Cultivar
Platycerium willinckii 'Bacteria'
Bacteria
- Latin
- Platycerium willinckii 'Bacteria'
- Chinese
- 細菌
- Japanese
- バクテリア
- English
- Bacteria
Parent species
Platycerium willinckiiJava staghorn fern
Bacteria is a trade name for a dwarf Platycerium willinckii and one of Taiwan's "six great dwarfs". Its point is size: a mature plant is roughly 20 cm across. Nobody can say who selected or named it. Being tiny makes it trickier, not easier, and with large numbers of sporelings and tissue-cultured plants now on the market, ask how any plant was propagated.
Care notes
What the name refers to
Bacteria is a trade name for a dwarf form of Platycerium willinckii. Taiwanese growers count it among the "six great dwarfs", alongside Jade Girl, Golden Boy, OMG, Jenny and Nano. It is a trade name, not a registered cultivar.
Unlike Jade Girl or OMG, nobody can say who selected Bacteria, who named it, or when; even the selector field in its PlatyWiki entry is blank. Some sellers claim the name comes from fronds that look like bacterial colonies. We found no source for that either, so we do not repeat it.
The appeal: very small
A European nursery describes the mature plant as about 20 × 20 cm, with fertile fronds around 10 cm long, reaching about 15 cm only on very old plants, forked at the tips and covered in white stellate hairs that make them look powdered. PlatyWiki records the fertile fronds as short, broad and many-forked, with short fingers and a deeper green, though individuals and growing conditions vary.
Small does not mean easy
PlatyWiki notes a problem growers often mention: the plant is so small that its hands (fertile fronds) and face (shield fronds) are crammed into a tiny space, which makes it a little harder for beginners. The entry recommends growing it in a cooled room under grow lights.
Our advice is to scale the board and moss down to the plant. A large board with a small plant keeps the moss wet for a long time, and a small plant handles stagnant damp worst of all. Otherwise grow it as you would willinckii; it is slow, so do not try to push it.
After mass production
Because Bacteria has been popular for a long time, large numbers of sporelings and tissue-cultured plants have been produced for sale, and its standing in the market has fallen sharply. Mass production is not the problem in itself; the question is whether the plant you buy grows up to look like the original.
Telling it from the other dwarfs
As young plants the six dwarfs look very alike and cannot be told apart from a seedling. Bacteria's mark is being the smallest overall, with short fingers. Jade Girl has fine hands and heavy silver; OMG has short, broad, repeatedly forked hands and is the one most easily confused with Bacteria.
Three questions before you buy
- How was it propagated? A pup is the same individual as its mother; a sporeling segregates; for a tissue-cultured plant, ask which mother plant it came from.
- Ask for a mature photo. Seedlings cannot be told apart, so ask for the mother plant or mature plants from the same batch.
- Is the size right? Even a mature Bacteria is only about 20 cm across. If a plant is sold as large, ask whether it is really the same thing.
FAQ
Why is it called Bacteria?
Nobody knows. There is no reliable record of who selected it, who named it or when, and the selector field in its PlatyWiki entry is blank. Some sellers say the fronds look like bacterial colonies, but that has no source either, so we do not treat it as the answer.
Is Bacteria easy to grow?
Not the hardest, but being tiny brings its own trouble: the fertile and shield fronds are crammed into a small space, and it grows slowly. Scale the board and moss down to the plant to avoid stagnant damp; PlatyWiki recommends a cooled room with grow lights.
How does a tissue-cultured Bacteria differ from a pup?
A pup is split from the mother plant and is the same individual. A tissue-cultured plant is in principle also a copy of one plant, but it depends on which plant was copied and how carefully; Bacteria has been mass produced, and some grow up looking different. Ask which mother plant it came from and see mature plants from the same batch.
Other cultivars of the same species
Names selected from the same wild species, usually compared side by side.