Monday, November 9, 2009

Random plant event: Nematanthus flowers

This seems a little bit early, but we'll take it: I have four Nematanthus plants, and two of them have flowers almost developed though neither is completely there yet. Only one flower each, too, but there's still time for that to change.


I never had a proper ID for either of these plants (or for the two that aren't flowering yet, either), but from poking around on-line after posting the picture of the striped one last February, I think it might be the variety called Nematanthus 'Tropicana.'


Both of these varieties have much larger leaves than I think they ought to have, and I'm a little puzzled about why that is, though I suppose as long as they're happy enough to flower I'm not going to worry about it too much. But still. They're like twice as long and twice as wide as the Nematanthus that haven't flowered yet. It's weird.


5 comments:

perlie said...

Hi, Mr. S,
Here's a link to the Nematanthus page of the Gesneriad Reference Web. I'm sure you have N. 'Tropicana' because I've never seen a bloom quite like that one. Nematanthus is a much larger genus than is commonly known.
http://www.gesneriads.ca/genemcod.htm
Damn, I hope the link works. This little page broke it in two. If you have any Gessies to ID, this is the place to do it if you don't have Jon Dixon or another encyclopedia at the ready.
I've found that my 'Tropicana' blooms most of the year when given adequate light and moisture and a bit of fertilizer.
Keep writing please! I love PATSP! Thanks.

perlie said...

http://www.gesneriads.ca

Well. I see THAT didn't work. Here's the GRW homepage. The Genera button to the left will get you on your way.

Kenneth Moore said...

I'm a fan of orange, and the stripes that it seems to have on the inside. Have yours flowered before?

I'm still waiting for the ones I bought back in July to do anything (other than die--I think I forgot about a few, so they're gone, and now I have one or two rooted leaves just sitting around in dirt, alive, but doin' nothing).

mr_subjunctive said...

perlie:

Nematanthus is a much larger genus than is commonly known.

So it would seem. I guess I'm less worried about the large leaves now.

For what it's worth, the first link worked for me.

Kenneth Moore:

As best as I can remember, this is the first time they've flowered for me, yes. In the apartment, none of them ever got any sun, because there wasn't enough sun to go around. I could get Aeschynanthus to flower just fine, but not Nematanthus.

Even then, only the two in the west window have flowered so far. One of them is in filtered south light and the other is in an east window, so theoretically they're all getting about the same amount of light, but apparently west light is better sometimes or something.

Aaerelon said...

Those are some tiny little flowers. I don't think I have an opinion on this plant. It looks overwhelmingly 'fine'. I apologize for the uselessness of this comment.