Jade Vine

Names & Nicknames: Jade vine, emerald vine, turquoise jade vine

Size: These woody vines can grow to around 20 metres long (a bowling lane), though some sources suggest they can reach 100 metres! Their fluorescent flowers are about 8cm long, about the size of your palm, and grow in verticle-dangling clusters that can be up to 3 metres long.

Smell: Jade vines don't have a noticeable aroma, producing only a very subtle sweet smell. They prefer to let their colour do the talking.

Communication: There's only one thing jade vines want to chat with and that is bats. Bats are their pollinators – they help them pass pollen from one plant to another to reproduce. That's where their unique flowers come in. Their vibrancy stands out in the low light of dusk, enticing bats to visit. Once found, their claw-like shape allows the bats to hang upside down and reach the nectar within.

Favourite Hangout: Jade vines are only found (in the wild that is) in one place on earth: damp, lowland rainforests in the Philippines. They can be a bit of a diva about this; anything below 15°C and that's a no-go for this steamy plant.

Favourite Snack: Yummy yummy sunlight. Jade vines, like most plants, produce energy through photosynthesis, a method that uses sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to produce energy.

Eating Habits: Jade vines, like most succulent plants, photosynthesise using a process called Crassulacean Acid Metabolism, or we can just call them CAM. Jade vines open up little pores on their leaves called stomata during the night to absorb carbon dioxide which they then store as an acid. During the day, they can then use this stored carbon dioxide, combined with sunlight and water, to photosynthesise and make energy.

Love Language: You know in high school, when you like someone but you are too shy to talk with them, you might send them a note via a friend and then they would send one back. That's how it works for these plants as well. The middleman friend, in this case, is a bat. A bat will land on a jade vine trying to get some sweet nectar, and in this process, vines will gently brush pollen onto the bat's head as it drinks. Once the bat flies off to another jade plant, that pollen will be left on the female part of the flower, and the act of plant lovemaking is complete.

If you see them: They can be pretty easy to miss most of the year; they're a woody vine that can blend into the canopy. However, for 2-3 months of the year, our heroes bloom, and the jade vine is dripped out in potentially hundreds of sparkling turquoise flowers. Only about 10% of all flowering plants are blue, and even less than that are the specific turquoise blue of a jade vine, so they really are a sight to behold.

Red Flags: Their lovely Philippine rainforest homes are getting cut down! Something that is continuously making this already rare plant even rarer.

Epic Journeys: Jade vines don’t exactly run around much, in fact in the wild, they can only be found in the Philippines. However, due to their rarity (and attractive appeal to bring in viewers), they can also be found in botanical gardens worldwide. Maybe your closest botanical garden has one?

Glow-up: How fast a jade vine grows really depends on the temperature. In ideal conditions, it grows several metres a year, but when the temperature drops, it's time to chill out for these sun-loving vines as they'll even go dormant if it gets too chilly.

Facts: The individual flowers of the jade vine only last a couple of days before wilting away. Beauty is fleeting, as they say.

Who are they in the friendship group: Quite unassuming most of the time but when it is their time to shine, they really go for it.

How threatened is it?: Although not listed by the IUCN, this plant is largely regarded as threatened in the wild.