Plant ID? Is it toxic?

[Baelari]

Pretty little plant, but I have no clue what it is, or if it's suitable for a vivarium. It was simply labeled as "Foliage."


How about this one? It was just labeled "Fern."


What kinds of plants are toxic to frogs anyway?

[Tony]

The first one is a Croton, Codiaeum variegatum. It is toxic, as are most of its relatives in the Euphorbiaceae, but I've been using it for years without incident. Most of the toxicity reports I have read point to ingestion as the primary danger, making the risk insignificant in my opinion and experience.

I'm not as well versed on ferns so I can't help with the ID, but I have never heard of any issues with fern toxicity and all the common household varieties seem to be widely used in vivaria.

[Baelari]

Thanks. It looks like a lot of common vivarium plants are toxic, but don't cause issues for frogs.

On a slightly related note, I just found out that the Coleus that I always assumed was toxic is actually edible, but if you eat a lot, it's reported to be a hallucinogen. Hooray for tidbits of trivia.

[Lacibeth]

Is the fern opposite (leaves come off on opposite sides at the same point) or alternate (leaves come off in stepwise fashion-one on this side and then one a little further up on the other side)?

[Baelari]

As far as I can tell, the leaves shoot up right out of the dirt. The leaves themselves remind me of wrinkly pin oak leaves, but some don't have any lobes and are just wrinkly sword shapes (do leaves have lobes? I don't know what else to call it). The veins in the leaves are nearly opposite each other, but not quite at the exact same spot.

[Lacibeth]

As far as I can tell, the leaves shoot up right out of the dirt. The leaves themselves remind me of wrinkly pin oak leaves, but some don't have any lobes and are just wrinkly sword shapes (do leaves have lobes? I don't know what else to call it). The veins in the leaves are nearly opposite each other, but not quite at the exact same spot.

Alright you made me dig into the very deep dark recesses of my brain (which can be quite scary), but the only simple leaved fern I can think of is a birds nest fern Asplenium nidus or Asplenium australasicum which is a high light/humidity but not overly moist soil plant. It has a fairly small root system so it actually does well in a smallish pot or as an epiphyte.