Dischidia vidalii
A Philippine epiphytic Dischidia (formerly D. pectenoides) that clings to tree bark and makes two kinds of leaf: small flat ones and large hollow pouches that ants colonise and into which the plant sends its own roots. It carries clusters of small pink to magenta flowers. Grow it like a bright-light epiphytic hoya: mounted or in a very airy medium, warm, humid and allowed to dry briefly between waterings.
Where it grows wild
An epiphytic climber on trees in lowland and hill forest on Luzon, recorded from sites such as Mt Mariveles (Bataan), Mt Makiling and the Sierra Madre foothills. The stems root along branches and the pouch leaves, filled with ant debris and roots, act as its water and nutrient store.
Philippine records carry no altitude; the localities are lowland to hill forest, roughly sea level to about 1,000 m. A single Sulawesi record at 1,750 m is outside the accepted range and is probably a misidentification.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
Grow Dischidia vidalii? Add it to a free garden and its full profile opens. Pro opens all 38,374 profiles in the library, plants and fungi.
More Dischidia
Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, unmodified.