Philodendron verrucosum
Philodendron verrucosum is a velvet-leaved hemiepiphytic climber of very wet premontane and lower montane forest from Costa Rica to Peru, most often found between about 500 and 1,500 m. It wants shade, steady mild temperatures with a nightly drop, near-saturated air and a free-draining medium that is never waterlogged. Plants from high elevations need cool nights, so ask where a clone came from.
Where it grows wild
A hemiepiphyte of very wet tropical forest: it scrambles over the ground or on rocks when young and climbs moss-covered trunks in shaded understorey. Croat's treatment places it mainly in premontane rain forest and tropical lower montane rain forest, less often in lowland tropical wet forest. In Central America it grows mostly on the Atlantic slope and near the Continental Divide in Costa Rica and Panama, and also on the Pacific slope of southwestern Costa Rica. Field growers describe it as terrestrial, lithophytic or hemiepiphytic depending on the site.
The literature gives about 200–1,500 m, mostly above 500 m. Some populations go higher, and a field account puts it above 2,000 m on the Andean slopes. The GBIF records span 149–2,150 m with a median of 1,400 m, so most wild plants grow in the cool premontane band rather than in the hot lowlands.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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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 Public domain licence, unmodified.