Piggyback Plant – Tolmiea menziesii

Common Name: Piggyback Plant, Pickaback Plant

Botanical Name: Tolmiea menziesii, tol-ME-a men-ZEEZ-i

Decorative Life: Many months depending on environment but is not all that tolerant to indoor conditions compared to most other foliage plant species.

Availability: Year Round

This species has been shown to be an iron-inefficient plant because of its inability to make iron more available to roots through biochemical changes. This information translates to mean that iron deficiency is likely, especially if growing media pH levels are too high.

• Named for Dr. William Fraser Tolmie (1812-1886), surgeon for the Hudson Bay Company at Ft. Vancouver, Canada.
• Some exotic diseases of citrus that involve small, single-stranded RNA molecules called viroids, can be transmitted to this species.