Random plant event: Anacampseros rufescens flower

I've yet to try growing an Anacampseros rufescens; they're not available very often, and so far when I've seen one for sale, there were more interesting plants to be bought, or it had bugs, or the price was bad. It's not an urgent, must-acquire plant for me anyway: it looks like one of those succulents for which no amount of light is going to be enough (like Pachyphytum, or some of the Euphorbias and Sedums). I've had enough of those.

But, it does flower, and the flowers are kind of cute. This is a plant from the ex-job, from a very long time ago when I still worked there. I realize that the photo doesn't show the plant itself very well: this was back when I could only take a tiny number of pictures before the batteries died. That sort of thing gives a person a very narrow focus. Things are better now. (Now, I likely average 75-100 pictures per day, the overwhelming majority of which you never see.)


I haven't seen any others in flower, but this particular plant was a lot larger than any I'd seen before or since (6-inch hanging basket, I think, as opposed to the usual 2- or 3-inch pot), and therefore probably also quite a bit older. Which likely has something to do with it.

Have you ever had an Anacampseros? How did that work out? I ask in case I happen to see one for sale again.

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

About 25% of my blog hits have just . . . evaporated since May. This hasn't happened in previous summers. Christmases, yes (last Christmas there was a 30% drop, for about a week), but not summers. And it's not like it was a sudden drop because of the 4th of July holiday, where it'll rebound again quickly: it's been a slow, steady, increasingly alarming decline, spread out over eight months weeks. I can only think of two explanations that fit the numbers:

1) One or both of the Mouse and Trowel awards is cursed.
2) I have been writing posts since May that happened to suck.

If it's the curse thing, I'm guessing I just have to wait. If current trends continue, PATSP will be getting negative numbers of page views by the beginning of December 2010, but then in May 2011 (possibly), there will be a new Mousie awards, and the curse will be passed to someone else, and I can start climbing back upward again. I admit to being slightly curious about how negative page views could work.

If it's just that I'm sucking, then I apologize, and will try to do so less intensely and/or often. Hopefully these transmitted light photos will be to your liking. Also, have you lost and/or gained weight? You look terrific. And I really like what you have done and/or neglected to do with your hair.

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

Strelitzia nicolai. Not what you'd call stunning, maybe, but it's still kinda cool. Reminiscent of the wake of a boat, maybe?

Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender.' The underside of the leaves of my plant are purple, and the tops are green, but unfortunately this mixes to produce brown, when viewed by transmitted light. If I were growing this in full outdoor sun, like it would prefer, then both sides of the leaves would be purple and we wouldn't have this problem. I think.

Dieffenbachia 'Tiki,' dead leaf. I haven't done dead leaves before, that I can recall. I mean, I've taken the pictures but then not used them, because often along with the deadness, there are also scars and spots. Plus dead leaves have a tendency to be wrinkly, which makes it hard to get the camera to focus properly. I don't know that this picture worked out that well either, but I have to experiment occasionally.

Cordyline fruticosa NOID. The color is off on this one -- the plant is actually more of a dark red-brown. It looks more orange because this plant is in a west window, and the geometry of the back yard is such that it only gets direct sun when the sun is already pretty low in the sky, making it more orange.

Cryptanthus 'Elaine.' I'm surprised at the color -- by reflected light, 'Elaine' is pink, white, and brown -- but the photo turned out pretty well.

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis NOID, petal. I guess we've got sort of an orangey-brown theme going in this set of pictures.

Anthurium "hookeri," very new leaf. This plant makes me feel guilty, because I know it's not getting as much light as it wants, hence the large, pale, thin new leaves like the one in the photo. But part of me also quietly cheers when a new leaf forms and starts to inflate: how big will this one get? That, and the fact that I don't have any spots big enough and bright enough to improve the plant's situation right now.

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Kong Aline.' (joke name for sport of 'Kong Rose') 'Kong Aline' is still with me, though it hasn't produced any leaves big enough for me to find out whether it's remembered how to make hot-pink pigments or not. (q.v.)

Zingiber malaysianum, older leaf. I don't know if Z. malaysianum is a particularly good transmitted-light subject, or if I'm just oddly obsessed with it, but it's going to come up a lot in the batches to come, so you should probably accustom yourself to seeing it.

Caladium 'Carolyn Whorton.' I considered trying Caladiums outdoors again this year, but money is an issue, and I wound up not planting anything outdoors that I didn't have already. (Though the Salvia elegans and 'Glennis' coleus do look very nice together, so that much worked out.) I think this was mostly the right choice, given the situation, but then I see this picture and . . . question the decision, for a moment.

Random plant event: Neoregelia NOID flowering

Well, it's finally happened: the dark purple Neoregelia I bought in August 2008 (the one with the scale problem) has decided to bloom. This is sort of bittersweet. Though it's nice that the plant's growing up, it also means that we're going to see its long, slow decline and death over the next year or two.


Yes, it will produce offsets before it goes, but my track record with rooting Neoregelia offsets is . . . not inspirational, let's say. I've managed five rooted offsets with N. 'Gazpacho,' but in two of those cases so far, the original offset actually died on me. I only managed to get a plant out of it because the offset that was dying itself produced an offset. Which is weird.


The flowers aren't especially decorative, though the structure from which they emerge pleases me. It looks sort of like a very tiny circular lawn.


I will, of course, try to get new plants out of this anyway, by trying to root the offsets. Maybe this will be the plant where I finally figure out how that's done. I've always liked it, problematic though it's been. (I don't care so much for getting stabbed by the marginal spines, especially since this particular variety's spines seem exceptionally prone to break off under my skin.)


If you were wondering -- neem oil does appear to have fixed the scale problem. It appears that using actual neem oil, instead of a neem oil extract, is important. I'm now using neem quite a bit around here. The smell still makes me want to gag a little, but I'm getting used to it, apparently. The only remaining issue is that when I've been doing a lot of neem spraying, I find myself sneezing a lot, for quite a while afterward. Natural product or not, I suspect this is probably a sign it's not good for me, but I haven't figured out a better way to do it. The product itself works well, though. I'll have to write a post about this sometime.

4th of July

Materials and Techniques: Selenicereus chrysocardium cuttings

This post might be a little premature, but even if we're not quite at the endpoint yet, enough has happened that I think a post can be built around it. So here we go.

I decided a while ago that I wanted to propagate some of my Selenicereus chrysocardium cuttings, both as insurance against a potential Selenicereus disaster and also to have on hand to trade or sell, should the situation arise. I wasn't sure quite how to do this, so I . . . basically just guessed.

The first step was to decide how many cuttings to take, and of what size. When we'd done this at work, we just cut the ends off of some long "fronds" (actually stems) and stuck them in soil. Which worked. I couldn't really do that, because my plant is only just so large, and and I didn't want to hack it to pieces just for propagation. So what I did was, I tried to make multiple cuttings from a single stem, which I did like so: I cut the -- I guess you'd call it the "midrib?" -- in multiple places, dividing the stem into multiple pieces which all contain some of the midrib.¹ The pink lines in the below photo illustrate where I cut.


I planted them in vermiculite, in a plastic salad-mix container. Why vermiculite? Well, I was concerned about fungal problems if I planted in potting mix, and vermiculite is a sterile medium. It also tends to be really good for rooting things, even things that are ordinarily difficult. This may not have been completely necessary either: like I said, when we did this at work, we just used soil directly and it all turned out fine. But I wanted to be careful. Thus:

I think it looks sort of like a rib cage.
Very little has happened since then. I initially left the top of the container off, for fear of fungal problems. After it'd dried out a few times because I forgot to water it,² I tried putting the top on. This turned out to be a bad idea; the next time I opened it up to check, I had botrytis growing on the cut ends.

Botrytis, sometimes also called gray mold, is a grayish fungus that attacks many, many types of houseplants, and I saw it all the time in the greenhouse at work, usually on leaves that had died and fallen on top of wet soil. It's unusual in a home environment because it's unusual for a home to be humid enough to keep an infection going. I removed the cover from the plastic container, sprayed the cuttings with neem oil, and haven't seen any Botrytis since.

Notice that the botrytis is only located where the plant was cut; it's not ordinarily able to attack uninjured tissue.
Extreme close-up to show the structure. But also because extreme close-ups are cool. (I still want a microscope so bad, y'all.)
I'm a little impatient for something visible to happen -- it seems like I should have at least one of these producing new foliage by now -- but I know they're doing something, because they don't pull out of the vermiculite easily like they used to, so there must be roots in there, and I've actually seen one root so far:


So it should only be a matter of time before I get foliage. And then I can pot them into separate pots, and they will thrive and grow and life will be perfect forever. Or that's my plan, anyway.

-

¹ This may not be necessary, strictly speaking; I am unsure whether one can propagate from pieces which don't contain the "midrib," never having tried it. I think they did try it at work after I left, but I don't know how that turned out. So I was basically hedging my bets here -- I know that you can at least do it the way I'm describing, and if it turns out that a person can also propagate from smaller pieces of the plant, then that's great. Let me know if you know.
² Wet vermiculite looks exactly the same as dry vermiculite, so I can't just look at the plants and know whether they need water. Which means that sometimes they dry out. Fortunately, Selenicereus chrysocardium handles drying out quite well, so long as it's for a reasonable amount of time.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

I was told a couple weeks ago that some of Dad's side of the family (though not Dad himself) had recently rented a local campgrounds for a week-long family get-together. They're more scattered around the country than they used to be, which has made organizing family events more difficult, though they used to do this all the time. Some families in this situation might give up on getting together for holidays, or scale back and only try to get everyone together for Christmas or something, but this group has just moved all the major holidays so they fall within a single week, instead. So on one day, they stayed up until midnight (for New Year's Eve); on another day they trick-or-treated (Halloween), there was a big turkey dinner one night (Thanksgiving), they hunted for colored eggs one morning (Easter), they had sparklers and firecrackers (4th of July), and they exchanged presents (Christmas). I may be forgetting some holidays.

This strikes me as being a really good idea, though since I'm related to all of these people I suppose I may not be genetically objective. But still. It's fun, it's festive, you get to buy all the same holiday paraphernalia, but you can do it when everything's heavily discounted, making it thrifty, and it's less of a disruption to everybody's lives because you only have to go through it once a year. What's not to like?

None of this has anything to do with Sheba or Nina or any of that, but I thought of it because of the upcoming Independence Day holiday, and then it seemed like something you'd be interested in, so there you go.

On to Sheba news. We've been taking her outside, unleashed, since Wednesday: the in-laws brought a Chuckit! for Sheba when they visited a couple weeks ago, which even if it's just a very large plastic stick with a ball-holding pocket at one end, it lets me fling the ball way further than I would otherwise be able to, and this means Sheba gets more time to run and chase it. Which she appears to like.

The back yard is incompletely fenced, and there were concerns that maybe she would run away if we let her out without a leash, which is why we hadn't done so before this week. But then the in-laws brought the Chuckit!, which we can't really use in the house, so I just explained things to Sheba before the first time on Wednesday, how if she ran away then everything would be bad. She didn't say okay, but she licked my hand, which looked enough like comprehension and agreement that I figured it was worth a try. And it's worked fine. Not only does she not run away, she seems a lot clearer on the retrieve-and-relinquish concept outdoors than she ever was indoors, so I don't have to chase her down, wrestle her to the ground, and pry her mouth open to get the tennis ball back. (Not that I was doing that before. I'm being colorful.)

Normally, we would be due for a Nina photo, but as I've just spent a couple paragraphs on Sheba, it seems more appropriate to go with Sheba this time. We'll get Nina her photo next week.

Waiting for me to throw the ball.

Video: "Desperate Houseplants" (Sesame Street)

I think the one on the right is some kind of caudex-forming succulent, maybe a Pachypodium or Adenium or something. The one on the left looks like nothing I've ever seen. (Via the blog Houseplants.)

Bonus video: Olivia teaches Big Bird about the slow growth rate of Peperomia obtusifolia.

Spotted in Iowa City: Dracaena

PATSP Learning Moment: Cycas

About a month ago, I took the Cycas revoluta off the shelf to water and it was doing this:


My guess is that it's a nutrient deficiency, probably of iron, magnesium, or nitrogen. I did spray it with an iron-containing trace-nutrient spray, and the parts that were still green appeared to have gotten greener. That doesn't necessarily mean that the iron fixed the problem (it's at least as likely that I misremembered how pale it had been before the iron), but that's my guess. I'm looking for 1) confirmation on the diagnosis, and 2) someone to tell me whether or not the yellowed parts will turn green again, ever (I'm assuming not).

This kind of nutrient deficiency is, of course, made more likely to happen by the way I water my plants. I flush with fairly large amounts of water at each watering, because that keeps salts from building up in the soil. A lot of my plants are sensitive to such salts, and this keeps them happy. Happier. Unfortunately, flushing out the soil to remove unwanted minerals winds up being the same thing as flushing out the soil to remove necessary trace nutrients too. This yellowing is a fairly rare phenomenon for me, because usually I repot things before mineral depletion becomes an issue, and also I add fertilizers to replace the minerals I leach out. But it's still happened a few times (Strelitzia nicolai and I have been through this more than once, for example). Usually I have more advance warning, though: the Cycas bleached out pretty much overnight.

The plant appears to be growing another set of leaves, though it's happening so slowly that I'm not positive, and it's maybe not getting enough light, too, in which case the leaves (should they actually come in) will be grotesque, big, pale things anyway. I didn't really mind until it changed colors on me, but if I'm honest with myself, this whole Cycas attempt really hasn't been going that well.

Meanwhile, I spent part of yesterday fixing up and publishing two posts, one about guest posts and product reviews (because I am occasionally asked), and the other a master list of every plant I've attempted to grow indoors in the last four or five years, and how that's been going, as of May 24, 2010. The latter is pretty dull, but it's there if anyone is curious. Links to both pages are located directly under the Caladium-themed header above. They will be joined by the Infrequently Asked Questions, as soon as I get around to doing that.

Also, I want to wish my Canadian readers a merry and festive Canada Day. May Celine Dion come down your chimney and bring you all the Nanaimo bars, Atom Egoyan DVDs (I really like The Sweet Hereafter, actually), and hockey sticks you asked for.