Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Nothing much to talk about today; nobody's run away or eaten anything they shouldn't or been unusually adorable or any of that. Which is fine. Not complaining.

List: Houseplants Which Resemble Piles of Sticks

What? Some of them do.

Agave geminiflora.

Bryophyllum tubiflorum.

Cissus quadrangularis.

Codiaeum variegatum 'Picasso's Paintbrush.'

Euphorbia tirucalli.

Gasteria x pseudonigricans?

Hatiora salicornioides.

Peperomia ferreyrae.

Rhipsalis teres var. heteroclada. (ID is tentative; Rhipsalis species are difficult to tell apart.)

Sansevieria cylindrica.
But which ones are pleasant to grow?

Well, I've grown seven of the ten (haven't tried Agave geminiflora, Bryophyllum tubiflorum, or Codiaeum variegatum 'Picasso's Paintbrush'), and don't have too many complaints about most of them, but if I must choose three to recommend:

Euphorbia tirucalli, whatever faults it may have as a poisonous, somewhat shapeless monster that wants to blind people and burn their skin off, is remarkably easy to grow, even under terrible indoor conditions, and mine has certainly proven its mettle. (I'll have had it ten years in October, which sort of doesn't seem like it could possibly be real. And yet.) And however much it might want to wound and disfigure, if you just leave it alone, that's not going to be a problem.

Hatiora salicornioides is another long acquaintance of mine, with whom I've had mostly positive experiences, and it's even safe to have around. Rhipsalis teres is pretty much exactly the same way, though I haven't known it as long.

It's also hard to find much fault with Sansevieria cylindrica, unless you like plants that will grow from time to time. (S. cylindrica does grow, just very slowly, has been my experience. This partly reflects the care it's received, though.)

The anti-recommend is Codiaeum variegatum 'Picasso's Paintbrush.' I may not have grown it specifically, but I've grown crotons before, and don't consider them worth the spider mites they bring with them.

Not pictured (It's impossible to make a comprehensive list, because there's no way to quantify "resemble," "piles," or "of sticks," but here are some others I considered.):

• Agave victoriae-reginae. Pretty much any Agave variety with non-floppy leaves, really.
• Aloe 'Grassy Lassie' in particular, but also a fair number of other Aloes.
• Araucaria bidwillii
• Bowiea volubilis (reader suggestion)
  
• Brassavola spp. (reader suggestion)
• Ceropegia stapeliiformis (reader suggestion)
  
• Chiloschista lunifera and C. parishii (reader suggestion)
• Crassula muscosa, a little bit.
• Cynanchum marnierianum (reader suggestion)
  
• Dracaena marginata, at last in silhouette.
• Euphorbia lactea, particularly large specimens.
• Euphorbia milii cvv., particularly older plants that have lost their lower leaves.
• Euphorbia platyclada (reader suggestion)
  
• Hoya linearis (reader suggestion)
  
• Hoya retusa (reader suggestion)
• Hylocereus sp.
• Leuchtenbergia principis, in the same way as Agaves.
• Pedilanthus tithymaloides, especially older plants that have lost a lot of lower leaves.
• Rhipsalis spp. are basically made for this list, or maybe vice-versa; some of the more commonly-available ones are R. baccifera and R. ewaldiana.
• Rhytidocaulon ciliatum (reader suggestion)
• Sansevieria hargesiana, and several other Sansevierias.
• Stapelia gigantea, slightly.

Thoughts About Tornadoes

1. Disaster Relief

As you may already be aware, the Southern U.S. has been repeatedly raked over by tornadoes in the past three days or so, in the largest, deadliest tornado outbreak in the U.S. since 1974. And we had been having an exceptionally busy April already, with large numbers of tornadoes reported on April 14 (38), April 15 (146), April 16 (139), April 19 (77), April 22 (29), April 25 (44), April 26 (68), and now April 27 (164).

The red dots are the reported tornadoes.
Across the entire U.S., an average April usually sees 150-160 tornadoes total.¹

Official numbers will take a while to sort out, but it looks like about 200 people have died from tornadoes so far this April, and obviously a lot of homes and structures (including the roof of the St. Louis Airport) have been damaged or obliterated.

It's not, obviously, on the scale of the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami,² but if you were one of the people who just lost his/r home, it'd still loom pretty big, so if you have the means to do so, I'd encourage readers to donate to Portlight.org, who say:

We are providing direct financial assistance to as many people as we can. This assistance will take the form of cash debit cards in the amount of $100 each. These cards will be provided to individuals and families identified to us by local officials, the local sheriffs, mayors, etc. These local leaders are in the best position to determine local need as well as vet recipients. In Alabama, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri and likely other places to come, lives have been thrown into chaos. The ability to spend a few dollars as needed will be crucial. Please make a financial contribution...and make a direct difference.

We also have a lot of flooding going on, as the record-setting snowpack in the northern U.S. (ND, SD, MN) is melting at the same time as the tornado-generating storms are dropping heavy rains (mostly AR, TN, MO, KY, IL, IN, OH) --

Total observed precipitation over the last two weeks. That one little white dot in southern Missouri means they've gotten over twenty inches there.
-- which is setting up the town of Cairo, IL (where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet) for a record-setting flood, which will continue south along the length of the Mississippi, breaking records the whole way down.

The severity of the recent storms is thought to be related to unusually warm temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which has been running about 1 degree (C) above the long-term average for this time of year. A warmer Gulf means more moisture in the air, and more moisture in the air means more moisture that can fall when it meets colder air, and more energy for a storm to work with.

2. Tornado Videos and Tornado Safety

I really like watching video of tornadoes. Seriously, I could do it all day long and not get bored. Here's one from yesterday, an enormous and deadly tornado that went through Tuscaloosa, AL (I prefer it with the sound off, BTW):



³

And the same tornado from a different angle:



The reader will notice one huge difference between the two, which is that the first guy set the camera down on something that wasn't moving, so you can actually tell what's going on most of the time. Which, if you're going to be outside filming while there's a tornado going on, is really the way you should do it. There's no point going out into an intense storm with a camera if your video is shaking around so much that nobody can tell what you've recorded.

But the other thing that stands out, especially about the first video, is that people are out driving around. People: this is so, so, so, so, so stupid. Tornadoes pick up large, heavy, sometimes pointy objects and fling them long distances away. They change directions unpredictably. They can move faster than you can drive. They overturn cars. And the motherfucking tornado in question was like a mile wide. If there's a mile-wide tornado in the vicinity, and you can see it clearly from your vehicle, YOU ARE IN PERSONAL DANGER. QUIT BEING A MORON, DRIVE TO A STURDY-LOOKING BUILDING, AND GET THE FUCK IN IT.⁴

I've only been through one tornado personally, which hit Iowa City about five years ago. (13 Apr 2006) Thirty people were injured in that one, but nobody was killed, and nothing in our⁵ building was damaged. The husband and I experienced it together, in his bathroom, and I think the tornado must have passed more or less directly over our building, because 1) I remember a sudden loss of pressure that hurt my ears, and a huge amount of air suddenly blowing in under the bathroom door (presumably the air was all getting sucked out through the vent in the bathroom ceiling), and 2) when it was over, we went outside and saw this less than a block away:

This picture was taken the next day; it was spookier to see at night, immediately after the tornado happened, but those pictures are harder to find in the public domain. In case you're wondering: yes, there were people in it at the time (Passover-related services), but they were all okay.
Further evidence that the tornado passed directly over us: the official map the city produced a week or two after the tornado hit. We were living more or less right at the tip of the arrow.

Two blocks to the north and one block to the east, a co-worker of mine was waiting out the tornado in her closet when her roof went away. She was still shaken up by it for several days afterward, as one would expect.
I was terrified of tornadoes when I was about 7 or 8 years old, but grew out of it by about 9 (partly because I got intensely interested, and read everything I could get my hands on about them). Each of my three younger siblings in turn also became very scared of tornadoes at about the same age and grew out of it; apparently it's genetic. As far as I know, I'm the only one of us who's ever actually experienced one directly, though, and I may be the only one who thinks they're pretty. (We've never had a conversation about it.)

So it's not like I want people to stop getting video of them. I just want people to stop, you know, being so focused on getting the video that they put themselves in danger. I kinda want to grab the people in the second video above and just . . . shake them, hard, by the shoulders, and tell them never to do that again.

*sigh*

Anyway. Please do contribute to Portlight.org if you happen to have a big pile of money lying around that you're not doing anything with. And if you don't, do you have any tornado-related stories, phobias, video, etc., to share? I'm curious.

-

Photo credits:
* tornado reports for 27 April and precipitation maps from National Weather Service.
* Destroyed St. Patrick's Church from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), via Wikipedia page for Easter Week 2006 tornado outbreak sequence.
* Iowa City map was a publication of the City of Iowa City, to which I added the arrow.

¹ It may be worth noting that the number of tornado reports received by the NWS is usually an overcount by about 15%, according to Jeff Masters at Weather Underground. But even taking that into account, we have had a huge number of tornadoes in April: just on those eight days I listed, assuming a 15% overcount, there have still been 600 tornadoes -- nearly 400% more than usual. And there were tornadoes on other days, besides those eight.
² I felt kind of bad, by the way, for not blogging about Japan when all that happened, but I sort of didn't feel like there was anything I could contribute: I had (and still have) trouble grasping the scale of it, I knew everybody already knew about it, so there wasn't any point in trying to increase public awareness, and I didn't have an interesting or unique perspective on it. So I elected not to say anything, rather than say something dull or obvious.
³ Just to make a little observation, for those of you who didn't listen to me and watched with the sound on anyway: if Jesus really wanted to help the people of Tuscaloosa, he could maybe have just made the tornado go back up into the cloud and stop destroying shit. I think it's pretty obvious from the video that Jesus is not interested in helping the Tuscaloosans.
Also, I predict that this is somehow going to be the gays' fault, because natural disasters are always the gays' fault. In fact, I'd bet money that a respectable public figure who ought to know better will have blamed the gays before the end of the day today.
(UPDATE, 11:42 PM CDT: Well, it looks like I would have lost that bet. I did find a number of people on Twitter who were sort of tongue-in-cheek saying that God was punishing the South for being anti-gay, but they didn't mean it, they're not public figures, and I find that only slightly less distasteful than when people say natural disasters are the fault of gay people.
Full disclosure: I considered such a remark myself, when writing this post, but took it out. So it's not like the thought process is unfamiliar to me; it's just, you know, in really poor taste to actually go ahead and say these things anyway. Not that that's ever stopped Pat Robertson et al.)
(SECOND UPDATE, 30 April: If I'd only said three days, I would have nailed it.)
⁴ You probably know the drill already, but in case you don't: go to an interior room on the lowest level of the building, away from windows, preferably either under something sturdy (like a staircase) or something cushiony (mattress, sleeping bags, thick blankets). Avoid spots that are below heavy objects on the floor above (for example: refrigerators, pianos, waterbeds). DON'T stop to open windows: this was recommended in the past, but the people who study this sort of thing have determined that it doesn't help.
If you must drive, the usual recommendation is to drive at a right angle to the tornado's path, though that presupposes that you can tell where the tornado is headed and that the tornado will move in a straight line, neither of which is a particularly good assumption. Overpasses or bridges do NOT provide protection from tornadoes, and are probably worse places to be than lying in a ditch in the open, so don't stop and hide under overpasses or bridges.
See this page for other tornado safety tips.
⁵ The husband and I were, at the time, renting two separate apartments in the same building.

Pretty picture: Pescatorea lehmannii

Another picture from the orchid show back in March. I really liked this one, partly because it was a species I'd never heard of before -- a genus I'd never heard of before, even! -- and partly because of the weird furry lip. I went looking around to see if I could locate any interesting trivia about this plant, but as far as Wikipedia and davesgarden.com are concerned, it doesn't exist. Which actually makes me like it even more.

Random plant event: Ledebouria socialis flower bud

This happened from time to time at work, and I've seen other people blogging about it, but none of my Ledebourias have ever bloomed, so this is exciting.


Also, for some reason, Ledebouria socialis has been way more popular than I expected on the sell/trade stuff. That's not to say that a lot of people are interested (only two so far), but two is a lot more than I was expecting, and it's also half of my stock. (Agave victoriae-reginae is also 50% sold-out already, but that makes sense to me.) Maybe the profile was wrong, and they're not passed around from person to person on the sort of scale I imagined?

This particular plant is one of the ones I was going to sell (it's been under lights in the basement, which is probably also why it's blooming); if it's still here when the flowers open, I'll do a follow-up post. I've never gotten a good close-up picture of the flowers yet.

Pretty pictures: Passiflora cvv.

Yesterday was pleasantly frantic -- lots of time spent e-mailing about the sell/trade plants -- so I didn't have a lot of time to write this.

(The husband asked, "You just posted a 10,000 word post yesterday; you can't take a day off?" "Sure," I said, "I could, but the big post only applies to people in the U.S.: what are the Canadians supposed to read? I have to think of the Canadians!")

So we've got a couple Passiflora flowers, photographed at the ex-job about five weeks ago.

Unidentified Passiflora sp.

Passiflora citrina.
The P. citrina flower was surprisingly small (maybe a couple inches or 5 cm; about as long as my thumb), but apparently that's how they're supposed to be.

Selling and Trading

I am officially ready to start arranging plant trades and/or sales with anybody who is interested in doing so. I had kind of hoped to have more and better options by this point -- some propagations didn't work out like I'd wanted, and some groups of plants have aged badly -- but there are still a lot of okay options. The list of what I have, and the fine print about how I expect trading and selling to be conducted, can be found just under the header picture, under the link "Sell/Trade List," or you can click here.

I am, of course, abjectly sorry for the length of the sell/trade list. It's awkward. Inconvenient. Unwieldy. I did the best I could.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

We don't live in a big town. The entire town comprises thirty-one blocks, says Google Maps, plus four cul-de-sacs. (The town I lived in until I was eleven only had ten blocks, and no cul-de-sacs, though, so it could always be worse.) This makes walking Sheba sort of boring, because even if I take routes through alleys and stuff to try to expand the options, there are still only just so many paths to be taken, and I've already been everywhere in town several times over.

So when the weather is nice enough for it, I've been walking outside of town with Sheba. There's a particular gravel road I like, heading west out of town, that's fairly quick to get to and relatively untraveled during the day.

It must see more traffic at night, though, because the trash in the ditches next to the road is like: beer can, beer can, cigarette pack, beer can, soda can, beer can, beer can, chewing tobacco container, beer can, soda can, jar of pickles, beer can, soda can, gun cabinet --


-- malt-based alcopop bottle, chewing tobacco container, beer can, beer can, beer can. I'm guessing a lot of drunk driving probably happens around here. Probably a good chunk of it's even underage drunk driving. Yeah, we're classy.

But so the point is that it's an okay place to walk a dog, during the day, and it makes for about a two-mile walk. I worried a little that maybe all the gravel might be hard on Sheba's feet, but there's actually enough grass along the side of the road that I don't think she spends much time on the gravel, and obviously I don't encourage her to walk down the middle of the street anyway. Unless I want to get a picture.


No doubt we'll get tired of this route soon enough too, but it was nice to discover. Now if we could only have some days when it's nice enough to go on an extended walk. Seems like all we've had for the last two weeks is rain and cold and gray and yuck, grumble grumble.

Elsewhere on the Web

Decorah Eagles
Summary: Somewhere in Decorah, IA, someone put a webcam in a Bald Eagle nest and is broadcasting the activities of its occupants (two adults and three eaglets) to the world. This is shockingly popular.

OSU College of Biological Sciences Greenhouses
Summary: A titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) named 'Woody' at Ohio State University, in Columbus, OH, is in the process of blooming. There's a webcam for this one too, which seems a little unnecessary but whatever.

Pretty pictures: Pink and Red Pelargonium cvv.

One nice thing about the new camera (which isn't even new anymore; I've had it more than a year): it appears to be capable of taking pictures of Pelargonium flowers. The old one always gave me over-saturated colors that obscured the details.

I go back and forth about Pelargoniums: when I started at the garden center, I liked them. After I'd been there a while, I hated them, especially the smell of them. (I considered writing a profile around the "person" of Newborn, or Infant -- they have very rounded features, they frequently smell funny, and everybody was always talking about them as though they were super-delicate. It still kind of makes sense to me.) Since leaving the garden center job, I've been appreciating pels again. Why absence makes the heart grow fonder with Pelargoniums and not Phalaenopsis, I don't know.

Pelargonium 'Strawberry Sizzle.'

Pelargonium 'Stars and Stripes.'

Pelargonium 'Peppermint Twist.'

I only actually own two pels. One is a 'Vancouver Centennial' that I've had for about two years. I can rarely give it enough light to get the leaves to color up properly (it's an inconvenient size, and competition is fierce for the high-light spots), but it's otherwise been agreeable.

Pelargonium 'Mrs. Pollock.'
The other, 'Mrs. Pollock,' only arrived a couple weeks ago (one of only TWO plants I've bought in the last two months, the other being the Rhipsalis I posted about a while back -- such superhuman restraint!), and all indications are that it's going to have the same problem. I hope to work something out that everybody is okay with. Nina and I are currently sorting through everybody's applications for one of the coveted outdoor positions this summer (yes, the plants fill out paperwork. We all get paperwork here.), and Mrs. Pollock makes a strong argument. We'll see.

Walkaway: Aristolochia gigantea

Still trying to get the list together for the plants I intend to sell or trade (which is going to take a while longer; there are many pictures, and I suspect I'm including too much information about the plants in question but I'm sort of paranoid about sending one to somebody and then having them not like it, or having it be not what they were expecting, and then feeling like I should do something to fix that -- except that by the time it reaches that point it's sort of too late to fix, so I'm inclined to share everything I know about the plant in question in hopes of forestalling this kind of awkwardness. Except that then I realize that I'm dumping tons of information on the readers, most of whom will find it irrelevant and tedious, so I delete most of it, only to succumb to the fear that I've omitted important details, so I add it all back in again. Which is why it's taking a long time.), but figured I should still post something today, so why not another plant I didn't buy from the ex-job?


It's at least a plant I'd never seen before; I'd barely even heard of it. (I think I've seen it on a couple other blogs, but it's not something people typically try to grow, particularly not as a houseplant.)

Younger Former Coworker said it had an unpleasant smell, but either I couldn't smell anything, or I forgot to check. (It could be that Younger Former Coworker makes up fragrance-related things to tell me about, so I'll question my own perceptions.) It certainly has the I'm-pretending-to-be-a-dead-animal look to it.


Younger Former Coworker also referred to the plant as "the nut-sack plant." She spends a lot of time around livestock.

I'm a little suspicious of the ID here: Aristolochia gigantea was the name on the tag, but the A. gigantea results from Google are the wrong color and size. It may be some other Aristolochia. It also wasn't completely opened-up yet, so the resemblance might be better now.

Pretty pictures: Phaius tankervillae

When I worked at the garden center, Phaius were very occasionally on the availability list from our supplier, but I never brought any in because . . . I don't remember. Our supplier used to try to push them on me, too, and sounded surprised when I declined to order any.


They've gotten a few in since I left, though, and . . . they're nice. I didn't get pictures of the foliage (which I regret), but I like it nearly as well as the flowers -- it's pleated a bit, like Asplundia, but otherwise long, narrow, and oval (like Canna or Alpinia).


The common name is "nun orchid," because a structure deep inside the flower resembles a nun with a white wimple. I looked, but couldn't actually see this on any of the flowers in this post, so I don't have a picture, sorry. (Garden Adventures does, though, as well as having more information about the plant.)


I didn't buy, because they were out of my price range (like everything else). That may not be such a terrible thing, though: I don't know what they're like to grow indoors, and I don't have room for one anyway. But they're interesting plants. Perhaps someday.

More Adventures With Chlorophyll Kid

I think it's more entertaining not to know what led up to this scene or what happens immediately after.


(Via.)

(Previously.)

Elsewhere on the Web

I don't quite get Tumblr -- it seems to be very popular, and yet I don't see that it's doing anything you couldn't do with Blogger, Wordpress, etc. Perhaps it's just that it's newer? There does seem to be a lot of faddishness on-line: everybody has a Geocities page until everybody has to have a MySpace page until everybody has to be on Facebook.

I don't understand Facebook's popularity either, especially considering their cavalier attitude toward user privacy. (Google/Blogger is, I suspect, not better, but so far they seem less blatantly bad than Facebook.) And I gave Twitter a chance, but it's too much, and I found it more frustrating than useful. (I don't think in 140-character snippets. It's okay. The rest of y'all go on ahead into the future without me.)

But, while I don't understand the advantages of Tumblr as a platform, I'm interested in some of the people who use it, and sometimes one follows links from site to site and winds up finding something interesting. I don't know how I got there, but I saw this on Hometown Memories, and for some reason it speaks to me:

Random plant event: Anthurium cross pollination

About two months ago, I went through a phase where I ran around trying to cross-pollinate everything that was in bloom: Chlorophytum, Nematanthus, Saintpaulia, Anthurium, Murraya. I'm not sure why. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.

Mostly, this was useless. The possible Nematanthus fruit that I was so excited about dropped off without developing; the Saintpaulias weren't even willing to pretend that something had happened. The Murraya produced a few fruits, but I haven't been able to get any of the seeds to sprout; ditto for the Chlorophytum.

I thought that the Anthuriums were another case where nothing happened at all, and wasn't that surprised, because I had no idea how to cross them (it's not easy to tell when the flowers might be receptive; it's only barely obvious when they're shedding pollen), but it turns out that at least a few worked, as you can tell from the lumpiness developing in the spadices:

'Pandola.'
As for how I did it: I took a cheap plastic paintbrush and went around "painting" the spadices of all the Anthuriums then in bloom, in varying sequences, on multiple occasions. That's all. I'd tried other methods in the past (both rubbing spadices together and using fingers instead of a paintbrush), which never worked.

'Gemini.'
This doesn't mean I'm going to get seedlings out of this, and if I do, I won't know which plant was the male parent, but it does, at minimum, move me from the nothing-happened Saintpaulia category up to the something-happened-but-I-still-didn't-get-more-plants category. If I do get fruit and seeds from the Anthuriums, I'm fairly confident that I know what to do from there. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Disturbing Sheba development this week: last Saturday she growled at three little girls who were trying to pet her, and snapped at one (no contact, fortunately), and then on I think Monday, she growled at a little boy who was trying to pet her too.

This is not good. It's also more or less new: the husband tells me she's growled at people when he's taken her on walks before, but they were adults, and she didn't try to bite them. I personally had only ever seen her growl at people while in the car before, and I didn't worry about that much because obviously she wasn't going to bust through the window.

Now, okay, we wanted a dog that would do a little light house-guarding, if necessary, but a dog that bites children isn't good. We can't afford obedience classes, and although one of our neighbors has lots of kids and probably wouldn't miss one if we were to borrow one for an afternoon to practice with, it seems like that would probably be wrong or rude or something, so . . . what's left, besides Cesar Millan?

It's worth noting that the situations were unusual; as far as I can remember, Sheba and I haven't interacted with any kids on walks before. She's been okay with my niece, who's more or less the same age. So it might have been more the novelty of the situation than a thirst for the blood of the innocent. But still. Suggestions?

Meanwhile, it's been a long time since we've had a picture of Nina, and Sheba's been bad this week, so let's have a picture of Nina:


She bites too, though not lately.

List: The Best Houseplants You're (Probably) Not Growing

This list isn't intended to be taken very seriously. It's subjective, and even where it's not, we're only talking about my personal experience, over a pretty limited amount of time;¹ the plant might be completely different for you. Having said that, these are the plants that:

1) have performed well for me for a long time,
2) aren't already common in stores (at least not the stores I visit),
3) typically do well indoors for other people too, as far as I know, and
4) have that special something that makes me want to recommend them to everybody.

This is slightly self-interested, as a few of these are plants I will have available for trade or sale at some point,² but it's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. I have them to sell because I like the plant, and in a lot of cases I like the plant because it's easy to reproduce for selling. The main point of the list is not to promote plants because I'll have them for sale, I swear, it's to say nice things about plants that have been making me happy lately. Because there are a lot of plants that don't.³ (Including some of the plants I want to sell or trade away.)

Agave desmettiana. Fairly rapid growth, as indoor Agaves go, interesting color (on the variegated variety), and so far it doesn't seem especially needy or buggy. If you have full sun and can water thoroughly and regularly, you can grow this.

Eucharis grandiflora. Beautifully fragrant (if short-lived) white daffodil-like flowers up to three times a year, large, glossy green leaves the rest of the time, cold-tolerant, and I've never had problems with bugs. Needs some light (filtered sun or bright indirect), and don't overwater. May go dormant if too dry or dark.

Gasteraloe x beguinii. (Aloe aristata x Gasteria batesiana). Nice form and color, tolerates fairly low light for a succulent, resilient as hell, offsets are easy to root, never a bug problem. Probably won't flower indoors, but it's my favorite foliage Aloe/Gasteria/Haworthia, easily. Give it at least some sun indoors, or else bright artificial light, and don't overwater.

Hatiora salicornioides. Only minor bug problems so far (spider mites, surprisingly), and the flowers aren't the glamour bombs that Eucharis's are, but the form is interesting, and it's easy to grow with full sun to bright indirect light. Fertilizer seems to be more important than I expected: some of mine have only started putting out new growth since I started using the Miracle Gro.

Hoya lacunosa. Easily brought into bloom (it basically just takes lots of light + fertilizer), and can be more or less continuously in bloom year-round. Neither the flowers nor the leaves are much to look at, but it's fairly non-demanding, and the scent is nice.

Pachypodium lamerei. Less easy than most of the other plants on the list -- it's obviously a pain to repot, and it's inclined to winter spider mite infestations and/or dormancy, plus they'll rot if you get them cold and wet at the same time. But they're still fairly easy to grow, and they're tough enough that I've never actually seen one rot from being too wet: I've only heard about it.

Selenicereus chrysocardium. You're probably never going to see the large, overwrought flowers, but with stems like these, who needs flowers? It's fast, it's huge, it's easy to grow (you need only regular watering and a sensible amount of light), I've never had pest problems, and it's just so weird.

Synadenium grantii. I praise Synadenium pretty much every chance I get, but it's difficult to articulate why I like it as much as I do. I like the textures, both visual (red-speckled green, or plum with specks of green) and tactile; I like that they grow fast and can be endlessly duplicated. I love that I've never had a pest problem on a Synadenium. Just a good, vigorous plant for someone with bright indirect light or brighter. They will occasionally drop lower leaves, for reasons I've never been able to figure out but suspect is water-related.

Vriesea splendens. I've always loved the way these look, but it took me a long time to decide to buy one, because all the books warn about them being fussy and difficult. They're not. I've had no pest problems, they seem perfectly happy under artificial light, bright indirect light, or filtered sun, and recently one has even decided to rebloom for me. Occasionally I let them get too dry, and then leaves curl and yellow, but that's been about it for problems.

Zingiber malaysianum. The leaves are pleasantly (if lightly) scented, glossy, and beautiful with light shining through them. It insists on being kept warm (above 50F/10C) and moist, more so than almost any other plant I own (I deal with this by watering every time the watering cycle gets around to it, and if I start finding that it's dry by the time I'm ready to water it, I move it up into a larger pot.), and I suspect that it's probably prone to mites, though I haven't experienced this personally. But I am so pleased with it.

Honorable mentions:

• Aechmea fasciata -- in the trade for a long time, but I rarely see any for sale that aren't already in bloom, and I don't know why. They're perfectly nice foliage plants, and if you buy one already in bloom then it's just going to die on you. (Granted, that can take more than two years, as it did with mine.)
  
• Araucaria bidwillii -- I know why this isn't sold more in the trade. They're kinda ugly, and even the fuller-looking larger specimens are sharp. I love mine anyway.
• Epiphyllum oxypetalum -- The flowers are pretty, but I'm not sure they're actually worth growing the plant for, since they only last for an evening. I like the plant enough that I'm willing to grow it for the unusual, awkward stems, though.
• Euphorbia trigona -- One of my oldest and best-behaved plants, not counting a minor pest problem when I first got it,⁴ plus I like the shape.
• Haworthia limifolia var. limifolia -- I started out liking other Haworthias more, but this one's grown on me. The color (metallic gray or gray-green, depending on culture) is neat, the texture is pleasant, and it may be the only Haworthia species I've had that's never given me trouble.
• Pandanus veitchii -- Of course. Minor pest problems (caterpillars or crickets or something, when I had mine outside last summer), painful to move around, and the tips burn if the plant is in the path of a heat vent, but mostly a piece of cake to grow.
• Polyscias scutellaria -- Polyscias in general have been nice to me, though they do have their moods. P. scutellaria is my favorite of the genus because it's been the most responsive to my care so far (bigger leaves, more leaves), but I also like the look of it.
• Senecio rowleyanus -- We went through some rough times at first, mostly because I wasn't watering enough, but we've reached an agreement since then, and it's grown a lot in the last year. Haven't seen flowers yet on my personal plant, but I look forward to the day: they smell like Big Red chewing gum.

What plant(s) you don't see for sale very often would you add to the list?

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¹ The plants on the list have all been in my care for at least 22 months; the most recent addition (Zingiber malaysianum) was purchased in June 2009, and the oldest (Gasteraloe x beguinii) is from November 2006.
² (I've been having trouble getting suitable photos of the plants in question, among other things. Too bright, too dark, always desaturated: it's frustrating. There's also the issue that some of the plants I had hoped to sell are not looking as good now as I had hoped they would, and it's probably too late to whip them into shape, which is demotivating. I spent the bulk of Wednesday taking pictures, and that set is the set I'm going to use, whether they're good or not. I'm currently planning the official unveiling for April 18, but that may be optimistic, given the number of photos I have to sort through.)
³ [shaking fist at sky:] RADERMACHERA!!!!!!!!!! (Actually, I got rid of the Radermachera a couple weeks ago. I'm still angry, though.)
⁴ It was either whitefly or scale; it happened long enough ago that I don't have any pictures, and don't remember that well. I assumed they were whiteflies, because they flew, but my memory tells me they looked more like immature scale. They went away, whatever they were.

Random plant event: Pedilanthus 'Jurassic Park 2'

I've had this stupid plant since June of 2008. I paid an average of $26.70 each for five plants from the now-defunct Asiatica Nursery, only one of which (Dracaena 'Indonesian Tracker') was remotely worth that. (Three of the other four are still alive; they're just not meeting expectations.) Which might have something to do with why Asiatica is now defunct.

Anyway. It's stayed alive well, I guess, and all the leaves that were covered in crusty gray stuff dropped off a long time ago, so it's a little shinier than it used to be, but it's only branched once since it arrived, and has been looking more and more like three sticks with a tuft of leaves at the top.

Until now.


It's possible that this is something the plant would have done anyway, just because it's spring, but I'm sort of inclined to credit the fertilizer again, since this didn't happen last spring, or the spring before. (I'm not getting paid by Miracle Gro, if you'd wondered. And I still hate their potting soil, which is part of why I don't expect to be getting paid by Miracle Gro anytime soon. But the fertilizer does appear to be useful, all the same.)

The plant is still, of course, going to look like crap: it'll take a lot more than a branch every three years to make this presentable. (I should probably try cutting it back and propagating some new plants.) But it's progress.

Music Video: Titus Jones "College is Crazy" (Britney Spears / Beyonce / Jay-Z / Gnarls Barkley / Asher Roth)

I'm a little bit troubled by how much I like this one.

Titus Jones (of "I Wanna Bulletproof Dancer" and "Good Girls Burn Miami") has done a whole album, Culture Shock (available for download at his website), and of the two Culture Shock songs for which there are videos so far, this is my favorite. It's also one of my four favorite tracks on the album overall (the other three being "Oops I Shot Jolene's Mom," "Pokestar," and "We Love Hustling Drugs"). I cannot figure out why I like it, though; Asher Roth, around whom the rest of the mix seems to be constructed, strikes me as being sort of aggressively and pointedly douchey, the sort of person I would go out of my way to avoid, particularly in the bridge. And yet.¹



It might be that I'm liking the way the other songs (esp. the Gnarls Barkley) comment on and partly undercut the Asher Roth. I don't know.

Titus Jones, by the way, will do mixes for hire.² Were I to win the lottery or something, I think one of the first things I would do would be to contact Mr. Jones and buy a 4-5 minute mashup of the following songs:

"Baby" (Justin Bieber)
"Baby Baby" (Amy Grant)
"Baby Baby Baby" (TLC)
"Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby" (R. Kelly)
"Say Baby" (David Garza)³

Might be one of those things that would turn out more clever than good,⁴ but if anybody could spin that mostly-shitty straw into gold, it'd be Titus Jones.

Anyway. When there's a video for "Oops I Shot Jolene's Mom," I'll post about that, too. That'll probably be a shorter post, though.

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¹ There's also the issue of the word "crazy" being repeated over and over. Mental illness advocates, and some people with mental illness, don't like this kind of thing. The word "crazy," they say, is used to stigmatize, ignore, and demean those with mental illnesses, and using it to mean "more extreme than anticipated" or "uncharacteristic" is somehow likewise demeaning to the mentally ill. I can sort of almost see the point, but I think the logic is flawed: I think watering down a slur by giving it additional meanings is the best possible way to take away the sting. Insisting that people not use the word because it upsets you only gives people more power and incentive to upset you by using it, particularly if the word has become essentially meaningless. (Like for example "fucking:" a "fucking good party" is basically the same as a "crazy good party," and in both cases, the only purpose the words "fucking" and "crazy" serve is to intensify the description and convey an attitude. They're not interchangeable in all situations, though: "You're crazy" is obviously not the same thing as "You're fucking.")
No doubt some could make counterarguments, but that's not even really the point: my point is that although some people would be upset by how many times "crazy" is used in the mashup, I'm not one of those people. I have cut certain words from my vocabulary because of arguments like the above ("lame," "retarded," "bitchy" -- though "totally bitchin' Camaro" is still acceptable), but I'm keeping "crazy." I'm not trying to be an asshole, but it's crazy fucking useful.
² Though they're pricey: the cheapest option is a mashup of three songs to make a new song under two minutes long, and that costs $50.
³ A song which is not on YouTube (except in a really crappy live version) but worth looking for -- I like the whole album Overdub, actually -- and which is primarily about how in order to get played on the radio, one has to write songs that "don't forget to say baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby." I heard the song on the radio about nine years ago, so obviously it worked.
⁴ I haven't even heard the R. Kelly song: I'm only using it because it was the only song title I could find with more than three "Baby"s. (Oh. Wait. Now I've heard it. Well, maybe Jones could do something with it anyway.)

Pretty picture: Brassolaeliocattleya Goldenzelle 'Lemon Chiffon'

I tried very hard to come up with something to say about this flower, but apparently all my blogging energy for the day went into a mashup post, which will go up twelve hours after this one did. It's not that it's not a nice flower, it's just that after a certain point, one gets tired of frilly Cattleya-type orchid flowers, even if they're sort of unusual-colored Cattleya-type orchid flowers, and I think I'm approaching that point so fast that the blurry spot in the rearview mirror might be it already. I hope someone is making new kinds of orchids.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Houseplant

1.

A piece of furniture, to sit in a particular location and occupy space in an interesting way. Favored by photographers, the wealthy, realtors, TV producers, artists, office workers.

2.

An air-cleaning appliance, to remove chemicals in the air, or chemicals one imagines to be in the air. Favored by the paranoid, the urban, those with multiple-chemical sensitivity, office workers, owners of new homes.

3.

An interloper, which belongs outside, planted in the soil, but is for some reason indoors where it doesn't belong, being all unnatural and stuff. I've only seen this in Amy Stewart and Michele Owens of Garden Rant, though I suppose this interpretation might appeal to people with very rigid opinions about Where Things Go, or those who have previously had bad luck with indoor plants.

4.

Money, or at least potential money. Endorsed by obsessive hobbyists who have reached the point of hoping that the obsession could at least partly pay for itself, or who are trying to convince a family member that it's a good idea to open more space up for plants; also adopted by retailers, wholesalers, and their employees.

5.

A victim, or object of guilt. Popular with beginning indoor gardeners, the very busy, the recently-vacationed, the easily-distracted, the overly-confident, and those who did not do the research before purchasing.

6.

A (hypothetical) weapon. This could be something only I think about, but I've given enough thought to which of my plants could be used in self-defense that I think I make up for all the people who don't think about it at all. People inclined to this stance are obviously paranoid, threatened, inclined to fantasies of themselves being heroic, or some combination thereof.

7.

A chore, a never-ending task, an obligation, a duty. Favored by those who have received plants as gifts, those who thought they'd like a houseplant better than they actually do, those with hectic, complicated lives that mostly revolve around taking care of others, those who have collected more plants than they can reasonably take care of, the dysthymic, the exhausted.

8.

A memento of someone who has died, moved, or otherwise gone somewhere else. Favored by the recently (or not-recently) bereaved, the involuntarily lonely, the sentimental, the hopeful.

9.

Absolution for one's environmental sins. Did you clear-cut a 300-year-old forest to make room for your McMansion and its 5-SUV garage? Buy a couple peace lilies and all is forgiven. This perspective is preferred by those with long, solitary commutes, those who sometimes forget to recycle, and those who don't know how much fossil fuel is involved in making a plastic pot, putting a plant into it, shipping the plant 1500 miles across the country, heating and/or air-conditioning the store, making the plastic bag the plant gets put in, and burning the gasoline in the car to get the plant back to the house.

10.

A magic charm, which attracts luck, wealth, happiness, wisdom, or some other positive, unattractable characteristic. The preferred interpretation of cynical marketers, who are somehow able to ignore the fact that the original ranges of the plants in question are often inhabited by people who are very poor, unlucky, or miserable, by comparison to the intended buyers of the plants.

11.

One checkbox on a long list of plants to be checked off. Favored by hoarders, collectors, competitive types for whom dying with the most plants means winning, obsessives.

12.

An object of wonderment. Preferred by those who start plants from seed, who didn't know their plant could flower, children, scientists, artsy-fartsy types (not as far from scientists as you might think), stoners, the easily impressed.

13.

Nature itself! A small piece of rain forest, brought into one's home! Favored by pretty much anybody who doesn't look at them as interlopers or furniture.

Question for the Hive Mind: Aloe nobilis

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what's going on here. I'm not sure how to describe it, but fortunately there are pictures.

The plant is the Aloe nobilis I got from Lowe's about a month ago. It's been growing well, and has put on maybe three or four new leaves since it got here. However, the back of one leaf, and parts of the margins of two others, are doing this:

One back, one margin.

The same leaf as in the center of the first picture, viewed from the side.

Extreme close-up of the margin.
When I first saw this, my first thought was maybe Aloe mites, which I knew about only from having read all of Geoff Stein's articles on Davesgarden.com a while ago (also Dee at A Desert Observer has written about Aloe mites), but when I looked at the photos, I didn't see anything that looked like my plant -- those were mostly singular, rounded, cauliflower-like growths on one particular spot, not streaks of slightly-bumpy stuff.

So my best guess at the moment is aloe mites, but 1) I thought I should get a second opinion, and 2) if it is aloe mites, I'm wondering what I should do about it. I have imidacloprid and a sharp knife, if that helps, and I also have the receipt, so I could take it back to Lowe's for a refund if it's best not to even try messing with this. Recommendations?

UPDATE: I'm getting increasingly certain that this is an aloe mite infestation. First, after much wading through pages about how people can use Aloe vera to treat edema on human and animal body parts, I found a picture of edema on Aloe dichotoma, which presents as irregularly-shaped, slightly sunken, brown to tan patches. My plant has been wet, because it's in peaty soil that I haven't removed yet, but what my plant has doesn't look like Aloe edema, insofar as I can figure out what Aloe edema looks like.

Second, I found an eleven-month-old post at Garden Web, in a thread about an aloe-mite-infested plant that was being sold at Home Depot, in which a representative of Altman's, the wholesale supplier who sold the plant in question to HD (and also the producer of my plant, though I bought mine at Lowe's), showed up to say that 1) obviously Altman's would never knowingly send out a plant infested with aloe mites, and 2) it's sort of an ongoing problem for them because aloe mites are now part of the natural environment where they grow their plants and can wander into the production area, 3) sometimes Altman's plants catch mites from other, non-Altman's, plants in the garden centers where they're being sold, and 4) they're working hard to come up with a way to prevent infestations but aren't there yet.

These all seem like valid points (#3 is maybe only valid-ish), and I'm sure the people at Altman's are as nice and conscientious as any other similarly-sized group of people, but 1) I'm returning the plant to Lowe's on Monday and 2) it's going to be a long time before I feel comfortable buying an Aloe, Gasteria, or Haworthia (which also get aloe mites, BTW) from Lowe's again.