A friend who was moving a few years ago left a leaf in a shot glass of water to me and it grew into this. When it "blooms," all that happens is a 3 or 4 inch stamen grows from the base of a leaf. the surface of the stamen looks like a tight green pine cone - that kind of diamond pattern - and it gets pollen all along it. When it's green it smells like pine, and when it dries out it smells very strongly of maple syrup. Also, I just saw a tree labeled only "tropical plant." It looked similar to a ficus (perhaps only to my untrained eye), but the leaves were all curled back on themselves, the tips to the underside of the stems. It was very pretty and I'd love an ID for that one as well. Thank you!
My first thought on seeing it and hearing about the inflorescence is Peperomia obtusifolia or something very similar.
Ficus with that style of inflorescence, Junglekeeper? In all of the Ficus I've seen (and there are plenty down here) I've never once seen a spathe and spadix produced, which is what dangermouse is describing.
@lorax: Junglekeeper was answering the question about the second plant that looked like a Ficus but had leaves curled back on themselves, not the question about the first plant with the flower spikes (which is pretty definitely a Peperomia obtusifolia).
The tree I saw was definitely not the Japanese Privet saltcedar suggested, but thank you for the suggestion. I did look at pictures of the Ficus benjamina Pandora before posting my question, but I couldn't find anything with as dramatic a curl as I saw. The tips of the leaves all literally touched the underside of the base or curled right around to form a tube. Does the amount of curl in the leaves vary a good deal in that type of ficus? Maybe I just saw a really good example...
AH!! Yes! Thank you, Junglekeeper, that looks exactly like what I saw. I'm having trouble finding much information about it online. The one english site I found said that it only gets about a foot and a half tall. Is that true?
Haha - I did go back and get it actually. and I found a picture on a japanese site of one that looks like it's about 4 feet tall. Soooo... I guess I'll find out. Thanks again for your help.
I'm pretty sure it's the Barok variety, as suggested above. The leaves are quite dramatically curled. From the pictures I could find, the Exotica type only has a slight curve. Thank you ,though.
Hahaha! That's not at all what I meant by the title of the thread. If I was going to start giving my plants names, Penfold would certainly have to be top of the list, though.
