I was watching TV the other day and spotted this beautiful large glossy zig zag like leaf and fell in love. The only problem is - i can't seem to find anything online that even remotely looks like it. Can you identify this plant for me!?

May be some cultivar of Schefflera elegantissima
https://techieoldfox.wordpress...

That is a beauty, whatever it is! Do you know if it was a living plant or perhaps one of the artificial, silk variety? It does kinda/sorta resemble Schefflera elegantissima but I've never seen one with such broad leaves. Here are our database listings for S. elegantissima: https://garden.org/plants/sear...

I was actually watching the show flip or flop (filmed in california) and it was outside of one of the houses they were remodling - so i know it was a live plant and not artificial. Thanks for the help guys!!

Yeah I was suspicious of it as living plant too lol anyway hope others could help.

I wonder if it could be Japanese Aralia (Fatsia japonica) ?

I think that is close to what's in the picture plantadylin!!! thank you so much for all of the help everyone! I'm so happy that I can be apart of this community.

You are very welcome; we saw some beautiful Japanese Aralia plants when visiting San Diego a few years ago!

Sorry but its not a Japanese Aralia (Fatsia japonica) - the leaves are completely wrong for that ID. Look at how the leaves are connected in the middle. The leaves are right for a Schefflera of some type.

It's Schefflera elegantissima in it's mature foliage. They get even broader leaflets when they're older. When I get back to work I'll take some pictures of ours. We hab some that we're about 30 years old and almost 20' tall, but they got taken out when they built a new building. Interestingly, if you cut them down to about 3' the leaves return to the more typical look. I'll take some pics of those too.

Way back a couple days ago...

tofitropic said:May be some cultivar of Schefflera elegantissima
https://techieoldfox.wordpress...

Yes, @tofitropic nailed it a few days ago! I've never, ever seen a Schefflera elegantissima with broad leaves like that but I'd sure love to have one! I googled and found some photos of plants with the broad leaves:
https://www.south-florida-plan...
https://toptropicals.com/catal...

edited to delete one link because it was not a Schefflera.

What I find very funny is that South Florida Plants says that it "will even take part sun". Our really big ones were in full sun all day long, even when it was over 110. It's really much tougher than it's dainty little lacy leaves make it look. I will grant you that they grew out of a shady area into the sun but once they got there they luxuriated in it even though they only got watered once a month.😲 Plants (and other assorted living things) love to throw us exalted opposable-thumbed-wonders curve balls when we think we've got it all figured out.

They were talking about FLORIDA sun LOL it is a killer. Out plants labeled FULL SUN here in FL are only given 1/2 day sun. There are exceptions, but full sun here is just too much for a lot of plants

Still think it is some sort of plastic plant. Resemble the Schefflera elegantissima just a little in my opinion.

klcompton233 said:I was watching TV the other day and spotted this beautiful large glossy zig zag like leaf and fell in love. The only problem is - i can't seem to find anything online that even remotely looks like it. Can you identify this plant for me!?

its called false aralia, Plerandra elegantissima

Wow, the mature foliage of False Aralia (Plerandra elegantissima) sure looks a lot different than the juvenile leaf form and I love it!

I had a false aralia years ago. It looks very much like that.

I finally got back to work and finally got some pictures of the one with both kinds of leaves.

Mature foliage in front and immature in the back.

Intermediate leaves.

Really mature leaves. I forgot to get something in there for scale, but they're close to 20" across. The big ones in full sun had even bigger leaves with less indented margins, closer to 2 feet across.

WOW, that is one amazing tree and It's definitely False Aralia (Plerandra elegantissima), formerly classified as Schefflera elegantissima ... a really beautiful one!