Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum

Specific Families and Genera => Saxifraga => Topic started by: mark smyth on September 28, 2009, 02:09:16 PM

Title: Sax 'Piggy Back'
Post by: mark smyth on September 28, 2009, 02:09:16 PM

I was given a plant of Sax. 'Piggy Back' last night. Anyone know how to propagate it?

Title: Re: Sax 'Piggy Back'
Post by: Maggi Young on September 28, 2009, 02:23:47 PM

I'm not aware of  the cultivar name 'Piggy Back' nor yet 'Piggy Bank', Mark, but I'd hazard a guess that this will be a form of Saxifraga epiphylla , a Chinese species.
This has, according to Malcolm McGregor's book, : "oval leaf blades with an acute tip, which is thick, crisp, fleshy and hairy on the green surface as well as having a bristly margin. Undersides of the leaves  have purple spots. S. epiphylla is easily distinguished by the embryonic plantlets at the base of the leaf blades.  The plantlets are generally formed late in the summer or in the Autumn and, where the leaves can lie flat on the ground, they will root and the old blade rot away."

Hope this helps!

Title: Re: Sax 'Piggy Back'
Post by: mark smyth on September 28, 2009, 04:05:28 PM

Thanks.

Rubbish photos >:(

Title: Re: Sax 'Piggy Back'
Post by: David Shaw on October 01, 2009, 08:02:58 AM

Did not the 'Piggy Back' plant used to be arround as a house/office plant? I guess that it would have been a sax. but I don't remember much about it.

Title: Re: Sax 'Piggy Back'
Post by: Ragged Robin on October 01, 2009, 09:44:44 AM

This is what I remember from the office:

http://faculty.ucc.edu/biology-ombrello/POW/piggyback.htm