Cultivar
Platycerium willinckii 'Nano'
Nano
- Latin
- Platycerium willinckii 'Nano'
- Chinese
- Nano
- Japanese
- ナノ
- English
- Nano
Parent species
Platycerium willinckiiJava staghorn fern
Nano is a trade name for a dwarf Platycerium willinckii and one of Taiwan's six great dwarfs; by the selector's account it came from the same Indonesian batch as Jade Girl, Golden Boy and OMG. The word itself just means very small, so different sellers may use it for different dwarfs, and with sporelings and tissue-cultured plants widely sold, ask about the mother plant and how it was propagated.
Care notes
What the name refers to
Nano 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 Bacteria. It is a trade name, not a registered cultivar.
According to PlatyWiki, quoting the selector Huang Yuan himself, in 2016–17 he had contacts search Indonesian collectors for dwarf willinckii, and what they found became Golden Boy, Jade Girl, OMG and Nano. That account comes from the selector, but it is a community record with no formal documentation behind it.
The trouble with the word
Nano simply means very small. The more descriptive a name is, the more easily it gets attached to other dwarfs, so a Nano from one seller is not guaranteed to descend from the same plant as a Nano from another. That is the biggest difference between Nano and names like Jade Girl or Jenny, which point to one particular plant.
What it looks like
PlatyWiki records the fertile fronds as short, broad and many-forked. The whole plant is small, with fronds under a dense coat of stellate hairs.
Telling it from Bacteria and OMG
Honestly, you cannot do it from descriptions. PlatyWiki describes Nano, Bacteria and OMG in almost identical words — short, broad, many-forked fertile fronds — and as young plants the six dwarfs look very alike. The only way to tell them apart is a mature photo of the same plant and a record of where it came from.
Care
Grow it as you would willinckii. PlatyWiki recommends a cooled room with grow lights for the best results. Because the plant is small, scale the board and moss down too: a large board with a small plant keeps the moss wet for a long time and invites stagnant damp.
After mass production
Nano is popular, and large numbers of sporelings and tissue-cultured plants have been produced for sale, making it one of the easiest dwarfs to find. Mass production is not the problem; the question is whether the plant grows up to look like the original.
Three questions before you buy
- Which mother plant? Nano is the easiest of these names to borrow, so the seller should be able to say where it came from.
- How was it propagated? A pup is the same individual as its mother; a sporeling segregates; for a tissue-cultured plant, ask which plant was copied.
- Ask for a mature photo. Seedlings cannot be told apart, so ask for the mother plant or mature plants from the same batch.
FAQ
How is Nano different from Bacteria?
Not in a way you can tell from descriptions. PlatyWiki describes both in nearly the same words — short, broad, many-forked fertile fronds — and young plants look very alike. The difference is in origin: by the selector's account Nano came from the same Indonesian batch as Jade Girl, Golden Boy and OMG, while nobody knows who selected Bacteria. Only a mature photo of the same plant and its provenance can separate them.
What does Nano mean for a staghorn fern?
Nano simply means very small and refers to a dwarf form of willinckii. Because the word is so descriptive, different sellers may use it for different dwarfs, so with Nano more than any other name you should ask about the mother plant and where it came from.
Is Nano easy to grow?
Grow it as you would willinckii; PlatyWiki recommends a cooled room with grow lights for the best results. The thing to watch is its size: scale the board and moss down so a small plant is not sitting in moss that never dries.
Other cultivars of the same species
Names selected from the same wild species, usually compared side by side.