Pretty picture: Cattleya aurantiaca

Not at all what I think of when I think of Cattleya (in fact, some of what I think about when I think about Cattleya are probably not even Cattleyas, at least not pure ones), but it's not uncharming. I still prefer the color of the cross with Lc. Rojo, but as they say, I wouldn't kick this one out of bed for eating crackers.

Though in point of fact, I would kick anybody out of bed for eating crackers, 'cause, dammit, it's a bed. If you have to eat something, you could at least make it something that's not going to splinter into a million pieces and get all ground into the sheets and stuff. If somebody's insisting on eating crackers on a piece of furniture which is clearly not designed with cracker-consumption in mind, and doesn't see how that's a problem, then I don't think we're likely to have that long of a relationship anyway. And who eats crackers as a snack anyway, crackers by themselves? I mean, I do, sometimes, but that's mostly because they require no preparation at all and I'm very, very lazy when it comes to food. But I assume that other people don't sit down with a sleeve of Saltines and start chowing down. And I certainly don't eat just crackers, in bed, with someone I don't know well enough to have had the crackers-in-bed conversation with.

So no. I'd have to be like, um, _________, you're going to have to leave the bed for a little while if you want to eat crackers. And then when you're finished eating the crackers, you should come back and we should maybe have a talk about foods which are and are not appropriate to eat in bed, and maybe we should also talk about exactly where you see this relationship going if you're not going to be respectful of my desire to not be rolled in cracker crumbs against my will.

In any case, I do approve of the flower.

List: Houseplants With Circular (or Nearly Circular) Leaves

It occurs to me that I could do these list posts differently: instead of telling you what that the criterion is and then listing the plants that fit it, I could give you the list of plants and have you tell me the criterion. Basically "$10,000 Pyramid" for houseplants.

I won't do it that way, because it'd screw with anybody trying to google their way to a list of plants that had the criterion in question. But it'd be amusing. To me.

This one was unexpectedly difficult: I anticipated that I'd find circular leaves all over the place, but actually there are very few. Many otherwise-promising candidates actually have leaves which come to a point at the tip (there's a reason why we call it "leaf-shaped"), or are a little a little too stretched-out to call "nearly circular," or whatever. An even larger number among the succulents had almost round leaves, but with a thick petiole connecting them to the stem (like Crassula ovata or some of the Aeoniums and Echeverias), so the overall shape was more spoon-shaped than circular, and I didn't count them. But so here's what I came up with:

Calathea rotundifolia.

Cissus rotundifolia.

Dischidia nummularia 'Pebble Beach.'

Peperomia obtusifolia variegata.

Pilea nummulariifolia.

Plectranthus verticillatus.

Polyscias scutellaria.

Saintpaulia ionantha cvv.

Saxifraga stolonifera.

Soleirolia soleirolii.
Perhaps to make up for the difficulty of finding a set of ten plants, the recommends are exceptionally easy for this list. Peperomia obtusifolia variegata, Saxifraga stolonifera, and Plectranthus verticillatus are all very easy and tolerant plants. Peperomia prefers somewhat warmer temperatures than the other two, and Plectranthus grows so quickly that it requires a little more maintenance, but they're all pretty easy, 2.0 or below on the PATSP difficulty scale.

The anti-recommend winds up being a tie between Calathea rotundifolia and Soleirolia soleirolii, both of which need a lot of moisture in the air and soil in order to grow well. Soleirolia works out well in terrariums, where it can spread out and form a mat. Calathea maybe would do well in a terrarium too, but it'd need a pretty big terrarium, as C. rotundifolia gets to be a big plant. Davesgarden.com recommends a spacing of 18-24 inches (46-61 cm) between C. rotundifolias when planted outdoors, suggesting that they can get at least that big across. Your average planted fish tank isn't going to be able to accommodate that.

Not pictured (please suggest others if you think of some):

Alluaudia procera, sort of (some specimens seem to have more of a tendency toward a teardrop or oval shape, but others have round leaves; this is maybe a difference in conditions, or possibly the plant is just naturally variable)
a few Begonia cvv. are kinda roundish, if not actually circular (especially the extremely spirally cultivars like B. rex-cultorum 'Escargot')
Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta'
Calathea makoyana, roseo-picta, and some other spp.
Coccoloba uvifera
Ficus deltoidea, barely (often more triangular than round, but there seems to be a lot of variation between specimens, and some produce rounder leaves than others)
Ficus pumila, barely (usually more heart-shaped or oval)
Hoya kerrii, very occasionally (much stronger tendency to be heart-shaped, though sometimes leaves will have less of a notch at the tip)
Hoya obovata, most of the time
Lemmaphyllum microphyllum, sometimes (often more oval or leaf-shaped)
Maranta leuconeura kerchoviana, sometimes (usually more oval: younger plants tend to have rounder leaves)
Muehlenbeckia complexa
Pellaea rotundifolia, frond leaflets
Peperomia argyreia
Peperomia 'Jayde'
Peperomia prostrata
Peperomia urocarpa
Pilea depressa
Pilea glauca
Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk'
Pilea microphylla? (leaves are nearly too small to really tell what shape they are)
Pilea peperomioides
Plectranthus amboinicus
Plectranthus ciliatus
Plectranthus oertendahlii
Polyscias balfouriana
Portulacaria afra
Sedum sieboldii
Senecio rowleyanus (More spherical leaves than circular ones, but close enough.)
Sinningia cvv.
Tropaeolum majus (Though nasturtiums are not very often grown indoors, and they're super-prone to spider mites when they are.)
Xerosicyos danguyi

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XXIX

This batch is maybe a little heavy on the aroids, but what can I say? A lot of them have broad, thin leaves, which makes them very tempting subjects.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Philodendron 'Golden Emerald.' A much more interesting plant than the photo makes it appear.

Spathiphyllum 'Golden Glow,' flower spathe. Didn't work as well as I'd hoped, but I get so few chances at white photos that I figured I'd run with it anyway.

Monstera deliciosa. My Monstera has been pretty badly abused: I don't give it a lot of light, or warmth, or humidity. Not that I wouldn't, if I could, but it's big and awkward and I don't have a lot of spots where such a plant could go. So I get thin, pale, unsplit leaves like this one. Good for the transmitted light photos, bad for basically everything else. The especially confusing thing about this is that I took cuttings from this plant, and potted them up together, and they're also growing thin, pale, small, unsplit leaves even though they're getting very good artificial light and in a much warmer location. So maybe there's more going on here than I recognize.

Dracaena deremensis 'Warneckei.' Seems like it's been a long time since I tried a transmitted light picture for this plant. My sense of time, when it comes to these, is kinda screwy, though. I have photographs taken for Part XLIX already.

Philodendron gloriosum. I did finally reach the point with my plant where I had to cut it back. It needed to be repotted, and the thick, woody stems had crawled to the edge of the pot and made a right angle downward. No way to move the plant to a bigger pot without cutting at least some of these stems back, so I did. There's some indication that the cut-off parts might be rooting in water, which would be great news if true, but even if they do root, I'm not sure what I can do with the pieces. At least the plant survived the repotting, though. I'd known that I needed to do this for a long time, and had been scared that the plant would die if I did.

Dieffenbachia 'Starbright.' Looks like an Aglaonema to me.

Aglaonema 'Gold Dust.' Looks like a Dieffenbachia to me.

Zingiber malaysianum. I'm impressed with the range of colors I've been able to get out of this plant, with transmitted light pictures. As far as it goes, I'm still quite happy with it as a houseplant in general, too. So long as I don't neglect to water, it'll grow just fine for me.

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Glennis.' I've taken a lot of 'Glennis' photos in the hopes of getting one that resembles the way the plant looks when viewed by reflected light. I've realized that that was never going to happen. This is nice too, though.

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Kong Rose' sport. The weird orange color isn't natural to the leaf, but has to do with the light I was using. It doesn't really look like this, but I liked the effect so well that I kept it.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

A couple weeks ago, Sheba made her longest car trip ever, to Cedar Rapids and back (about an hour each way, plus multiple stops within Cedar Rapids). She was pretty tired out by the end of it, and I think would have liked to nap all the way home but couldn't because of the noise, light, and bouncing, but still. She didn't throw up, which is excellent news, and even if she was worn out by the end of the trip, she was pretty excited during the beginning. I think she had a good time.

Also she's a dog, and has to do dog things.


In other Sheba-related news, she had her first vet appointment last Monday, which, happily, turned up nothing of consequence. She weighs almost exactly 50 pounds (23 kg), she's now re-vaccinated against bordetella ("kennel cough"), and she has heartworm preventative medication to take, which in retrospect we probably should have gotten that for her earlier and I feel like a bad dog father. But all indications are that she's fine anyway. Also she growled at the vet once, but in fairness to Sheba, he was sticking a plastic tube into her ear at the time for reasons she couldn't have understood. I would have growled too.

Pretty picture: Rudbekia hirta

This is possibly a little late; I took these pictures in mid-July, but didn't post them because everybody else already seemed to have the Rudbeckia-photo thing covered. What's actually blooming now is mostly Helianthus and Solidago, which I haven't been taking pictures of this summer because of not having air conditioning in the car anymore. But I figure they're all gold-colored flowers, so if seeing them a couple weeks late is going to be problematic for you, just back away from your computer monitor and squint until they could plausibly be something else.

I really like this picture full-sized.

Random plant event: Glycine max pods

In the continuing story of our backyard soybean field (check out the earlier post to see the flowers), we now have the beginnings of the soybean pods. This part, at least, was a little bit familiar to me, since I've seen the mature pods before, and these are pretty similar.


Not the most shining examples of nature's beauty. I mean, it's no sun-setting-over-a-wildflower-ringed-serene-lake-while-a-V-of-geese-fly-south-for-the-winter-overhead.

But, you know, they're soybeans. Only so much I can do. Maybe they get prettier as the season progresses. I doubt it, of course. But maybe.

Site-related: Comment moderation

Due to a much larger-than-normal influx of spam commenters that appeared about a week ago, I turned on comment moderation for all comments earlier today. Previously, moderation had been on only for posts more than a week old.

The only effect this should have on your life is that it will take longer for your comments to show up here at PATSP, because they'll have to wait until I read them and decide whether they're blog- and post-relevant, which I think we can all agree isn't that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things.

Pretty pictures: Kalanchoe blossfeldiana

Not a lot of botanical, or even horticultural, content today, but the pictures are big and purty and well-suited for desktop backgrounds. Or even if you don't want a new desktop background, there's still quite a bit more detail to be seen in the full-size picture.

I don't have cultivar IDs for any of the five; they were probably tagged, but with bloomers like these, I often forget to check, for some reason.

My favorite is the pink calandiva (fourth from top).

Question for the Hive Mind: Variegated Morning Glory?

I saw this growing at the ex-job, out on the nursery lot. It wasn't for sale, because it wasn't in a pot, and it didn't look like it had been deliberately planted, but it's also very odd and passably-ornamental looking, so I suppose it could have been an escapee. I don't recall us ever selling potted morning glories (moonflowers, yes, but not morning glories), though, nor did we ever offer sweet potato vines with this sort of variegation. So . . . what is it?

It was late afternoon when I took these pictures. The plant was in a location that likely gets only afternoon sun, and not very much of it: there are some fairly dense trees growing overhead.

Pretty picture: Masdevallia ignea x constricta

The actual petals and other important parts of Masdevallias are stuck way down in the center of the plant, and are tiny. The sepals, which have become fused together, are the brightly-colored bits with the long "tails."

I think most of the Masdevallias I've seen are less pretty than just odd. I like odd, usually, so that's not really a problem. And the first one I posted about, Masdevallia Prince Charming, I actually think is kind of pretty, too. Everything breaks down with M. ignea x constricta, though, as my brain insists that it's creepy and off-putting. The odd shape, combined with the large numbers of flowers in these pictures, somehow add up to "alien invasion" in my head.


Also the color, let's face it, is not the most appealing.

Maybe if they were edible, and tasted like cheese, it would work for me.

Though I'm not a big fan of cheese either, actually, so maybe not. I don't know.

Masdevallia is another genus I will probably never grow, though I have more hope for Masdevallia than for Miltoniopsis; Masdevallia might be okay in our basement. It's humid and cool, and there are fluorescent lights all over the place, so if I managed to water often enough, I might be able to keep a Masdevallia happy. Not, like, an alien cheese invader Masdevallia, but with some other, more pleasingly-colored hybrid.

List: Houseplants Native to Southern Africa

Houseplants tend to be from the same few places over and over again: Southeast Asia is popular, as are Central America and Brazil. But one of the richest sources of houseplants, particularly succulent houseplants, is the southernmost segment of Africa. South Africa lucks out because it has the Karoo, a very dry inland section of the southern end of the continent. The westernmost section of the Karoo (which is actually called the Succulent Karoo) is very dry, hot, and windy, and the plants living there have gone to fairly extreme lengths to survive, dispensing with stems entirely (Lithops spp.), or living buried in the soil with only the translucent leaf "windows" exposed to the sun (Lithops again, but also some Haworthias, Senecios, and Peperomias).

Most of us don't actually keep the inside of our homes broiling hot and windy, but the low humidity and sometimes-neglectful watering of some homes are compatible with these plants' needs as long as enough light is provided. Other South African houseplant species come from the moister areas to the south and east of the Succulent Karoo, but these also tend to be more tolerant of dry soil and air than your average tropical rainforest plant. (There are less drought-tolerant exceptions, like Saintpaulia and Streptocarpus.)

Map of the southern tip of Africa. The Karoo, Succulent and non-, is outlined in yellow; the Succulent Karoo is to the west of the green line. Image is public domain, from Wikipedia.
It's difficult to come up with a comprehensive list of houseplants from this region, because it's impossible to be precise about "houseplant" and "this region." Some of the plants on the list are only found in a single fairly tiny location, say around a specific town. Others have ranges stretching up through East and Central Africa, or even east to Madagascar and around the Indian Ocean. But these, at least, can naturally be found at some spot or another within the southernish part of Africa, wherever else they might or might not exist.

Aloe harlana.

Asparagus plumosus.

Chlorophytum comosum.

Euphorbia flanaganii.

Euphorbia pseudocactus.

Gasteria NOID. Gasterias in general, though.

Saintpaulia ionantha cv.

Sansevieria trifasciata 'Hahnii Pearl Young.'

Senecio rowleyanus.

Strelitzia nicolai.

For the recommends, I'll go with Aloe harlana, Strelitzia nicolai, and Euphorbia pseudocactus. All three are pretty easy-going most of the time -- I've literally never had a problem with my Aloe harlana, and only the most minor problems with Euphorbia pseudocactus, which were entirely my fault anyway. Strelitzia nicolai and I have had our ups and downs, but I'm still fond of it, so much so that I'm apparently willing to delude myself into thinking it's an entirely different plant so I can justify purchasing it over and over.

For the anti-recommend, I don't know. I've had minor problems with all seven of the remaining plants from the list, ranging from generalized failure to thrive (Chlorophytum, Senecio) to various speeds and flavors of decline and rot (Gasteria, Sansevieria, Saintpaulia), to extreme demands for light and the heartbreak of etiolation that causes (Euphorbia), to underwatering followed by hardcore needle drop (Asparagus).

I think Sansevieria is the one I'm least likely to buy in the future, as the Sansevieria problems have been a lot more permanent, and seem to happen to every specimen I buy sooner or later. Most people will think this is ridiculous, because everybody but me finds Sansevierias easy to grow. But that's the one I want for the anti-recommend anyway.

-

Not pictured:

Adromischus cristatus
Albuca bracteata
Aloe aristata
Aloe brevifolia
Aloe ciliaris
Aloe ferox
Aloe greatheadii
Aloe maculata
Aloe polyphylla
Aloe striata
Aloe variegata
Anacampseros rufescens
Argyroderma delaetii
Asparagus densiflorus
Bowiea volubilis
Ceropegia woodii
Cissus quadrangularis
Clivia miniata
Conophytum spp.
Cotyledon orbiculata
Crassula arborescens
Crassula coccinea
Crassula muscosa
Crassula ovata
Crassula rupestris
Crassula tetragona
Didymochlaena truncatula
Ensete ventricosum
Euphorbia anoplia
Euphorbia caput-medusae
Euphorbia cooperi
Euphorbia enopla
Euphorbia grandicornis
Euphorbia horrida
Euphorbia ingens
Euphorbia obesa
Euphorbia susannae
Euphorbia tirucalli
Faucaria tigrina
Fenestraria rhopalophylla
Gerbera jamesonii
Gloriosa superba
Haworthia spp.
Hoodia gordonii
Kalanchoe beharensis
Kalanchoe gastonis-bonnieri
Kalanchoe luciae
Kalanchoe thyrsiflora
Kalanchoe tomentosa
Ledebouria socialis
Lithops spp.
Ornithogalum spp. (aka Albuca)
Pachypodium geayi, lamerei, other Pachypodium spp.
Pelargonium spp. (some)
Plectranthus amboinicus
Plectranthus ciliatus
Plectranthus oertendahlii
Pteris cretica
Rhipsalis baccifera
Sansevieria cylindrica
Selaginella kraussiana
Senecio macroglossus
Senecio radicans
Stapelia flavopurpurea
Stapelia gigantea
Streptocarpus spp. (most spp.)
Strelitzia reginae
Tylecodon spp.
Zamioculcas zamiifolia
Zantedeschia spp.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

There's a bed-of-roses / bed-of-Fittonias joke in here somewhere, but my brain keeps going to "I beg your pardon / I never promised you a rose garden" instead, which is especially weird because that's an old country-and-western song and those are the only two lines I know and I'm not even sure how I know those. So I can't find the joke, is the point. But I know there's one in there somewhere.

[shaking fist toward sky] Okay, brain, you win this time. But I'll be back!

Random plant event LOLPlant: Sansevieria trifasciata

Sometimes you can wait a while to repot a plant, and sometimes it's sort of an emergency. And then every once in a while, it's kind of both at once.



UPDATE: Andrew's much-improved LOLplant version:


(Link to Sansevieria trifasciata profile)

Unfinished business: Pandanus amaryllifolius

In case anybody'd been losing sleep over it: I have received a replacement Pandanus amaryllifolius from Gardino Nursery. It looks quite a bit like the last one:


And no mealybugs either, as far as I could find. So I'm happy. Now to wait for the pesticide to wear off, so I can heat up a leaf and smell this "pandan smell" I've heard so much about. I really hope it's worth the nine- or ten-month wait.