Music Video: DJ Earworm "No More Gas" (multi-artist mashup)

I don't think I'll do this again, at least not to this degree: even if the "extra" posts aren't huge, and don't take that long to write, any time I spend working on extra stuff is time I'm not spending on the bigger, more complicated posts like the plant profiles. Which is the excuse I'm going to use for why I didn't get the Persea americana profile done this month. (UPDATE: It's done.) I'm not saying we're completely done with mashups, just that I think it was maybe a bad idea to try to write about so many of them in so short of a time. It was fun, but I'm glad I don't have to do any for a while.

Having said all that, "No More Gas" is a personal favorite, and we may as well go out with a bang. The songs which were put together to make it:

"4 Minutes" (Madonna, Justin Timberlake, & Timbaland)
"American Boy" (Estelle & Kanye West)
"Bleeding Love" (Leona Lewis)
"Closer" (Ne-Yo)
"Damaged" (Danity Kane)
"Dangerous" (Kardinal Offishal & Akon)
"Disturbia" (Rihanna)
"Gimme More" (Britney Spears)
"Low" (Flo Rida & T-Pain)
"Superstar" (Lupe Fiasco & Matthew Santos)
"When I Grow Up" (Pussycat Dolls)

Pretty picture: Beallara Tropic Lily 'Ice Palace'

Sorry about this. I know it's not my best photo. There's nothing new going on in the house, though, and the last few times we've gone out looking for interesting garden center photos, either the garden center in question was closed when we got there, or it was open but they didn't have anything interesting going on either. So with this picture I'm reaching way back to last August, and it's not even a particularly good or interesting photo, though I still like Beallaras in general.

On the up side, we're supposed to get a little snowstorm today (Monday) and then a big snowstorm Tuesday and Wednesday, which between the two of them are supposed to drop 8-12 inches (20-30 cm) on us. It's not East Coast kind of snow (seriously, guys -- so jealous), but it'd be the biggest snowfall of our winter to date if it happens like they're saying it will, so I'm pretty stoked. Alas, it's also going to involve 25-30 mph (40-48 kph) winds and wind chills down to -21F (-29C), but you know: every rose, thorn, yada yada.

Random plant event: Justicia scheidweileri reflowering?

I've been a little worried about the Justicia I got from a reader last August. It dries out faster than the 12-to-14-day watering schedule permits, so I only catch it when it's wilted from lack of water, and although it always perks back up again, it usually loses a couple leaves in the process. (Zach, at The Variegated Thumb, has experienced this also.) And I figured I probably didn't have enough light to get it to rebloom inside: it's in an east window, with a number of other plants between the window and itself. (I have lots of plants. They sometimes wind up in non-ideal locations.) But it looks like it's going to rebloom anyway, which is interesting.


Justicia and I are still pretty much strangers to one another,¹ but this is an encouraging development. I think it may also have thrown a seed into a neighboring plant, as they are rumored to do; the seedling didn't wind up surviving, but there was something I couldn't identify coming up in one of the Dieffenbachias a few months ago. I don't know exactly what happened to it, but it looked like it could have been a Justicia. They're also supposed to propagate fairly easily from cuttings.² So all the early signs are looking good, except for that whole watering issue. And I'm fairly sure repotting would fix that.

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¹ Indeed, it may be something of a stranger to itself: Justicia scheidweileri is, as far as I can determine, the correct name for the plant, but they're still sold as Porphyrocoma pohliana, and some websites only acknowledge the Porphyrocoma name.
² Not surprising for a plant in the same family as Hypoestes phyllostachya or Hemigraphis exotica, though the Acanthaceae is also home to Strobilanthes dyerianus, which I've found harder to start from cuttings, and often not worth it even when the effort succeeds.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

It's so much easier to find interesting photos for Sheba weeks than for Nina weeks. She has so many more places she can go, after all.

No news about either pet, really, though a couple weeks ago, the in-laws were here briefly with their dog. Sheba and the dog-in-law (female, mutt, mostly pit bull with something else that I forget) mostly got along, though there was a lot of playing (?) that sort of turned into something else, or seemed like it might turn into something else. Had the dog-in-law been a new permanent resident, I'm sure they would have worked something out eventually, but I wasn't always sure what was getting communicated between them or how they felt about one another.

We've talked a few times about getting a second dog, though for the moment we're agreed that this wouldn't be a good time. I check the Iowa City Shelter's website regularly anyway, and in one case we even went to the shelter so I could meet one of the dogs, even knowing that adopting a second dog wasn't going to happen. (The dog in question, a pit bull named Nico, has since been adopted.) Why? Don't know. Presently I'm semi-interested in a bulldog-mastiff mix named Devo, who's gone unadopted for quite a while now.

(Devo, of course, should be a whippet. Nobody consults me.)

Music Video: DJ Lobsterdust "DeceptiShot" (Le Tigre / Pat Benatar mashup)

I've tried really hard to get into Le Tigre, but I can't. It's just . . . unpleasant. The mashup here works for me, though it's possible that Pat Benatar is doing all the heavy lifting. It's at least an interesting take on "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."

Random plant event: Ficus elastica branching

The reader would be forgiven for not understanding why this is a big deal, but one of the troubles with Ficus elastica indoors is that they're reluctant to branch, so after you've had one a while, it often looks like a single tall thin stick with a tuft of leaves at the top. Even pruning -- which ordinarily causes plants to branch -- won't necessarily do it: it's common for an indoor-grown Ficus elastica to respond to the removal of a growing tip with . . . the production of a single new growing tip.

So I was pretty pleased to discover a spontaneous branch on my plant:


Granted, this is not going to do much to fill in the base -- as you can see, the plant's lost all the leaves down there -- but I figure it can't hurt, and I didn't have to do anything, so I'm happy.

In general, to get a Ficus elastica (or F. lyrata) to branch, the best way to do it is to let it spend a few months outside. It may also help to cut the stem back and/or move it up to a slightly larger pot first, though that's not strictly necessary. There are four things to keep in mind about letting your plant go outside for a season, though:

1. The leaves can sunburn, so don't put it into full sun right away; keep it in a shady spot to begin with, and gradually introduce it to more and more light.
2. When you bring it back in, it will likely drop some leaves as it re-acclimates to the lower light in your home.
   
3. It will be much thirstier outside than it was inside.
   
4. Check for bugs before you bring the plant in.
   

This plant didn't go outside, but it has been sitting under a couple shop lights for a couple years, so it gets fairly consistent, if not intense, light. Or possibly I'm just lucky. Either way, I'm happy it's decided to fill in a little.

Other: The Green Cordyline fruticosa

I've recently become disillusioned with Cordyline fruticosa. I have five, at the moment, one of which has been with me for four and a half years now. But -- and it's a big but -- it's no longer the case that Cordyline is an "easy difficult" plant for me, as I said in the profile: I realized this around October or November this year, when I went to check them for watering and found spider mites on one. Again. Just like every other year I've had them. Previously, I've tried spraying the mites off with water, hand-washing the leaves with soap and water, spraying with neem,¹ and anything else that's occurred to me, but it never gets rid of the mites: they're always back in a couple weeks. It's time-consuming and frustrating, but I felt obligated to do something, so I kept doing it.

And I would still have been okay letting the Cordylines stay where they were, mingling freely with the other plants, if not for the fact that they'd all started to get burnt tips and margins. The 'Kiwi' went first, in December 2009, and the others followed about six months later. My suspicion is that this was a delayed reaction to the change in water since we moved: in Iowa City, we had soft, slightly acid river water, and now we have hard (sometimes extremely hard), alkaline aquifer water. This is my theory mostly because I've ruled out pretty much all the other possibilities: the change in water is the only major thing that's happened to them.

So what I ultimately wound up doing with them last fall was: I watered the four small ones, sprayed them thoroughly with neem, put them in plastic bags, and stuck them in the basement. If they survive the winter, great: I'll cut them back, let them resprout, and send them outside for the summer. If they die, well, I was basically ready to throw them away already, so.

The bagged Cordylines.
None of which is even the point of the post yet.²

The point of the post is that the one exception was the large solid-green plant, which I've had for about three and a half years. It didn't start getting tip and margin burn when all the others did, so I have decided not to bag it for the winter. It probably has mites, but I'm willing to live with that if it'll just hold on to its leaves and not share them with too many other plants.

Old photo of the green Cordyline fruticosa.
So what's different about how the green one was treated, compared to the others?

The green one spent the summer outside last year. I think the explanation for the lack of leaf burn is that it got rainwater all summer long and hasn't been watered very often since I brought it in, so maybe doesn't have minerals built up in the pot to the same degree as the other Cordylines.

Current photo of the green Cordyline fruticosa.
However, I am reminded that being outside for a summer is not entirely without its own set of problems:


That's a baby oak tree growing in the pot there. I suppose I should have known this was a possibility, since I've pulled dozens of maple seedlings out of every container I've had outside since we moved, but somehow it never occurred to me that oaks might be weedy too. I suppose technically one has to blame the squirrels.

In any case. The oak obviously can't stay there in the pot, and we're not in need of another oak tree, but I sort of feel like, you know, it's trying so hard. So I'm wondering: when and how would one go about transplanting it to the yard?

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¹ Not recommended -- they always dropped a bunch of leaves every time after I neemed them.
² Though I've wanted to write a post about the giving up and bagging for quite a while, and am pleased that I've gotten to use that picture finally.

Music Video: Partyben "This Tightrope's Made for Walkin'" (Janelle Monae / Nancy Sinatra)

This mashup probably wouldn't be getting consideration if I didn't love "Tightrope" so much. I mean, not that this mashup is poorly done, but it's not a complicated, four- or five-song composition like "No-One Takes Your Freedom" or "I Wanna Bulletproof Dancer" or something. But I'm willing to use whatever excuses I have to in order to listen to Janelle Monae.

Incidentally -- we tried going to Best Buy to get the Janelle Monae CD, and . . . okay, I know that our corporate overlords have decreed that we're all to re-buy all our music on MP3s now, and businesses are phasing out the stocking of actual CDs and stuff, so I can understand not having the CD physically in stock, but -- they didn't even know who she was, or have her anywhere in their computer. I'd thought she was, you know, kind of a big deal?

So on the off chance that you don't know who she is either, watch the "Tightrope" video. It's worth it for the dancing alone.

List: Houseplants Which are Partly or Totally Blue

Well okay. "Blue" is a stretch. Though a few genuinely blue plants are rumored to exist (Micorsorum steerii, an unknown Begonia species), one, they're iridescent, and change color depending on the angle at which they're being viewed, and two, it'd be a stretch to call them houseplants, since the Begonia isn't even in cultivation as far as I know, and the Microsorum is cultivated but not really suitable for the home outside of a terrarium. And maybe not inside a terrarium, either. I don't know anyone who's tried.

But there are still plants out there with some blue to them. Most are succulents, and the blue coloring is the result of a fine, powdery layer of wax covering the leaves and/or stems, which is confusingly called "bloom." The main purpose of bloom is to reflect excess light (especially ultraviolet) and heat away from the plant, which is why it's common on desert plants, but it also, being wax, is water-repellent, so other kinds of plants find uses for it as well (for example: the leaves of some varieties of cabbage; the leaves, stems, and seed pods of poppies; fruits of grapes and certain other fruits).

Because bloom serves a self-shading purpose in a lot of the plants in which it is found, plants grown indoors may not produce as much, and may as a result appear more green than plants of the same type grown outdoors. Bloom also rubs off easily when plants are handled, so if you value the color, try to touch the leaves as little as possible. On the other hand, some plants may change color if they're in very bright light (such as full sun outdoors): many Aloes, for example, will turn red or brown-red in full sun. Others will stay blue or green but will get reddish leaf margins.

Because there's no good way to define "blue" for these purposes, and because plants grown in different conditions may look different, I don't guarantee that you'll agree with my choices here, but I did search davesgarden.com for "blue," all 75 pages of results, so I'm trying to cast a wide net. (I also got to look at a ton of purple daylilies and potatoes, which makes me think that hort types have a broad and flexible understanding of the meaning of the word "blue" anyway.) Please note also that I'm excluding plants with blue flowers from consideration: here we're only thinking about leaves and stems. If I can come up with ten houseplants with blue flowers, and that's a big if, then blue-flowering plants will get their own list someday.

Agave x 'Blue Glow.' Leaves are pretty consistently turquoise to blue; marginal spines may be yellow, orange, or red depending on light, and are sometimes all three colors at once.

Aloe brevifolia. In outdoor sun, plants have a tendency to turn different colors: depending on the photo, they may be bronze, purple, or gray. My plant doesn't get much direct sun, and it has been light blue-green pretty much the whole time I've had it.

Browningia hertlingiana. Photos show variable color, but from what I can tell, the color tends to be a pretty solid turquoise/blue.

Echeveria cvv. (some cvv.) The blue cultivars tend to be a fairly pale, washed-out, greenish-blue, often with pink or red leaf tips.

Juniperus sp. Variable color depending on species, photography, and culture, but I think it's close enough to count.

Melocactus azureus. Quite a few pictures that turned up in Google image search looked pretty plain green, no blue at all, but the one in this picture really was as blue as shown. I assume either cultural differences or misidentifications.

Myrtillocactus geometrizans. The picture does a terrible, terrible job of illustrating the color (though it does show how the bloom rubs off with handling), but Myrtillocactus is typically a vivid blue-green.

Phlebodium aureum 'Mandianum.' New fronds in particular tend to be a dull blue-gray. My personal plant is a lot more yellow-green now than it was when I bought it, probably because of inadequate light, but the new fronds still emerge bluish.

Sedum morganianum. Plants kept in insufficient light will be greener. The real color is less saturated than that in the photo.

Selaginella uncinata. The blue color is due to iridescence. I don't know what these do in lower light.

On the do/don't recommends:

I do recommend Agave 'Blue Glow,' which has done fine for me so far under lights in the basement. It's unclear whether it's going to be a particularly good long-term indoor plant, and I'm aware they can get very large, which is a worry, but so far, so good.

Sedum morganianum is a favorite plant of mine: I was worried, after Sedum x rubrotinctum always seemed to be reaching for more light, that I wouldn't be able to grow S. morganianum, but my plant has been in a west window since the move, and it's been one of my better-behaved plants. It does drop leaves every time I water it: they're loosely attached to the stem, and come off easily. After trying for a while to prevent this from happening, I've decided to just accept that it will, and start new plants with the leaves that come off. As a result, we currently live with five pots of Sedum morganianum, and I expect there will be more coming along all the time.

The third recommend is Aloe brevifolia. It's not my most exciting plant, but it's been steady and unproblematic, and I've had it for a very long time (relatively speaking), so it wins out over the various plants in this list that I haven't had for very long or that haven't done much of anything (Browningia, Myrtillocactus, Phlebodium) or the nice-seeming plant I've never had at all (Melocactus).

For the un-recommend, I'm torn between Juniperus and Selaginella. Both are pretty inappropriate for your average indoor houseplant-grower, though for different reasons: Juniperus wants cooler temperatures, especially during the winter, and Selaginella is unforgiving of missed waterings and dry air. I suppose most people who received both at once would kill the Selaginella first, so if I have to choose, then Selaginella is the anti-recommend.

Not pictured:

• Several other Agave species and hybrids are blue to some degree or another; I'm particularly fond of the plant I think might be A. desmettiana.
• Many, many Aloe species and hybrids, including A. 'Blue Elf,' A. maculata, A. striata, A. vera, and A. 'Walmsley's Blue,' are bluish-green.
• Bismarckia nobilis is perhaps a little large and demanding to work as an indoor plant, but I've heard of people making the attempt, and it's sort of a silvery-blue in good conditions.
• Cereus aethiops varies a great deal in photos, but looks like it tends to be somewhere in the blue/green part of the spectrum most of the time.
  
• Chamaedorea cataractum, when grown in good conditions, has a metallic blue sheen to some of the fronds, though I expect that fades when grown indoors.
• Chamaedorea metallica has a sort of dull blue-gray color under some conditions.
• I'm not sure it makes a great houseplant, but the blue Mediterranean fan palm, Chamaerops humilis var. argentea, shows up as silvery blue in some photos.
• Crassula arborescens var. undulatifolia (sometimes sold as C. 'Blue Bird') is slightly bluish under strong light, and plain green under lower light.
• Also maybe not great houseplants: Cycas angulata (silvery-blue) and C. ophiolitica (slightly bluish green). The related cycads Encephalartos arenarius (highly variable, according to the pictures: olive green, blue-green, silvery) and E. horridus (much more uniformly silver-gray, with hints of blue) would also technically qualify.
  
• Dasylirion berlandieri and D. wheeleri are both bluish-gray, and I've seen D. wheeleri, at least, sold as a houseplant. No idea how well that works out for people.
• Echinocactus horizonthalonius is a dull, mostly gray shade of blue under some conditions.
• I'm not sure I believe in the existence of Epipremnum aureum 'Cebu Blue' or not, and if it does exist, I'm not sure it qualifies as blue except in name. Can't tell much from the photos.
• A number of Ferocactus spp. are blue or grayish-blue.
• Haworthia limifolia var. ubomboensis is mostly green, but with a hint of blue or blue-gray, depending on conditions and photography. A few other Haworthia species are also sometimes bluish, though they tend to be green or gray.
  
• Kalanchoe eriophylla is, according to davesgarden.com, given the common name of "Blue Kalanchoe," though it's more white than anything -- I'm not sure I see it.
• The younger leaves of Kalanchoe luciae and K. thyrsiflora are covered with a light bluish bloom, though it's temporary and not particularly intense.
• Kalanchoe marmorata is bluish-green or bluish-gray in good light.
• Kalanchoe tomentosa varies according to photography and growing conditions, but are sometimes gray-blue or blue-green.
• I found it a very disappointing houseplant, but Lamprathus blandus has lots of oddly-shaped leaves that can appear as blue, green, gray, or intermediate shades thereof.
• Leuchtenbergia principis is a bizarre cactus with blue-gray projections which resemble leaves. In strong light, the "leaves" will be edged with reddish-purple.
• Several cultivated Lithops varieties are blue-green or blue-gray.
• Microsorum steerii and M. thailandicum are both apparently a striking, deep, iridescent blue/green/black; whether they can be grown indoors is questionable.
• Several Opuntia species are blue-green, blue-gray, or blue-violet at certain points in the year, though since the most dramatic color is brought about by cold, a plant raised indoors year-round is unlikely to exhibit the full range of color.
• Some cultivars of Pachyphytum, xPachyveria, and xGraptoveria are blue, gray, or violet to some degree or another.
• Davesgarden.com lists a Peperomia 'Blue Whale,' which the photos make look mostly black, but I suppose it could plausibly be blue.
• Pilosocereus pachycladus is a washed-out bluish-gray.
• Sedum burrito is very similar to S. morganianum, pictured above, though the leaves are more rounded and are more perpendicular to the stem.
• Senecio crassissimus has red-edged blue-gray leaves when grown in bright enough light.
  
• I've never seen Senecio serpens and S. talinoides attempted indoors, but we did keep an S. talinoides (I think) in the greenhouse over a winter at work, and it grew okay. Possibly you'd have to use supplemental lighting. Both are powdery blue or blue-gray.

Random plant event: Tradescantia zebrina flower

Urg. I don't think I'm actually sick, but I'm still not well, either: I slept nine hours and change on Sunday night / Monday morning and woke up feeling better, but still not normal. This week's torpor is distinguished from last week's in that last week I didn't really want to do anything but there was no compelling physical reason why I couldn't, whereas this week, I would like to do things, but everything hurts, so I can't.


Fortunately, the Tradescantia zebrina (possibly cv. 'Lipstick?') has provided me something to write about. Not something terribly interesting, mind you, but up until yesterday afternoon, I had no idea what I was going to post today, so that there's anything at all is kind of a minor miracle, like finding a croissant that looks kinda like Jake Gyllenhall.

I suspect the trigger here for flowers was that I added fertilizer a couple weeks ago. I mean, I don't know for sure that I did add fertilizer a couple weeks ago, but it sounds like the sort of thing I might do, and the plant sure as hell isn't blooming because it's been bright and sunny here, so that's pretty much the only explanation that's even possible.

Music Video: Mighty Mike "Imagine a Jump" (John Lennon / Van Halen mashup)

My first reaction on hearing this one was to be mildly offended. I got over it, but it's a really odd emotion for a mashup to evoke.

Question for the Hive Mind: Cactus IDs

I'm either sick or underslept to the point of feeling sick on Sunday evening as I write this, so I don't have it in me to write very much. I've had these photos for a long time, and have been meaning to go to CactiGuide.com or somewhere and try to come up with IDs so I could use them for List posts, but I never did. If you have a guess on any of them, leave it in the comments. Or keep it to yourself. Whatever.

I, meanwhile, am going to go to bed early and hope that I'm just tired. It doesn't feel like tired -- every joint and muscle is achy, I have a headache, my face feels hot, my eyes and mouth are dry -- but this has happened before, once or twice a year for several years, and if I'm sick, it's the kind of sick that twelve straight hours of sleep usually cures.

There will be a mashup this afternoon; I wrote that post already.

Cactus NOID no. 5.


Cactus NOID no. 6. (Cephalocereus sp.?) Espostoa lanata?


Cactus NOID no. 7; Ferocactus sp.


Cactus NOID no. 8.


Cactus NOID no. 9. (Gymnocalycium?) Echinopsis sp.


Cactus NOID no. 10.


Cactus NOID no. 11. (Mammillaria sp.?) Echinocereus sp.


Cactus NOID no. 12 (tagged Ferocactus sp.).


Cactus NOID no. 13. (Melocactus sp.?)


Cactus NOID no. 14; Mammillaria sp.


Cactus NOID no. 15, with fruit; Mammillaria sp.


Cactus NOID no. 16; Mammillaria sp.

Music Video: DJ Earworm "No-One Takes Your Freedom" (Aretha Franklin / George Michael / Scissor Sisters / Paul McCartney mashup)

This has been one of my favorite mashups for a very long time, almost since the day I was first aware of the existence of mashups. DJ Earworm has become someone who takes hundreds of tiny snippets of songs and fits them together into a brand-new song, but his earlier stuff was more like this, taking large chunks of songs and playing them over top of one another. I don't have strong feelings either way which is better, though I suspect the mosaic-mural approach he's doing now is more time-consuming. Either way, this is still an amazing job of finding a set of four songs that work well together musically and thematically, and turning them into something entirely new, and I've listened to it some uncountably huge number of times over the past three years or so.

Pretty picture: Phragmipedium besseae D'Alessandro

A notable historical fact about Phragmipediums (abbreviated "Phrag" by those in the trade, or people who would just prefer not to type out Phragmipedium, which is most everybody) is that one species, P. besseae, has only been known since 1981, when it was found in Peru by Elizabeth Locke Besse. It's unusual among Phrags for its flower color, which is a strong orange to salmon, and there are a few yellow or cream-colored specimens out there too. Naturally, once word got out about the existence of the new species, orchid collectors immediately descended on the site and took everything they could get their hands on. The trade of wild-collected plants is now banned, but it all happened fast enough that some populations were wiped out completely, either by overcollection or by habitat destruction.

This is all pretty obviously not a good thing for the local ecosystem (P. besseae is found along the eastern slope of the Andes in Peru, Columbia and Ecuador, so it's probably technically several ecosystems, not just one), but it's more ambiguous for P. besseae specifically. One could argue that it was doomed by development sooner or later, and the collectors saved the species from extinction. I mean, I probably wouldn't argue that, but now that P. besseae is part of the orchid trade and being used in hybridization, it's indisputably a hell of a lot less likely to go extinct than it was when nobody knew about it.

Of course the best option would have been for collectors to get specimens for breeding without taking so many that they wiped out the species in the wild, but that would have depended on everybody being restrained, rational, and co-operative. Which is unlikely.

In site-related news, I have a couple other orchid pictures from elsewhere that may or may not show up in the next month and a half, but this is the last of the Wallace's Orchid Show photos from 2010. I remind readers that the 2011 show is March 12 and 13 at the Wallace's Garden Center in Bettendorf, IA, and I'll be there on the 12th (or at least that's the plan at the moment), should anybody want to try to meet up there. E-mail if you're interested.

Music Video: Norwegian Recycling "Singularity" (Travis / Iyaz / Kelly Clarkson / Oasis / Christina Aguilera / No Doubt)

I'm not positive the embedding is going to work here; the first couple times I tried it, the video didn't show up in preview. (Here is the link to YouTube, if it doesn't work.)

This one is unusual because 1) A lot of people have heard it already (the video has 280,000 views), and 2) It's pretty. "Pretty" isn't a quality one normally finds in mashups (I can think of a few others; "Building an Enigma" comes to mind [UPDATE: Sorry, the link to "Building an Enigma" was broken shortly after I posted this. It's Sarah McLachlan / Enigma, if you want to try to search for it.], as does DJ Earworm's 2008 United State of Pop, at least in places), and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's harder to do?

Anyway. I got very excited about Norwegian Recycling when I heard this, hunted all over the internet for more of his stuff,¹ downloaded a shit-ton of it, and then was quietly disappointed. It's not that the other stuff is bad -- it may yet grow on me, actually, and I like "Miracles" (which also probably counts as "pretty") well enough² -- but it all sounds very much the same, somehow. Maybe I just haven't listened to them enough yet. I don't know. In any case, this is easily my favorite of the songs he's done.

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¹ Why is it always "his?" Where are the female mashup artists? I know there have to be some out there somewhere. 1000 PATSP points to anybody who can point me to one. (PATSP points are not redeemable for cash, goods or services.)
² Actually, more people seem to like "Miracles" than "Singularity;" "Miracles" has over a million hits. I think "Singularity" is the better composition, though. Some of that is because I get all itchy whenever I hear the word "miracle" that many times in a non-mayonnaise context.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

On either Wednesday or Thursday this week, I got up, let Sheba out of her crate, drank coffee for a while, and then went into the plant room and found a small pile of greenish vomit with leaf chunks in it. This much has happened before, usually when I'm watering, and I've been assuming that she was just picking up dead leaves that had fallen on the floor as the plants got moved around, and the leaves in question were usually safe stuff like Pilea and Nematanthus, so I didn't worry about it much. But in this case, I hadn't been watering yet, and these leaves were awfully green. Investigation of the plant room turned up a Yucca guatemalensis with some recently-torn leaves.

Obviously nothing happened, and she's okay, but it was still alarming. She's never acted particularly interested in the plants before (though the Beaucarnea on a low shelf in the plant room has tipped over, repeatedly, under suspicious circumstances). I don't know what would have changed.

The husband noted that she hasn't been able to eat grass lately, like she used to do a lot, because the grass is all dead and/or under snow, and I suppose Yucca would sort of resemble grass (especially this particular plant, which is a couple cut-back canes that resprouted two weak little baby shoots). I guess if throwing up was the point, then it worked the same as grass, too. And the Beaucarnea also looks grassy, barely, so we might have an explanation for those cases as well. But that all sort of begs the question of why the sudden need to eat grass in the first place. It's not like her diet's changed.

Anyway. So it looks like maybe it's time to go spray everything with the bitter-apple stuff again. I feel sort of silly doing it, because it'll wash right off again the next time I water, but if she needs the reminder, then I suppose I will anyway.


Meanwhile: picture of Nina beginning to shed (you can sort of see in the picture that the area behind her head, and around her left front foot, is a little lighter than the rest of her skin). She sheds her skin all the time, but I don't usually notice until it's well underway.

Music Video: DJ Lobsterdust "Knock Out Eileen" (LL Cool J / Dexys Midnight Runners mashup)

I'm not sure what to say about this one. It's another mashup that's maybe not so much good as it is surprising. But hey. Maybe you're in the mood for surprising?

Pretty picture: Buddleia NOID with Vanessa atalanta

Another out-of-season photo (this is dated 28 August), because I'm kind of at a loss for ideas and the plants here have abruptly stopped being interesting. (The Peperomia pereskiifolia is blooming, but if you've ever seen Peperomia inflorescences, you'll understand why I didn't think that was exciting enough news to turn into a post.) But everybody likes butterflies.

Everybody except the Moth Supremacists, anyway.

I also have a wee bit of news, which is that Wallace's Garden Center, in Bettendorf, IA, is in fact going to do the Orchid Show thing again this year, on March 12 and 13. I'm planning to be there on the 12th, so if you live in the vicinity and go on the 12th too, then we could both be in the same building at once. Which is exciting enough on its own, but of course if we told one another how to recognize us, then we could also meet and talk about the orchids as well. We could have conversations like,

"Did you see this one over here that I can't pronounce?"
"I did! I couldn't pronounce it either!"
"Yes. It is very unpronounceable."
"Pretty, though."
"Oh yeah, sure, pretty. Definitely."

I don't know whether there are actually that many people reading PATSP who live in the area, or, if there are PATSP readers in the area, whether any of them would find being in my vicinity and having conversations about verifying the viewing of orchids particularly exciting. But this would be the time to start making plans, if anyone is close enough to the Quad Cities to think this sounds like a good idea. (If we planned it well, we could hit the QCBC before or after, too.) E-mail if you are so moved, and we'll make plans to make plans.

The Botanical Taxonomist's Junk Drawer

The spreadsheet I use as the master census for all my indoor plants has a column for the family of each plant. Most of the time, filling it in is straightforward. Stenocereus is in the Cactaceae. Vriesea is in the Bromeliaceae. Phalaenopsis is in the Orchidaceae. However: a fairly large subset of plants were problematic, when it came to determining family affiliation, because the usual sources of information didn't agree.

Aloe vera.
For example: is Aloe vera in the Asphodelaceae, as Wikipedia claims, or should I go with davesgarden.com and put it in the Aloaceae? Or maybe GRIN and Tropicos are more authoritative, in which case I should put it in the Xanthorrhoeaceae. Or maybe the old cactus and succulents book I bought at a secondhand store a few weeks ago should be considered, in which case there is a case to make for the Liliaceae. Without a compelling reason to take one source over the others,¹ I was left to guess, or go with the first one I encountered, or whatever.

And this scenario happened over and over and over, see below.²

• Dracaena: Ruscaceae, Ruscaceae, Asparagaceae, Asparagaceae
• Agave: Agavaceae, Agavaceae, Asparagaceae, Asparagaceae, Amaryllidaceae
• Chlorophytum: Agavaceae, Liliaceae, Asparagaceae, Asparagaceae
• Sansevieria: Ruscaceae and Agavaceae, somehow; Ruscaceae; Asparagaceae; Asparagaceae
• Haworthia: Asphodelaceae, Aloaceae, Xanthorrhoeaceae, Xanthorrhoeaceae, Liliaceae
• Cordyline: Agavaceae, Asparagaceae, Asparagaceae, Asparagaceae
• Aspidistra: Ruscaceae, Ruscaceae, Asparagaceae, Asparagaceae
• Beaucarnea: Ruscaceae, Ruscaceae, Asparagaceae, Liliaceae

Sansevieria trifasciata 'Moonglow.'
Which is discouraging, if you like to know how your houseplants are related to one another.

But then, a couple weeks ago, The Phytophactor (whom you should really be reading, by the way) posted a link to The Plant List, an on-line database of plant names. TPL isn't the only database on-line that includes the obsolete names, but it does appear to be up-to-date,³ and it's the only one I know of that's been endorsed by the Phactor, as he calls himself sometimes, so, you know, whatever the hell. So I looked up every genus of plant I've got, checking to see that I had the right family written down, and -- hold on to your mind securely, now, because I am going to BLOW IT⁴ -- every single one of the cases I was unsure about, according to TPL, belongs in the Asparagaceae.

Aloe? Asparagaceae.

Dracaena? Asparagaceae.

Aspidistra, Haworthia, Aloe, Beaucarnea, Agave, Sansevieria, Chlorophytum? All Asparagaceae.

Cordyline fruticosa 'Kiwi.'
Now. There's no particular reason to believe that TPL is more right about this than Tropicos, or GRIN. There may in fact not even be a way to be right about this at the moment, given that taxonomy is normally a somewhat fluid science, and this has only gotten worse lately, with the arrival of cheaper gene sequencing and all the close genetic analysis it permits. But one will notice that TPL's Asparagaceae-as-junk-drawer policy has one big advantage over Tropicos and GRIN, which is that it's really, really simple. Faced with a dauntingly huge number of unclassified or ambiguously-classified plants, one can take fifteen minutes or so to put them all in the Asparagaceae and then take the whole department out for drinks for the rest of the day. Which is why I'm happy to ignore the possible existence of (for example) the Xanthorrhoeaceae, which is sickeningly difficult to type anyway,⁵ and follow their lead. If taxonomic consensus changes later, as it surely will, well, at least I know I didn't waste a lot of time learning useless information.⁶

So if you're ever in a situation where you have to name a houseplant's family, and you have no idea -- which, okay, I can't think of any plausible scenarios when that might happen, but you never know -- guess the Asparagaceae. Everybody else is.

-

¹ Okay, it's not that tough of a decision: GRIN and Tropicos are the best bets, because Wikipedia and davesgarden.com collect their information from their users, and one hopes that GRIN and Tropicos have higher standards than that. And the book, being from 1958, doesn't really have a chance of being correct. But still -- unless I'd heard otherwise at some point, I used to assume that family assignments were fairly solid, and that information from one source ought to agree with information from the others, so frequently I only looked at one source and went with whatever it said. So in a lot of cases I didn't know what GRIN and Tropicos said.
² (In order, references are: Wiki, dave, GRIN, Tropicos. When there's a fifth, it's the 1958 book.)
³ Mostly I'm assuming it's up to date because it includes such personal bugbears as the reclassification of Dracaena marginata as Dracaena reflexa var. angustifolia, which is so obviously wrong that I refuse to accept it, and I am confident that future taxonomists are going to back me up on this one. Sadly, the more plausible substitution of Dracaena fragrans for D. deremensis is there too: I'm reluctant to give up the name D. deremensis.
⁴ Original source of this line: Sady Doyle. Ordinarily I wouldn't give credit, but ordinarily I'd try harder to change the line to make it my own, too. Also I think Sady is awesome.
⁵ Seriously, like two thirds of the name is "aceacaceaeceae." How are my fingers supposed to keep that straight? I suppose at least I can be grateful that I'll probably never have to prounounce it.
⁶ For the record, I'm not actually accusing TPL of being lazy. I'm sure they have their reasons for classing all these together, which are all scientifically-based and everything. I'm agreeing out of laziness, though.

Music Video: Titus Jones "Good Girls Burn Miami" (Sean Kingston / Cobra Starship / Shakira / Lady Gaga / LMFAO mashup)

Another thumpy/throbby club-type mix, like "I Wanna Bulletproof Dancer." I like "Dancer" better, but "Good Girls" has going for it that it's sort of made me okay with Sean Kingston, who I took an extreme and irrational dislike to when "Beautiful Girls" was on the radio all the time. (It was lunge-at-the-dashboard-if-the-first-two-notes-came-on-the-car-radio kind of dislike. I still feel that way about that song, but at least the disgust no longer bleeds over to Kingston's entire repertoire and makes me want to scratch out his eyes with potato peelers and stuff.¹) The Shakira helps.

-

¹ I don't knoooooooow. I don't! I just hated the song the first time I heard it, and ever after. At least some of this has to do with feeling like it was trivializing depression, but that makes it sound like I had reasons, which I really don't think I did. Maybe some long-repressed childhood trauma involving a similar-sounding song. I don't know. For obvious reasons, I've never listened carefully to "Beautiful Girls" to see whether I could figure out the problem.

Random plant event: Dendrobium keiki

I was worried at first that this meant that the plant was upset with me about something, or that it was giving me a keiki instead of flowers, but what I found on-line seemed to be suggesting that although a Phalaenopsis producing keiki might have a backhanded, passive-aggressive meaning like that, Dendrobiums don't necessarily mean anything by it: it's just something they do from time to time. Which, if that's the case, then I'm happy for the opportunity to propagate, I guess. Can anybody confirm or refute?


I also don't know which of my two Dendrobiums this is, 'Karen' or "Humphrey Bogart." They're in different media, but at some point I lost track of which was in fir bark and which was in coir. I'm about 60% sure this is 'Karen.' I'd have preferred to propagate "Humphrey Bogart," given the choice.

Music Video: 10000 Spoons "Precious Bleeding Love" (Depeche Mode / Leona Lewis mashup)

As I sort of hinted at last Saturday, I think a lot of the reason I find mashups interesting and worth listening to is that a good one can make me like a song I previously hated.¹ There's one mash-up out there that actually sort of makes me feel warmly about Journey. (You're not going to find it at PATSP, though, because anything with that kind of destructive potential needs to be tightly restricted. Obviously.)

I didn't necessarily hate Leona Lewis, but the song sounded kinda dumb to me the first time I heard it. And it didn't help that I misheard "keep bleeding" as "keep breathing," the first time, which was just confusing.² Put her in front of a Depeche Mode song I already really liked, though, and suddenly I like the lyrics just fine. So I'm forced to conclude that I'm mostly interested in the particular palette of instruments playing behind the singer, not what he or she is saying, even though I'd always thought I mostly cared about the words. Better to find this out sooner rather than later, I suppose.

-

¹ Or at least that's the right-brain reason: the left-brain reason is that I am continually amazed that pop music is so interchangeable, that so many songs change chords at the same moments, that so many have the same structure, that it's all so homogeneous. Even songs that sound like they have weird chord progressions, like Nirvana's "Lithium" or Beyonce's "Single Ladies," seem to fit right in with everything else. Somehow, this manages to surprise me every time.
² I also heard "Baby, this time I'll be bulletproof," in La Roux's "Bulletproof," as "Maybe this time I'll be bulletproof," which changing that one consonant sound makes it a very different, and much more depressing, song. In my defense, I don't think she's enunciating very well.
I also always mishear Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," though: I always hear "It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not" as "It doesn't make a difference if we're naked or not." That's the only reason I like the song at all, and it makes no sense unless you know how I'm interpreting that line.

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

There's probably a name for the condition of having writer's block, but having it with everything you try to do, not just writing. I don't know what the term would be, but I lived the experience all day yesterday (Monday). Couldn't bring myself to water, couldn't get anywhere writing the blog, mildly depressed (the AdSense decision factored into this, but I don't think it was the main cause), couldn't even manage to take a nap. In the end, I wound up on the couch, watching Beavis and Butthead Do America, which is my emergency self-treatment of choice for depression. It worked, in that it cheered me up (it always does; that's why it's the treatment of last resort. It'd be the treatment of first resort, but I'm afraid overuse would decrease the potency, so Beavis and Butthead only get brought out in extreme situations, maybe once or twice a year), but it didn't make me any more able to get anything done.

Which is why we have transmitted light photos again. Although I traditionally try to come up with a comment about each photo individually, I'm going to stop doing that unless I can think of something worthwhile to say: not only does this save me time writing, it also saves me the agony of trying to come up with something clever (or interesting (or even remotely connected)).

For this particular batch, with one pink exception, we have a green-or-orange thing going on. Hope you like.

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

Homalomena 'Perma Press.' It's turned out to be a less-terrible houseplant than I was expecting, from my experiences with H. 'Emerald Gem.' The main problem is that it wants to be really, really big, so all the petioles are bent and twisted because I don't have a spot where they can extend themselves the full two feet that they want.

Neoregelia NOID. It's really, you know. Pink.


Anthurium andraeanum cv. I don't know what happened to cause the water-soaked patches here: I didn't do anything to the leaf as far as I know, and although it's happened before, it's pretty rare. But it makes for a more interesting Anthurium photo than usual.

Ficus benjamina 'Midnight.'

Hemerocallis NOID, flower petal.

Syngonium wendlandii. Bad photo, but it's a good plant. I'm happier with my S. wendlandii than I have been with any of the S. podophyllums, amazingly enough.

Codiaeum variegatum NOID (most likely 'Petra.').

Zingiber malaysianum.

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Splish Splash.' Tied for my favorite picture from this batch.

Canna 'Tropicanna.' The other picture that's tied for favorite. Less dramatic than the previous Canna photo, but arguably that works in its favor. The other one was pretty intense.

Unfinished business: Ads

Okay, well, raise your hand if you're shocked:

Hello,

Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you've provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense program. However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we're unable to reinstate your AdSense account.

As a reminder, if you have any questions or concerns about your account, the actions we've taken, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

This was particularly delightful because it was the very first thing I got to read this morning when I got up. Nothing like starting off the day with a hot cup of coffee and an enormously powerful multinational corporation telling you to go to hell.

So if you're thinking about signing up for AdSense, you should maybe take into consideration that they don't have to give you the money. In fact, since they don't even check to see that you're following the rules until you've got $100 in clicks, you get the added cruelty of getting to watch the amount slowly increase, over however many weeks or months that takes, and anticipating the money and looking forward to it, and then they take it away because you've broken the rules that, apparently, are impossible not to break. I don't know how the people who do get AdSense checks manage to do it, but I suspect my mistake was in posting about having the ads and drawing attention to them. Like, the first rule of AdSense is, you don't talk about AdSense. Maybe not. Apparently I'm never going to know.

Random plant event: Breynia disticha cuttings rooted

Okay, well, I knew I was being optimistic about how long the Persea americana profile was going to take to write, but apparently I was even being optimistic about how optimistic I was being (Optimism: it's a slippery slope, kids.), because that's not anywhere near happening. (UPDATE: It's done.) Also, when I set up this schedule, I didn't know that the in-laws would be visiting on Saturday, so that complicated things too.

The point being that I don't have much for you today, because I haven't had much time to work, and what time I have worked was spent on a profile which is nowhere near completed, so this might not be my most interesting week. Similarly, if I owe you an e-mail or you've donated via PayPal, it could be a while before I get back to you. For which I apologize abjectly, of course.

The plant-related content today has to do with my trying to propagate my Breynia disticha. It's not so much that I wanted or needed more of them; I was just unhappy with the way my plant was getting taller without really getting any bushier, and was hoping to cut it back to induce branching. Which, when you cut back a plant, you're left with pieces of plant, and as long as I had the pieces I figured I'd try to propagate. So I put some damp vermiculite in a cup, stuck the Breynia pieces in, taped another cup over the top, and waited. And behold! Roots!


And actually it didn't take long to see new leaves and roots. I don't remember any of the dates in question, but it couldn't have taken more than two months. That is more or less in line with what everybody says about Breynia as a weedy ornamental in semitropical climates like South Florida: the davesgarden.com page on it includes many, many people complaining about the suckers and seedlings. The plant wants to reproduce very badly.

It's less enthusiastic about growing, at least indoors. My plant has been with me for roughly two and a half years (since October 2008), and I haven't always been able to keep it as wet as it would prefer. It drops leaves when it gets too dry. But it's been a robust grower and is mostly pest-free (there have been occasional minor problems with spider mites), plus it turns out to propagate readily, so I expect it to be around for at least another couple years.