Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

This is a little blurry because it was taken (via a side mirror) while the car was in motion, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

This week was the anniversary week of bringing Sheba home from the shelter. I checked my personal journal to confirm this, and ran into the list of names we were considering for her.

One option I'd considered privately, but didn't include in the poll, was "Pandora," after the contestant from Season 2 of RuPaul's Drag Race, and I kinda wish I'd gone with that now, since it's nicely symmetrical with Nina (also a RPDR contestant name) and Pandora is my favorite from that season, like Nina was my favorite from the first season.

This would have obligated us to get a third pet a year later, who we would have had to name Yara, and then a fourth pet this year named Chad, Sharon, or Latrice,¹ so it's probably all for the best that I never got started down this particular road. We only have just so much in the budget for pet food. (Though the idea of a pet guinea pig named Yara is surprisingly compelling. . . .)

But.

I am occasionally still bothered by the name "Sheba." It's not that I find it objectionable on its own; it's just that we didn't pick it out, so there's no personal significance to her name; it doesn't reflect our tastes or whatever. And then sometimes I'm concerned when we're telling someone else her name, that they'll think we picked it out, and I want to make sure they know we didn't, which doesn't even make sense because it's not like Fervor wouldn't come across as way more off-putting and harder to explain.² In any case, I'd wondered whether going with the shelter-assigned name would bother me, back when we were making the decision, and it turns out that yes, it does. Lesson learned.

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¹ I can't decide on a favorite this year! On the one hand, Sharon Needles is originally Iowan, and very weird and creative (I'm particularly fond of her plastic surgery and pea-green/coral glam outfits.), and has the best name.
But Latrice, though not quite as fabulous with the outfits (check out her Ursula hair and makeup, though), is still a lot of fun to watch, and it would be awfully nice for a big girl to win a season, especially after stick-thin Raja won last year.
Chad Michaels has done the most outfits I've found jaw-dropping (the gold/hologram dress, the Florence Welch dress, and most recently an AMAZING green 50s politician's-wife number (full view, close-up).
I don't ordinarily give a damn about fashion, but it seems like there's always one runway outfit every week that I find fascinating, and I've become mildly obsessed with the show this year, which is new. The point being that I have no idea who is my favorite for Season 4. I'd be happy with Chad, Sharon, or Latrice as winner, though I think if I were forced to choose one, I'd pick Chad.
Which would make a terrible pet name.
² Our next dog will of course be named "Rural Juror."

New plant: Ficus benjamina

I know what you're thinking. You're writing a post to tell us you got a Ficus benjamina? Who, exactly, did you think would care?

And okay. I'll grant that this is not a particularly exciting plant to be talking about. But it's not so much about what I got as how I got it.

Also you don't have to be so mean.

It was basically a case of somebody coming up to the house, knocking on the door, and asking if we wanted a Ficus -- one of our neighbors had one which had outgrown its spot in their house, and they were looking for someone to take it, being the gist.¹ When I actually walked to their house (about a block away), to see the plant, it didn't look that bad. I mean, it was a house I'd never been in before, so I didn't have much sense of what was "normal" for the space, but I'd originally pictured some 8-foot tall, five-foot wide monster in a 100-pound ceramic pot, with branches growing horizontally along the ceiling, and it was nothing like that. The (clay) pot was maybe eleven inches (28 cm) in diameter, which is big, but, you know, I've probably got twenty plants that are in pots bigger than eleven inches. So no big deal.

So I agreed to take it home, and the pot got broken along the way, for reasons which aren't really very interesting and would take a lot of time to explain properly. So I had to find a new pot to move it into, and it turned out that the only one I had that was big enough was 16 inches (41 cm) in diameter.

As it was sort of an emergency and I didn't have any other options, I went ahead and used the 16-inch pot,² and . . . that thing happened. You know that thing? The thing where when you have a small plant in a small pot, and then you move it into a big pot, it suddenly looks like the plant got bigger too, even though you know that only the pot changed size? That happened.

Oh, shit.
So now I have a new plant that's about 4 feet tall and 3.5 feet wide, all of a sudden, in a house that was already kind of full to overflowing with plants, and no place to put it. I mean, we'll figure something out -- I could never turn away a Ficus in need -- but this isn't quite what I thought I was getting into when I said yes. When PATSP gets made into a sitcom, this will have to be one of the episodes.

P.S. For the record, I gave her a plant back, to fill the new empty spot in her house. (She picked one of the variegated Yuccas.)
P.P.S. She also said I could go over and dig up some of her Sempervivums and Mertensias sometime if I wanted to plant some here. Not sure about the Mertensia -- there's not really a good spot for one right now, though I do want one eventually -- but I'll definitely take her up on the Sempervivums.

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¹ You might think that our plant-crammed windows had something to do with this, but no. We weren't even the first or second household they asked. (Maybe we looked like we had enough plants already?)
² I would ordinarily never do this, or advise anybody to do this. The general rule of thumb is to go up two inches (5 cm) at a time, so I should have moved it to a 13-inch clay pot, ideally. I went ahead and jumped it five inches in one go because: it sort of needed to be repotted anyway (it wasn't bad, but close enough), the two-inch rule matters less once you get into the really big pots, and Ficus roots are so aggressive and robust anyway that the plant will likely fill the pot within a year regardless. I'm semi-inclined to keep it outside this summer, in which case having some extra soil there will help keep it moist when I forget to water it.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Hsinying Makurow x Paph. Raisin Magic

And the 2012 orchid pictures begin. (Hooray?)


There will be a lot of Paphiopedilums this year; this isn't because I was obsessed with them or anything. (I like them, enough to attempt to grow one, but nothing beyond that.) They just seemed to have a lot more of them this year. As always, a lot of the plants were crammed so closely together that it was more or less impossible to get decent pictures of some of them (you'll notice a stray Phalaenopsis in the background on the left, and a ribbon -- I swear they gave every plant that showed up a ribbon, and then the ribbons were all angling themselves to get into my pictures), and the way some of the displays were set up, a lot of nice plants went unphotographed because I couldn't get close enough. Not that I didn't get plenty of photos anyway: my point is just that there was a higher percentage of paphs than in previous years, and the paphs were also in more accessible displays, for the most part. Hence lots of paph pictures.

As usual, it was impossible to distinguish smells, there being too many scented plants (and not a few fragrant people) around and lots of air currents, so that piece of information will be lacking, again, for this year's pictures. Which is sad. Even if I could distinguish individual smells, though, it's not like I have an easy way to record them for later discussion, so maybe it's better this way.

Walkaway: Tillandsia dyeriana

It's occurred to me that there have already been a couple weeks when I probably could have mailed plants out and didn't, even though I wasn't expecting suitable weather for that until end of April / beginning of May. So, I'm trying to get prices set and photos done so we can go ahead and begin with the selling and trading. (You'll know when I'm ready to start mailing stuff out by the cold snap that will hit Iowa.¹) I spent the better part of Sunday taking pictures; we'll see how long it takes to get them rotated / cropped / colored / etc.

Anyway. I needed 4-inch grower pots, perlite, and aquatic soil, so I went to Iowa City on Friday, where I saw the most interesting new bromeliad I've seen in quite a while:


Not that the foliage is so fascinating -- as you can (kinda) see, it's basically just a dull green, medium length, medium width kind of deal -- but the inflorescence is pretty striking.

(Particularly striking is how the pure white flowers turn nearly pure black when they die.)
It's apparently not a particularly difficult plant to grow, but I passed it up because it was priced at $20, and I have no positive past Tillandsia experiences,² so it didn't seem worth it. Not that $20 for a 4-inch pot could ever seem reasonable, but . . . well. You know what it's like; I don't have to explain it to you.

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¹ Not really: you'll know because I'll put up a post about it.
² I like T. cyanea in theory, and managed to keep one alive for five years, but it never grew very much, it didn't rebloom, it tried to offset a couple times but then the offsets died, and eventually it rotted out and died. My best guess is that it probably wanted more light than it was getting.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

I intended to do a Nina picture this week, but when I got the camera ready and pointed it at the terrarium, I couldn't find her. Tried blowing puffs of air in to startle her, so I could see where she was, but that just induced her to jump under the Pellionia thicket before I saw where she was.

I then crept back up on her later, but she saw the camera move or something and, again: under the Pellionia. And the next day, same thing.

I'm pretty sure this is me being clumsy, not Nina being jumpier than normal, but either way, it doesn't matter: I couldn't get new Nina pictures. So here's one from December 2010:

Pretty picture: Ascocenda Suksamran Sunshine

This was unfortunately destined to be a crappy picture -- the original was too washed out and blue, and my efforts to fix that only succeeded in making it too dark as well. But maybe this will help you appreciate the (mostly better) set from the 2012 show, which begin next Tuesday.


It's possible that the correct name is Sunlight, not Sunshine; Google has results for both, and the flowers look basically the same under both names, so after trying to figure it out for a while, I gave up.

Ascocenda is, as we all know, the name for crosses of Ascocentrum and Vanda. Google suggests that care for Ascocenda is basically the same as for Vanda.

New Plant: Osmanthus fragrans

It doesn't look like much, but the rumors are true: Osmanthus fragrans flowers smell pretty awesome.

I got this in the mail this week from Ginny Burton,¹ who has been pushing me to get one for a long time. (I would have done so on my own, had I ever seen any for sale in Iowa.)

The plant had a few flowers on it when it arrived, not all of which had a noticeable scent, but the ones that did smell very much like apricots. It's not strong enough to fill the whole house, as some on-line sources suggested, but then, it's still a small plant, it's been in a box for a few days, the flowers appear to fluctuate quite a bit in scent production depending on age and time of day, etc.


It still remains to be seen whether I'll be able to grow it in any kind of long-term way; I've never tried this plant (or any plant in the Oleaceae, for that matter) before, and I've only had this one since Monday. I'll keep you posted.

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¹ I ordinarily don't publicly identify people who send me plants, because publicizing opens up all kinds of possibilities for people to be swarmed by requests for cuttings, hurt feelings because I got a plant and someone else didn't, or . . . I don't even know. It's just simpler to leave people anonymous unless they specify otherwise. Ginny said it was okay, though.

Random plant event: Coffea arabica

I wasn't all that fond of Coffea when I first wrote its profile, back in 2008. I mean, I didn't hate it, either, but the foliage on my plant was pretty plain, it grew faster than some plants but not as fast as others, the form wasn't particularly exciting, it didn't flower, etc. I mean, it was a nice enough plant, but it didn't really stand out in the crowd for me.

That all started to change around this time last year, after I began using fertilizer with trace elements at every watering. I knew before this that my plant was probably not getting as much of something as it wanted, because the new growth was occasionally chlorotic, but I was still surprised at how rapid and extreme the reaction to the fertilizer was. A year after this picture was taken --

Coffea arabica, February 2011. Pot: 8" / 20 cm.
-- I happened to be pulling the plant out of its spot in the corner of the plant room, when I noticed two things. One, the plant has nearly doubled in height:

Coffea arabica, March 2012. Pot: ~11" / 28 cm.
Which is pretty cool all by itself. Second, though, I think I may be getting flowers soon, 'cause I noticed these buds:


And, I think the flowers are supposed to be self-fertile, so there's a decent shot at getting berries eventually, which interests me quite a bit. Even if there are never berries, I'll be pretty happy, though: I'm very interested in what the flowers smell like.

Whatever happens with the flowers and berries and so forth, C. arabica somehow managed to sneak onto my favorite plants list without me noticing until now. It's given me very little trouble (the aforementioned chlorosis, and a recent tendency of the smaller plants in the pot to get crowded out by the larger ones, but that's about it), it grows a lot faster when it has . . . nutrients available (*cough*), the leaves are shiny, and it's where coffee comes from. I suppose I could ask for something easier to propagate, but aside from that, what's not to like?

(P.S.: I realize it's hard to tell from those pictures that the plant's nearly doubled in height, but you'll just have to trust me. It's presently about 4 feet / 1.3 m tall, and has lived here for a little over five years, which is, one, just about exactly the height when they're supposed to start flowering, and two, a couple years late. Which is not surprising, given the whole lack-of-fertilizer thing.)

Pretty picture: Cattleya Mary Lynn McKenzie

The best I could do for a genealogy here was a site that said Mary Lynn McKenzie is a cross between Cattleya Bob Betts and Cattleya Swan. This isn't especially exciting information to know, and this is the internet so it's always possible that it isn't even true information, but I'm including it in the post anyway because really, the only commentary about this flower I can come up with is that it's awfully white. Which you already know, having seen the picture already.

I also kind of approve of the weird white-daffodil impression it's doing. It amuses me when plants imitate one another.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Okay, obviously what's going on here is just a bad, blurred picture. But the longer you look at it, the weirder it gets -- the differently-sized legs, the different-colored eyes, the flattened ears with a ghost image of vertical ears, etc. -- so I was amused.

In other Sheba-related news, she caught a squirrel a couple weeks ago. I don't remember why I didn't write about it when it happened: I suspect it was just that I'd already written the Sheba/Nina picture post for the week.

I didn't see it happen, which I regret because I've seen her chase squirrels unsuccessfully so often and it would have been nice to join in her moment of triumph, but whatever. The husband convinced her to drop it almost immediately (which is weird, 'cause we can never convince her to drop the glowy ball -- on more than one occasion, she held on to it for more than 45 minutes before we could retrieve it¹ -- and it seems like a squirrel would be way better than a ball), and later disposed of it.

Sheba has, so far, declined to comment.

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¹ We would just let her carry it around as much as she likes, but 1) it was expensive, for a dog toy, and if destroyed would be a bigger deal to replace, and 2) the packaging said not to leave the dog unsupervised with the ball, which implies that it might hurt her if she ever did figure out how to tear it apart. So we throw it as long as she returns and drops it promptly, but if she starts to take longer to relinquish, then fun time is over. Occasionally I throw the ball one too many times, and then we wind up following her around the house for 45 minutes, waiting for her to drop the ball so we can grab it, wash it off, and put it away again. This is tedious enough that we don't break out the glowy ball that often, which if Sheba would only realize this and act accordingly, she'd get to play with the it way more than she does.

Pretty picture: Mammillaria (?) NOID

Okay. I feel a little better. The orchid show pictures were a little easier to sort through than last year's, because 1) the lighting worked out better or something -- more of them were decent to begin with -- and 2) I didn't take as many shots of each flower, so I didn't have to do as much agonizing over which shot to use. Some of them still didn't turn out that great, but what they may lack in quality, they make up for in quantity: I now have 91 orchid posts scheduled through March 2013, with the pictures already in place (if not any text yet). So I'm pretty sure you'll never have to wait more than 5 days between posts, even if I don't write another post for a year. (We still have 2 pictures from last year to burn off first, but after that, look out.)

Meanwhile, some cactus flowers, from the ex-job. These pictures were taken at the end of January.


I suspect Mammillaria, but I'm not positive, so if anybody has any guesses, feel free to share. Perhaps the stripes are a clue?

Random plant event: Senecio cephalophorus 'Blazin' Glory'

Between trying to keep up with watering the plants, propagating new plants, keeping up (poorly) with e-mail correspondence, sorting through all the orchid photos I got on Saturday,¹ trying to make decisions regarding the book (which is looking increasingly like it will not be a book, but something shorter), writing the blog, and working on half a dozen small side projects of various kinds, I'm getting very close to the point of being so overwhelmed by my list of things to do that I'm unable to do any of them. Consequently, posting is going to be light for . . . a while. I don't know precisely what I mean by "light," or "a while:" time will have to tell, but I figured I should let you know this is coming, and apologize for it. In previous years, things had normalized again around mid-June, but this year may never actually settle down: if I find myself with time again, I may have to use it on writing the "book" (or whatever the hell it's going to be) instead of posting more to the blog.


Oh, and there's also a plant. I don't know much about Senecio cephalophorus 'Blazin' Glory,' except that it's a Proven Selections² plant and the ex-job has some this year. (I think this is the first year they've had them.) The plant in the photo is just barely more than a plug;³ I'm not sure how big one can get in a single season, but I bet large quantities of 'Blazin' Glory' are impressive outdoors when they're all in bloom.

The Proven Winners website claims that 'Blazin' Glory' can be grown indoors as a houseplant. That's probably true, but I'm positive that I don't have a bright enough spot for one. (That's been a problem for other Senecios in the past, as well.)

Plant List says that the correct botanical name for this plant is Kleinia cephalophora. The Timber Press Guide to Succulent Plants of the World (Fred Dortort) says that not all botanists agree about splitting some Senecios off into the genus Kleinia, and that in any case Senecio is the name most accepted in the horticultural world.

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¹ You'll probably see a lot of orchid posts during the next year. I got pictures of somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 different plants, and unlike last year, most of those turned out well enough that I can probably use them without too much manipulation.
By comparison to the last year of orchid show photos, Paphiopedilum fans will be pleased; Cattleya fans will be disappointed.
²The difference between a Proven Winner and a Proven Selection, according to the Proven Winners website:

Proven Selections® are regionally accepted, but not great performers in all locations.

Sometimes plants that are known to be very good, but generally available become Proven Selections®. Most gardeners are not aware there is even a difference in these two types of plants. However, this is our way of trying to focus great plants into the parts of the country where they will do their best, rather than sending them willy-nilly everywhere, which will not help gardeners succeed.

³ Many annuals are started in trays containing hundreds of small cylindrical pockets of soil and then are shipped to the retailer once they've rooted in the tray. A solidly-rooted plant will pull out of the tray along with its cylinder of soil; these small plants are called plugs. As soon as plug trays arrive, we repotted the plugs into the pots we were going to sell them in (usually 4"): potting up plugs is one of the major February and March garden center tasks.

Pretty picture: Baptistonia echinata

If everything went according to plan yesterday,¹ I now have about a million orchid photos to sort / crop / color-tweak, a task which could probably occupy me for the next eleven years or so. I only actually have two weeks before I run out of last year's pictures, though, so I'll have to go a little faster than that.


Meanwhile, this week, we have Baptistonia echinata, yet another in the very, very long line of plants that were mis-tagged: the tag said "Baptistonia echinacea," not B. echinata. I understand that it's easy to mis-write an uncommon word if there's a much more common, similar word already in your brain, but even so: does no one know how to proofread anymore? I was also disappointed because my first impulse was to hope that someone had named a species of Echinacea E. baptistonia, so as to confuse search engines, but alas.²


Couldn't find much specific information about B. echinata on-line. It's from Brazil, it's epiphytic, they like lots of humidity but are fairly temperature- and shade-tolerant; if I understand this post correctly, it's the only species in Baptistonia.

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¹ (I'm writing this on Wednesday the 7th.)
² Possibly no big loss: all available evidence suggests that search engines would cope just fine, it's people who would constantly be mixing them up.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

I am occasionally impressed by Nina's ability to stick to glass surfaces, but then I remember 1) all the hard-water buildup probably makes the glass a bit rougher and easier to stick to than I'm thinking it is, and 2) I bet if I only weighed three grams (0.1 oz), I'd stick to lots of stuff too.

The lid is not normally open on the cage; I opened it for the picture because I can't get good pictures through the screen. I don't get good pictures without the screen either, but try to ignore that.

(Side note: if you are one of the many, many people to whom I owe e-mail currently, I am very sorry. Don't hold your breath.)

Walkaways Part 17

A few interesting plants from the ex-job:

Calliandra emarginata.
They were selling Calliandra emarginata as a bonsai (or at least a bonsish; I don't think they've ever had actual bonsai bonsai), which guarantees that I will never buy it, but it's an interesting plant. No clue what they're like to grow indoors; I don't even have any idea what they're like to grow outdoors.

Kalanchoe 'Fantastic.'
I've had mostly-bad experiences with the Kalanchoe genus in general, and consistently bad experiences with Kalanchoe luciae specifically, in the past, so this wasn't particularly tempting, but it was new (to me), and I can't argue that it's not a cool-looking plant.


I don't know whether this is K. luciae or K. thyrsiflora, and it appears no one else does either: Google results are split about 50/50. The tag, for the record, said K. thyrsiflora, not that that means much.

Loropetalum chinensis.
Loropetalum chinensis is another bons-ish; I include it here mostly because I'd never heard of it before and it's kind of pretty.

Polypodium formosanum var. cristatum.
I intend to try this plant someday. I've had some ups and downs lately with footed ferns (two of my three Davallias have taken a recent hard turn for the worse, over nothing in particular that I can see; one has died as a result), but Phlebodium aureum is one of my favorite plants, and Polypodium grandiceps seems to be working for me so far, so P. formosanum seems worth a try even so.

It's possible that the correct name is Phlebodium formosanum, not Polypodium formosanum; Glasshouse Works gives both names but appears to favor Phlebodium. If that's the case, then I'm even more interested.

Philodendron 'Pink Princess.'
Finally, Philodendron 'Pink Princess.' For most of the last few years, I haven't seen it for sale anywhere around here (I think I saw them at Wallace's once), and now all of a sudden the ex-job has gotten them on two separate shipments, as 6" (shown) and also as 4". It's an interesting-looking plant, but I'm not terribly interested in 'Pink Princess' because it's super expensive, and everything I've heard about it suggests that it's really slow-growing. The two things are probably related.

I don't remember what the ex-job wanted for the 4-inch plants, but it was definitely over $10, maybe something like $15. They paid a lot to get them in, I understand (don't know how much, but I know how they calculate these things, and the retail prices reflect wholesale), but $10 for a 4-inch tropical plant is never going to seem acceptable to me.

Random plant event: Aglaonema 'Maria,' with special guest star

This could also have gone into Tuesday's unfinished business post, but it seemed special enough to warrant its own. In this case, the news is that one Aglaonema seed I started around December¹ has actually germinated. Not that it's particularly interesting to look at yet:


But even so. I didn't expect this to work at all, so having anything happen is pretty neat.

I planted the seed in a mix of soil and unchopped sphagnum moss, per the instructions from the University of Florida. The soil/moss was put in a clear plastic cup, covered with saran wrap (held on with a rubber band, because it wasn't staying on by itself -- saran is less sticky when wet), and left on a shelf with a shop light overhead and another underneath, giving it maybe a little bit of bottom heat.

It actually gets better (and weirder) than that, though, because the first thing I noticed happening in the plastic cup was not that the seed was sprouting, but that the sphagnum was sprouting. Not only did I not expect this to happen, I wasn't even aware that it could happen: I thought the sphagnum was dead by the time it got packaged up and sold.


I've seen plenty of claims on-line that peat moss² is being harvested at an unsustainable rate from the wild, mostly for garden soil and related gardening products, though the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association, unsurprisingly, disagrees. It would therefore be interesting to produce my own, I guess, though 1) I doubt the husband would permit me to build a sphagnum bog in the basement and 2) even if I did, I'm guessing proper habitat reproduction would require a fair amount of energy, which might negate the environmental benefits of having a home bog. Though I'd get to tell people I had a sphagnum bog in my home, which gives coolness points³ which would partly negate the increased energy usage, in the sense that I'd mind less about destroying the environment if everybody thought I was cool.

But whatever. The sphagnum sprouts are kinda neat-looking. I'll probably try to keep the stuff going in the cup after I take out the Aglaonema,⁴ just to see what it decides to do next. I mean, why wouldn't you?

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¹ Not sure of the exact date. The first Aglaonema seed I started was in December, but this is the second one. The first was planted in vermiculite, and hasn't done anything yet. So we may be looking at a germination time of around 8 weeks, give or take, depending on exactly when the second seed was started. There's a third seed as well, currently still on the plant, though the berry is starting to shrivel up a little so I should probably hurry up and do something about that.
² Wikipedia explains the difference in terms thusly: "sphagnum" is the live organism that grows on top of the bog; "sphagnum peat" is the decaying old growth underneath. It then becomes "peat moss" after decaying, compacting, and being packaged up.
³ Fine. Eccentricity points, then.
⁴ (Which will probably be whenever the Aglaonema hits the top of the saran wrap.)

Unfinished business: various

Excoecaria cochinchinensis.
I asked the question earlier, whether Excoecaria cochinchinensis (Chinese croton) is particularly susceptible to spider mites, like its namesake Codiaeum variegatum (croton). The answer is a pretty emphatic yes, as my plant somehow managed to attract an advanced mite civilization (They were already making steam engines!) despite not having any mites visible on the adjacent plants.

I figure I'm pretty committed to keeping the Excoecaria I have, for however long that lasts, but I won't buy another one.

The moral, I guess, is: don't buy any plant that's called a croton, whatever adjectives are in front of the word.

Dischidia ruscifolia.
Y'all didn't know that this was a question, because I didn't mention it (aside from a glancing reference at the end of this post), but I've been wondering for a while whether Dischidia ruscifolia was easy to propagate. I sent cuttings to a reader last summer, and s/he said yeah, piece of cake, just stuck them in water when they arrived and potted them up when they had roots, but I hadn't tried it for myself.

Well. I've tried it now, and if anything s/he overstates the difficulty: there were short roots visible within a week. I didn't bother letting them get longer; I figure anything that starts rooting in water that easily will root in soil even easier. I am now, as I said in the post, fond of D. ruscifolia at least on principle, and maybe even in actuality. It's impossible for me not to like a plant that causes no problems and propagates well.

Hatiora NOID.
The Hatiora NOID from this post, which shattered on me, and then flowered once while dying, is apparently not done for yet: I started four pots of shattered pieces of the plant, and all four have at least one rooted fragment growing in them now. It's still a serious decline from how it looked when it first got here (above), but at least I managed to salvage something:


It's possible that this is just setting me up for an endless cycle of shattering and regrowth, and I'd be better off if the plant had just died and been done with it, but until the plant demonstrates otherwise, I'm going to interpret this as an apology.

Ananas lucidus.
A very, very long time ago, I saw an Ananas lucidus for sale at the ex-job, which I found very, very appealing. I wanted it, but I didn't have any place to put something that big, and I think they wanted some completely ridiculous amount of money for it, like $50ish. So I told myself no, ignored my piteous cries and foot-stomping tantrums, and kept my fingers crossed that 1) they wouldn't all sell, 2) the unsold plants would eventually begin to offset, and 3) someone at the ex-job would separate off the offsets and sell them in a more manageable size and price.

Well, all of these things happened, though I'm afraid my crossed fingers are permanently deformed: I had to wait two years. But as of January, I now have one of my own. It's a little green, because they had it in too dark of a spot for most of the time it was there, but it's been coloring up again since I stuck it under a light:


Now that it's here, of course, I'm remembering how large they get, and questioning my judgment. But. You know. I'm always questioning my judgment.


Last, I am pleased to announce that I have finally been successful at germinating Schlumbergera seeds, following one failed attempt. The only thing I did differently was, I let the seeds dry out overnight after I separated them from the fruit pulp; in the first attempt, I planted them immediately.

It took longer than I was expecting -- for some reason I was thinking they were supposed to germinate almost immediately, but instead, I didn't notice seedlings until 5 March, sixteen days after sowing. In fact, it took them so long that I'd already written this part of the post bemoaning my inability to sow Schlumbergeras from seed, and having a sour-grapes reaction ("Like I need hundreds of Schlumbergera seedlings anyway -- I already have hundreds of Anthuriums, and it's not like the house is that big.") to my failure.

So now we have an interesting problem, which is that the Schlumbergera seedlings are supposed to be uncovered once they start to develop, and the Anthurium seedlings seem to do better if they have the higher humidity of an enclosed container, but they're both in the same container, and both are too small to withstand transplanting. Odds are, I'll let them fight it out and hope that one or the other grows fast enough to transplant. I have plenty of Schlumbergera fruits left, after all. And it really is true that I should probably focus on one genus or the other.

This isn't even all the seed-sprouting news I've got, but I have to leave something for later posts.

Other: tentative sell/trade list

Just calling your attention to the first version of the 2012 availability list, titled "Likely sell/trade offerings (2012)" and linked above, just under the header photo. I expect it to go through a lot of changes before I'm ready to begin sending things out (mostly additions for the next month or so, followed by a rapid flurry of subtractions as I realize that some of the plants aren't working out as well as I thought they would), and there are presently no photos or prices, but I thought some of you might be interested in an advance peek anyway.

Random plant event: Crassula perfoliata var. falcata

Crassulas and I do not work well together, as a rule. My Crassula ovatas get spots of fungus on them, the Crassula arborescens barely grows (and what growth it has is disproportionately small, and it drops leaves a lot besides), Crassula rupestris (or maybe C. perforata) lived for years without ever growing a root, and Crassula muscosa just dies over and over.

They're all my fault, to some degree or another: the C. ovata problems are likely because the way I water -- in the tub, with a shower head -- makes it impossible to avoid getting water on the leaves; I suspect the C. muscosas weren't solidly rooted when I bought them;¹ the C. arborescens is likely not getting enough light. But still. This seems like a lot of problems to be having, for a genus that's supposed to be easy.

Crassula perfoliata var. falcata² has been the exception, so far: no fungus, it has roots, it grows, the new growth looks like the old growth, etc. It's never even had a setback, in the almost two years it's lived here (I got it in June 2010).³ On the other hand, I was getting a little nervous, watching it get taller and taller: what was the end game here? How much taller can it get before something . . . happens? And what something will that be? Is it going to tip over? Branch? Bloom? Rot?

And now I have an answer:


That's a teeny-tiny offset (branch? Is there a technical difference?), beginning to grow from the base of the plant. So not only does it have no immediate plans to die, but it's actually interested in expanding. Nice to know. Here's a photo that shows a bit more context:


-

¹ There's a good chance that this could have been overcome if I'd had a nice south window to put it in, but there's very, very little south-facing space here, and much of what there is is blocked for some of the day by our neighbors' house.
² This plant is still better known in the horticultural world as C. falcata. I'm basing the ID off of information from The Timber Press Guide to Succulent Plants of the World (Fred Dortort), confirmed by Plant List.
³ In fairness to my other Crassulas, C. perforata var. falcata has one of the rare and coveted south-window spots. So it has unfair advantages.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum NOID

*sigh* Orchids just make me sad now.

Pretty rocking picture, though, if I do say so myself.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

In the basement. The photo is somewhat misleading, because it implies that the shelves on the right side of the photo are just as full of plants as the shelves on the left: in actuality, about 1/2 of the space on the right shelves is still empty, because I don't have it lit yet. But soon.

Random plant event: Senecio mikanioides

I've never tried growing Senecio mikanioides, indoors or out, but I do occasionally see people talking about doing so (mostly in books). The flowers aren't anything special to look at --


-- but I was struck by the fragrance, which was fairly strong and pleasant. (If memory serves, it was in the jasmine / gardenia neighborhood, but this was a while ago, so I may be misremembering. Or mis-describing.) The fragrance is honored by the new name, Delairea odorata: as I have just gotten it into my head that it's spelled mikanioides instead of mikanoides, I'm not going to give the old name up yet. (C'mon, taxonomists -- meet me halfway at least, eh?)

It's also an invasive species in places where winters are mild. Apparently it's particularly bad in California and Australia. (One source says Montana as well, which confuses me a bit, since Montana is not known for balmy winters.) It doesn't appear to be a serious problem elsewhere so far, though the Mediterranean coast, the Atlantic coast of the U.S., southeast England, and similar climates ought to keep a look out. I don't see the appeal of the foliage anyway:


But I could understand being tempted by the flowers' fragrance, I suppose. Anybody out there ever grown it indoors? Is it easy to keep alive and/or bring into flower? Would I have to have direct sun? I can't buy the plant in the photo, for . . . reasons, but I see it for sale once in a while around here in the spring, so if I should get one, now's the time to tell me.

If it helps with the recommendation: I've had a Senecio macroglossus for quite a while and have decided that it's probably not worth my time, even if it doesn't actually die.