String of pearls. String of hearts. String of turtles. String of dolphins. They sound like a set, like flavours of one thing, and they look like it too: a long stem, a run of little beads or leaves, the whole plant spilling over the edge of its pot. We carry a good few of them (string of hearts usually in hanging baskets, the others here and there), and it's easy to assume they're variations on one plant with slightly different beads. That assumption is wrong, in the most interesting way.
Those four are about as closely related as a daisy is to a peppercorn. "String of ___" isn't a plant. It's a shape that four completely unrelated plant families arrived at on their own, the way a shark and a dolphin both ended up torpedo-shaped without being related. Which is good news for you: caring for your string of plants doesn't take four separate care sheets. Once you can read the bead, you can read all of them. The name tells you the shape. The leaf tells you the care.
Four Families Wearing the Same Costume
Here's the cast, sorted by who's actually related to whom.
The daisy family (Asteraceae). String of pearls, string of dolphins, string of bananas, and string of tears are all Curio (you may know them under their old name, Senecio). These are the true succulents of the group. Let a string of pearls bloom and you'll get tiny white puffball flowers that smell like cinnamon, which rather gives the daisy connection away.
The milkweed family (Apocynaceae). String of hearts (Ceropegia woodii) and Hoya curtisii sit here, distant cousins to each other. Both are a little waxy and semi-succulent, running the same water-thrifty playbook from a different branch of the tree.
The pepper family (Piperaceae). String of turtles (Peperomia prostrata) is the odd one out: not a desert plant at all, but a creeper from the rainforest floor, where it grows across damp bark and leaf litter in dappled shade.
The fig family (Moraceae). String of frogs is a creeping fig (Ficus pumila), the same genus as the big rubber trees and fiddle-leafs, just in miniature trailing form. Not a succulent in the slightest.
Four families. Four completely separate evolutionary paths to the same look. Beads-on-a-string turns out to be a good design for a plant that wants to trail down a rock face or a tree trunk and catch light on the way, so nature reinvented it more than once. The technical name for this is convergent evolution: unrelated organisms landing on the same solution because it works, the way birds and bats both arrived at wings. It's the reason the "string of" shelf is so satisfying to look at, and the reason its care is quietly all over the map.
The Bead Is the Instruction Manual
When you can't rely on the name, you rely on the leaf. Pinch a single bead between your fingers and pay attention to what it feels like. This one touch-test does more sorting than any label.
Fat, firm, and full of give, like a tiny water balloon? That's a plant carrying its own water on board (pearls, tears, bananas, dolphins). Storage like that is a desert strategy. It means the plant expects bright light and long gaps between drinks, and it would genuinely rather you forgot to water it than fussed over it.
Thin, soft, or more leaf-like than bead-like? That's a plant that doesn't store much water and doesn't expect to have to (turtles, and to a point, frogs). These come from shadier, steadier, more humid places, and they want more even moisture and gentler light. Treat one of these like a succulent and you'll dry it to a crisp.
String of hearts sits politely in the middle: its little heart-shaped leaves are thin, but it grows tubers underground that bank water for it, so it forgives a missed watering better than a turtle does.
This is a first read, not a courtroom verdict. But it's a reliable one, and it's the same touch-test that sorts a thick-leaved snake plant from a thin-leaved calathea. Once you can feel the difference, you stop memorizing plants and start reading them.
Light Comes First, As Always
Every plant we grow starts with the same question, and I'm not about to make these ones the exception: what's your light?
There's a trap built into the way we use these plants. We hang them. And the spot we hang them in (off a shelf bracket, in a corner, above the sink) usually gets chosen for where it looks good, not for where the light is. Then the plant goes leggy and pale, and we blame ourselves, when really we hung a light-hungry plant in a dim corner and asked it to perform.
The fat-bead succulents want the brightest spot you can give them: a few hours of gentle direct sun is ideal, an east or bright south-facing window especially. Skimp on light and string of pearls does something unmistakable: the gaps between the pearls stretch out, the strands go bald and stringy, and it stops looking like the plant you brought home. That isn't a watering problem. That's a light message.
The rainforest crowd (turtles, frogs) wants bright, indirect light instead: enough to keep them full, but direct midday sun through glass will scorch those thin leaves. A spot that's bright but out of the sun's direct path suits them well.
If you're not sure how to read the light in your own space, and rented places make this harder, we wrote a whole guide to doing exactly that: how to read the natural light in your home. It's the single most useful skill in all of houseplant care, these plants included.
Water the Bead You Have
You'll notice I haven't handed you a watering schedule, and I'm not going to. Watering isn't a day of the week; it's a response to what the pot is actually doing, which shifts with light, heat, pot size, and season. The good news is the bead already told you most of what you need.
The fat-bead succulents (pearls, tears, bananas, dolphins) want to dry out well between waterings, and I mean really dry, most of the way through the pot. Then water thoroughly and let them go again. Their whole strategy is built around drought, so the fastest way to lose one is kindness: watering it again while it's still damp. When you do check, look at the beads themselves. Plump and firm means fully watered. A little soft or flattened means genuinely thirsty, and that's your real signal, better than any calendar.
The rainforest crowd (turtles, frogs) likes more even moisture: not soggy, but not bone-dry either. For these, the classic finger test works well. Push a finger into the soil to your first knuckle. Dry at the fingertip, water. Still damp, wait a few days and check again.
Two things about the hanging habit itself. A pot up in the air with warm air moving around it dries out faster than the same pot sitting on a table, so these often need water a little sooner than you'd expect. And because they're overhead, it's easy to underwater simply by not looking up. A quick bead-pinch when you walk past is all the check-in most of them need.
Soil and Pots: It Comes Down to Air
For the succulent side of the group, the enemy is a soil that stays wet. Their roots need to breathe, and roots sitting in dense, waterlogged soil suffocate. So the mix wants to drain fast and hold air. Our peat-free house blend (two grades of coco coir for structure, perlite for air pockets, worm castings for gentle nutrition) works well with a little extra grit or perlite stirred in to open it up further. Terracotta helps too: the porous clay wicks moisture out of the soil and makes it much harder to overwater. If you know you're heavy-handed with the watering can, a fat-bead plant in a terracotta pot is your friend.
The rainforest crowd is happy in that same house blend closer to its standard form, holding a touch more moisture, though it still wants to drain freely rather than sit swampy.
Everyone in this group wants a drainage hole. All of them. A cache pot with no hole is where trailing plants go to quietly rot from the bottom up, because water collects where you can't see it. If you love a decorative pot without a hole, keep the plant in a plain nursery pot that drops inside it, and lift it out to water.
We default to peat-free here for a few reasons, but the practical one is control: coco coir rewets evenly and predictably, where peat can go bone-dry and then repel water at exactly the moment you're trying to rescue a thirsty plant. If you're currently using a peat-based mix, that's completely fine and very common. It's just worth knowing the alternative behaves more kindly while you're still learning a plant's rhythm.
Normal, or a Signal? How to Tell
Almost everything one of these plants does is a message, and most of the messages are reversible. Here's how to read the common ones.
Shrivelled, softening, or wrinkling beads. Most often: thirst. A succulent that's spent its stored water tells you by going soft, and a good drink usually plumps it back up within a day or two. Sometimes: the opposite problem, roots damaged by staying too wet and unable to drink even though there's water right there. Tell which by feeling the soil. Bone-dry means give it water. Wet means stop, and read the next entry.
Long bare stems with big gaps between the beads (sometimes called "leggy"). This is almost always a light message, not a water one. The plant is stretching toward a brighter source that isn't there. More light fixes the new growth; the bald stretch that already happened won't refill, but you can cut those strands back and the plant will branch fuller from where you trimmed. Nothing here is fatal, and the cuttings root easily if you'd like more plants.
Mushy, translucent, yellowing stems, especially down near the soil. This is the one to act on. It's rot, and rot isn't really a watering-amount problem; it's a suffocation problem. Roots sitting in airless, waterlogged soil can't breathe, they die, and opportunistic organisms move in. We wrote a whole piece on why this happens and how to think about it: why soil oxygen is the houseplant secret nobody talks about, because understanding it is what stops it happening twice. The immediate move: take the plant out of the wet soil, snip away anything mushy, and let the healthy pieces callus and re-root in fresh, airy mix. Even a badly rotted string plant can usually be saved as cuttings, because a single firm segment is enough to start over.
The theme across all of it: these plants are far more reversible than they look. Moved, trimmed, repotted, restarted from a scrap. Very little here is a point of no return.
Meet the Lineup, Bead by Bead
Here's everyone, with what the bead tells you and where each one stands on pets, because that question comes up a lot and the answers aren't intuitive. One thing worth saying up front: every plant here trails, dangles, and sways when the air moves, which is exactly the kind of thing a cat wants to bat at and chew. So for the mildly toxic ones, the fix is placement, not avoidance. Hang them high, out of reach of a determined pet, and the risk mostly takes care of itself. And "non-toxic" never means "chew-proof": any plant, safe or not, can give a pet an upset stomach if they eat enough of it. (We get into what that label really promises in a separate post on pet-safe plants.) The genuinely surprising part: the beads that look the most like hard little inedible pebbles are the toxic ones, and the soft, chewable-looking turtle is the safe one.
Ranking the pet risk here honestly: everything toxic in this group is mild. We're talking a possible upset stomach or some drooling, not an emergency. The ASPCA is the source we trust for this, and where they land is worth knowing plant by plant.
String of pearls (Curio rowleyanus). The classic. Perfectly round, pea-sized beads, each with a little translucent "window" stripe that lets light into the middle of the bead, an adaptation for soaking up more sun. The fattest and most drought-tough of the group, and the one most often lost to overwatering. Bloom it and you get those cinnamon-scented white flowers. Pets: mildly toxic, with the ASPCA noting stomach upset and lethargy if eaten. The sap can also irritate skin, yours included, so wash your hands after taking cuttings. Hang it high and enjoy it.
String of tears (Curio herreianus). Essentially pearls' teardrop-shaped twin: same genus, same care, same bright light and dry-hard watering. The beads are a little more pointed and often carry that same translucent window. If you can grow pearls, you can grow these. Pets: same as pearls, mildly toxic, same skin-irritating sap.
String of dolphins (Curio × peregrinus). A hybrid, and a charmer: each leaf has little "flippers" that make it look like a pod of tiny leaping dolphins. Care is pure Curio, bright light and a good dry-down. Pets: treat as mildly toxic like the rest of the group. It's a cross between string of pearls and a close relative, so it shares their chemistry, and the same hang-it-high rule applies.
String of bananas (Curio radicans). The fastest grower and arguably the most forgiving of the fat-bead crowd, with plump curved beads like a bunch of little green bananas. A good first "string of" if pearls feel intimidating. Pets: mildly toxic, same as its Curio siblings.
String of hearts (Ceropegia woodii). Not a succulent in the pearls sense, but a tuber-backed trailer with thin, marbled, heart-shaped leaves on wiry purple stems. Those underground tubers bank water, so it forgives a missed drink and can trail to remarkable lengths. One of the easier plants in this whole roundup. Pets: this one is genuinely murky, so here's the honest version. It isn't listed in the ASPCA's database at all, despite plenty of websites claiming it's "ASPCA non-toxic" (it's simply not listed either way). Most growers treat it as non-toxic and it lives in countless pet homes without trouble; a few sources flag mild tummy upset from the sap. Low risk, but I'd rather give you the accurate picture than a confident one that isn't backed up.
String of turtles (Peperomia prostrata). The rainforest one, and the safe one. Tiny round leaves patterned like little turtle shells, thinner than they look, growing slowly across the soil the way it would across a mossy log. Wants steadier moisture and gentler light than the succulents. Pets: non-toxic to cats and dogs, confirmed by the ASPCA by exact species. If you want a "string of" plant and you've got a curious cat, this is the one to reach for first.
Two more we bring in as gentler alternatives, especially if string of pearls has ever defeated you:
String of frogs (Ficus pumila). A trailing creeping fig, not a succulent, with small textured leaves some people think look like little frog feet. Because it isn't storing water, it wants more consistent moisture, which oddly makes it more forgiving for people who like to water: there's no drought strategy to disrupt. Pets: this is the one clear "toxic, and a bit more than mild" plant in the group. The milky sap typical of figs can cause an upset stomach if eaten and can irritate skin on contact, both yours and a pet's. So while it's an easier grower, it isn't a pet-safe swap for the turtles. Wash up after pruning.
Hoya curtisii. Tiny silver-flecked, spade-shaped leaves on a slow, tidy trailing hoya. It's a hoya through and through, which means it's more forgiving than it looks and eventually rewards you with the clustered, waxy flowers hoyas are loved for. If you fall for it, everything else about its care lives in our full hoya care guide. Pets: non-toxic. The ASPCA lists hoyas (wax plants) as non-toxic to cats and dogs with no toxic principle, so curtisii is a safe, pet-friendly pick right alongside the turtles.
Seasonal Notes for Hamilton
Our Hamilton winters change what these plants are doing, and it's worth moving with that rather than fighting it.
From late fall through the short days of winter, the succulent crowd slows right down. Less light means less growth, which means less thirst, so your watering should pull back to match. The pot stays wet longer in December than it did in July, and watering on summer's rhythm straight through winter is one of the more common ways a healthy string of pearls tips into rot. Let them dry longer. They aren't sulking; they're waiting out the dark the way they're built to.
The light shift itself is the bigger seasonal event. A south window in July and a south window in January are two different windows. A plant that thrived on a bright sill all summer can start stretching and paling by midwinter simply because the sun sits lower, comes in weaker, and is gone by late afternoon. Moving these plants to your brightest available spot for the winter, or adding a grow light, keeps them from going leggy until spring comes back around.
One timing note: this dark stretch is the wrong time to repot. Repotting asks a plant to grow new roots, and there isn't enough light in a Hamilton January to fund that work. If a plant needs a bigger home or a soil refresh, it'll settle in far better if you wait for the lengthening days of spring. (Active rot is the exception: deal with rot whenever you find it.)
You Already Have the Skill
So: eight plants, four families, and one skill that covers all of them. When someone hands you an unfamiliar "string of" something, you don't need to look it up. Pinch a bead. Fat and firm, treat it like a little desert plant: bright light, dry it out hard. Thin and soft, treat it like a rainforest one: steadier moisture, gentler light. The name was only ever telling you the shape. The leaf tells you how to keep it alive.
A quick word on feeding, since it always comes up: fertilizer isn't food. Your plant eats light; fertilizer is more like a multivitamin, a small supplement for when the plant is actively growing and could use a little extra. For this group, that means a gentle, diluted feed through spring and summer only, and nothing through the dark months when they're barely growing. A cold-processed liquid kelp like Kelpy (we keep it at the refill station) is about as gentle as it gets and suits every plant on this list. If you want the fuller reasoning on why gentle tends to win indoors, it's all here: fertilizer isn't plant food.
And if one of yours is doing something you can't read, that's exactly what our Doctor's Appointments are for. Drop the plant off, no appointment slot needed, and we'll have a proper look. More often than not it's a light level or a watering rhythm that wants a small adjustment, not a plant that's failing. Bring it in, and we'll read the beads together.