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A lot of you might recognize this leaf as something growing in your office or house. It's a ficus, one of the most common houseplants I guess there is. It's the ones that we always get a kick out of growing to see if we can keep the spider mites and see if we can keep the leaves on and all these kind of things. Don't over-water, don't under-water, keep it in the full sun, and all that kind of thing.

But if you go to the right place a lot of things that we consider houseplants, such as ficus and rubbertree, actually are trees. They actually are trees. Now this is a fairly nice size specimen that I'm standing by but if you look at the one we're showing now then you see that they can get into literal trees, because they never freeze back. So this is something that a lot of us never think about that these houseplants that we're growing can be trees in certain areas.

Now we're down in Mazatlan, Mexico, in western Mexico, where it never freezes. The coldest winter temperature will be something like sixty-five degrees. So low and behold they never freeze. So actually some of these things that we see as houseplants can be trees.

You may have never thought that you could hang a swing in your ficus or enjoy the shade from your ficus but in the right part of the country or the right part of the world you certainly can. So broaden you perspectives of what you've got growing in your own back living room.

This is Jerry Parsons, Vegetable Specialist for the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, the Weekend Gardener.