Platycerium willinckii 'Aysun'
Aysun

What this name refers to

Aysun is a trade name for a form of Platycerium willinckii. It is a trade name, not a registered cultivar, and its history is unverified. Only one account of its origin turned up: a Japanese seller describes it as a selection from dwarf Yellow Moon, grown from spores. English, Japanese and Taiwanese sporeling listings all use the same name, and we saw no sign of it being applied to unrelated plants, but that one seller is the only source that explains where it came from. We could not find the selector or the year.

Aysun is a Turkish woman's name with a meaning connected to the moon, which fits the Chinese name 月神 ("moon goddess") and the Moon series that Yellow Moon belongs to. That link is our inference, not something the person who named it has said.

How to recognise it

There is no consistent description of its features yet. Only the Japanese seller mentions "very white overall, with many forks", which is a single source. Most plants sold are sporelings, and sporelings segregate, so plants sold under this name will not necessarily grow up looking alike.

Easily confused with

• Totoro: raised from dwarf Yellow Moon sporelings; going by that seller's account, Aysun is also linked to dwarf Yellow Moon, but the two are separate selections.
• Yellow Moon and dwarf Yellow Moon themselves, and other heavily white-haired dwarf willinckii.
• Moonlight: another Moon series name, but a generic one that different sources use for different plants; see the willinckii page.

Care

Grow it like a dwarf willinckii; see dwarf willinckii care. For the first two weeks after buying a sporeling, keep it in its original medium and container, in bright diffused light with steady air humidity, and mount it only once the roots have settled.

A broken fertile frond will not kill the plant. All growth comes from the central growing point, so as long as that and the roots are intact, just cut the damaged frond off at its base, keeping clear of the growing point and never tearing it away. What does need attention is a growing point that turns black, soft or smells bad.

Why every flush of fronds looks different

After a willinckii makes its leaf change from juvenile to adult fronds, each new flush can be clearly longer, more forked and finer at the tips than the one before, as if it were a different plant. That is normal. Judge an Aysun by the fronds that come after the leaf change, not by its juvenile fronds.

Three questions to ask before buying

1. Which mother plant? Can the seller say which plant the spores were collected from?
2. How was it propagated? Sporelings segregate; only a pup is the same individual as its mother.
3. Can I see a mature plant? Seedlings cannot be told apart, so ask for photos of the mother plant or of mature plants from the same batch.