Pretty picture: Rhyncholaelia digbyana

BEST LITTLE GREENHOUSE IN TEXAS p. 6

INT. GREENHOUSE - DAY

Many customers milling around in the garden center's greenhouse. The sound of approaching rapid footsteps. MR. SUBJUNCTIVE runs into the room from the left, breathless, and stops in front of a plant.

MR. SUBJUNCTIVE (shouting)
Look! An orchid!¹

The CROWD OF SHOPPERS shuffles toward the indicated flower.
CROWD OF SHOPPERS
(murmuring) Oh my gosh, it sure is, wow how pretty, Judy will you look at that, etc.
MR. SUBJUNCTIVE looks behind himself, then resumes running and exits room to the right.

WOMAN #1
Who was that?

WOMAN #2
I didn't get a good look. Was that Mr. Subjunctive?
POLICE enter from left, running, followed by 12-year-old JIMMY, on a bicycle.

ADULT JIMMY (V. O.)
Later, of course, we found out that it didn't mean anything, that Mr. Subjunctive was just trying to jazz up the blog with a random snippet of drama because he didn't have anything interesting to say about Rhyncholaelia digbyana. But once word got around that Mrs. Carlson had just been found dead, buried under a pile of Cattleyas in her home, with spelling corrections written in black Sharpie on about half the tags,² things didn't look good for him. No wonder he ran.
CUT TO:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM

MR. SUBJUNCTIVE sits at table in room, alone, while CHIEF MARTINEZ and OFFICER SCHENKENBERG watch him through the one-way glass.

MARTINEZ
You get anything out of him?

SCHENKENBERG
He just said he was helping the old lady correct her plant tags day before yesterday and doesn't know anything. Then he started asking for a lawyer.

MARTINEZ
Correcting her plant tags? Does anybody actually give a shit about whether plants are identified correctly?

SCHENKENBERG
I don't know, Chief. Sounded fishy to me too. Should we get him his lawyer?

MARTINEZ
Ennh. Go ahead, but you don't have to hurry. Maybe we can get him to say something before the lawyer gets here.³
-

¹ (That I blogged about previously!)
² For the record, this plant was tagged correctly.
³ Obviously there would be more to the story than this, but let's pretend the rest of the script has been lost, 'cause I don't think I'll be able to write a complete script. And probably the story is all downhill from this point anyway. I didn't really plan anything out.

Cribplants, yo.

I've just become acquainted with gizoogle.net, a site which Snoop-Doggifies Google results and/or websites. What is Snoop-Doggification? Er. It's probably easiest to just show you.

Unfortunately, a lot of the formatting gets lost in the process, so the resulting blog doesn't look much like PATSP, but I was especially tickled to see what it did to the list of houseplant books from the first Missing From Retail list:

• Crockett, Jizzy Underwood. Crockettz Indoor Garden. Little, Brown n' Co., Boston MA / Toronto ON, 1978.
• Kramer, Jack. Da Illustrated Guide ta Flowerin Cribplants. Peerage Books, London, 1985.
• Powell, Charlez C. n' Dizzle M. Vining. Orthoz Complete Guide ta Successful Cribplants. Chevron Chemical Co., San Francisco CA, 1984.
• Stuckey, Maggie. Da Cribplant Encyclopedia. Doubledizzle Direct, Inc., Garden Citizzle NY, 1993.
• Griffith, Lynn P., Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: A Growerz Guide. Ball Publishing, Batavia IL, 1998.

I would absolutely buy a book about cribplants.

I would also totally buy a plant named Bizzlebergia nutans, especially if I saw it described like this:

Bizzlebergia nutans (biatchz tears) be a pimped out plant, as far as I be concerned -- it grows fast, propagates easily, is hard as fuck ta kill, n' produces short-lived but straight-up horny-ass flowers up in tha late fall n' winter.

Also Gizoogle is quite a bit more honest than I am when it comes to the Musa photo from this post. My original:

I don't know what specific botanical characteristics distinguish Musa from Ensete.

The gizoogled version:

I don't give a fuck what tha fuck specific botanical characteristics distinguish Musa from Ensete.¹

Mixed feelings about this overall. On the one hand, I was extremely entertained for a couple hours on Monday night, but then I felt bad, because the Snoop-Doggified² versions were so much better than my original writing. But I got better. How did I get over this? By running other people's blogs through Gizoogle, and seeing how much improved everybody else was too.

As you might imagine, new layers of meaning would be added to any post where Carol talks about her hoe collection at May Dreams Gardens, but I prefer the garden fairy posts. (The most recent one emerges from Gizoogle signed by "Violet Chronicpea Maydreams," who is the "chizzle scribe fo' tha garden fairies n' tha garden fairy whoz ass likes ta put rocks along tha edgez of tha raised bedz up in tha Vegetable Garden Cathedral.") And I find the garden bloggers' bloom day inspirational quote much improved as well:

Our thugged-out asses can have flowers nearly every last muthafuckin month of tha year.
~ Elizabeth Lawrence

Moving on, here's Garden Rant, on the topic of which Presidents have had the best record on environmental protection issues:

A few muthafuckin years back I posted bout the ten chronicest prezs up in U.S, history, accordin ta dis crib. Back then, tha dopest recent environmental record was owned by Bizzle Clinton. It still is. Clinton created 17 freshly smoked up nationistic monumentz (4.6 mazillion acrez of preservation³), extended protections fo' wetlandz n' old-growth forests, n' banned off-shore drillin yo.

(Oh, word, Adrian?)
And I love Kylee's (Our Little Acre) account of finding a monarch caterpillar in her garden in November, mostly because I am amused by the milkweed --> milkchronic substitution:

But da most thugged-out astonishin muthafuckin thang I found was a monarch caterpillar fo' realz. A tiny one. It was so small, itz a wonder I even noticed dat shit. Da milkchronic it was on was mostly yellow n' dyin yo, but did sheezy some fresh freshly smoked up growth all up in tha top. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. Still, tha cold temperatures n' latenizz of tha season have caused most of tha milkchronic ta lose they leaves n' they're left as bare stems standin sentinel up in tha garden.

By now I'm pretty sure you get it, and since it was kinda stupid in the first place, I'll stop providing examples. Investigate further on your own, if you're interested.

DISCLAIMER:
OBVIOUSLY, none of the people who were "quoted" for this post said anything like what Gizoogle claims they said, however amusing I find the idea that they might start. I didn't ask permission first, because I'm not clear where the line actually is here -- I'm not reproducing text from other blogs, and the whole point of the humor is the obviousness that the people "quoted" would never, ever say any of these things, so it's hard for me to imagine a scenario in which the original authors would suffer any kind of material or emotional loss. But, if you are Carol, Susan, or Kylee, and you're offended by this anyway, for whatever reason, just leave me a comment or send an e-mail and I'll take it down and replace your bit with something from Fairegarden. (And if Frances is offended, I'll keep moving on until I find three bloggers who aren't. There is no shortage of bloggers.) And I'm sorry I didn't ask first; I expected you either wouldn't care or would be amused.
FURTHERMORE, no offense was intended toward PATSP readers. (Though y'all, at least, have been warned about the language, so I'm not going to take it very seriously if you claim to have been offended.)
ADDITIONALLY, Mr. Subjunctive does not, ordinarily, condone the use of the word "bitches" or any of its derivatives in reference to female humans,⁴ but there's a world of difference between "make me a sandwich, you dumb bitch" and "What up, my biyatch?", and I think this is clearly much, much closer to the latter. Though I can apologize for that too, if it'd make anybody feel better.
Peace out.

-

¹ This is not true in the very strictest sense. I care, but only to the degree that it makes it easier for me to tell which I'm looking at. If the distinctions are all in how the flowers are arranged or the shape of the cell walls or something that's not obvious to the eye, then no, I really can't care.
² I am aware that he is trying to change his name to "Snoop Lion." Dat don't even make no mothafuckin sense though, so I ain't even hearin it.
³ (It's the "4.6 mazillion acrez of preservation" part that does it for me.)
⁴ (and he's even a little uncomfortable using it for female dogs, as far as that goes)

Pretty picture: Laeliocattleya Christian Starr 'Aloha'

The tag said "Laeliocattleya Christian Star 'Aloha.'" Which is of course wrong, though only barely: there should be two Rs in "Starr."

As errors go, this is minor. Doesn't change the pronunciation, and it'd be just as easy to find in most alphabetical databases, so I was prepared to forgive it.



However, the tag also said "C. baud[*]bec x Lc. Memoria Robert Strait," where the [*] part is something that was either indecipherable or covered up by a leaf or something. Which is a problem, because it's not Cattleya baud[e]bec, a species; it's Cattleya Caudebec, a grex. And that is just careless.

Since spelling the cross out wasn't actually necessary, and a determined searcher could still find all this out easily enough from the information provided, though, I'll count it as only half-wrong.

Why not? Tis the season! Holiday spirit of forgiveness and everything!

wrong tags: 8.5
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 11

For what it's worth, I sort of like what the flower's attempting to do here, though I wish it didn't have quite as many stray spots of purple, and restricted the color to the veins a bit better. Coordinates well with the current blog background, though. I'll give it a thumbs-up. Tidings of comfort and joy, yo.

List: Missing From Retail, Part 1 of 5

I've mentioned this phenomenon before, in the profile for Pandanus spp. The reason it's on my mind again is, I bought a used houseplant book at a consignment store a few weeks ago, and it's got a lot of plants in there I'd never even heard of, which reminded me that I'd wanted to talk about this.

Since these are all plants I've never or rarely seen before, I don't have photos for a lot of them. When I have one, I've used my own photo; otherwise, I've resorted to Wikimedia Commons or just gone without.

I am especially interested in speculation about why I don't see them for sale as houseplants, so if you see one on this list that you've grown and think you might have insight, leave a comment. (Some possible explanations: small window of attractiveness, poorly adapted to indoor conditions, low tolerance for shipping, prohibitively expensive to produce because of slow growth, replaced by a better plant with similar qualities.)

The five books I'm using are:

Crockett, James Underwood. Crockett's Indoor Garden. Little, Brown and Co., Boston MA / Toronto ON, 1978.
Kramer, Jack. The Illustrated Guide to Flowering Houseplants. Peerage Books, London, 1985.
Powell, Charles C. and Donald M. Vining. Ortho's Complete Guide to Successful Houseplants. Chevron Chemical Co., San Francisco CA, 1984.
Stuckey, Maggie. The Houseplant Encyclopedia. Doubleday Direct, Inc., Garden City NY, 1993.
Griffith, Lynn P., Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide. Ball Publishing, Batavia IL, 1998.

This will be a five-part post, eventually. (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5)

Achimenes erecta. Photo by Andel Früh, from Wikimedia Commons.
I know there are gesneriad enthusiasts out there who grow Achimenes cvv. (Cupid's bower, hot water plant) indoors, but it appears that you can't grow them until you've grown several other gesneriads first. It seems obvious enough that people would buy them in stores if they saw them for sale, so the issue has to be one of production (not cost-effective to propagate), distribution (don't ship well), or long-term prospects (don't remain attractive long enough in stores for retailers to make any money off of them). No idea which, but I bet there are readers who'll have a guess.


Allamanda cathartica 'Williamsii.' (My picture.)
Allamanda cathartica (golden trumpet) is mentioned in a few of the books, and I've seen them for sale intermittently at the ex-job, but I'm not aware of anyone actually growing one indoors, nor have I ever tried it myself. My guess, based on the behavior of the ones at the ex-job, is that they are probably too fussy and demanding to do well outside of a greenhouse.

Anguloa clowesii. Photo by Orchi, from Wikimedia Commons.
I had never even heard of Anguloa spp. (tulip orchid) before I bought the Kramer book, but they sound fucking perfect, as orchids go. Large green leaves, fragrant blooms (not sure about A. clowesii above, but wikiposedly some or most Anguloa species have cinnamon-scented flowers), "easy to bring into bloom indoors,"¹ etc. And the hybrids are, if anything, even more awesome (check the photo of Anguloa x ruckeri, here). So something must be horribly wrong with them. But what? What could be that terrible? We may never know.


Aspidistra elatior. (My photo.)
I totally get why Aspidistra elatior (cast-iron plant) isn't more widely available: I haven't been happy with mine. All the books go on and on about what an easy plant Aspidistra is, and how if you absolutely can't grow anything else at all, you can grow a cast-iron plant, but: mine has had spider mites a few times, the leaf tips have burnt back pretty severely in the last year or so (in the worst cases, about 1/3 of the leaf is dead), now it has scale, and it doesn't seem to be growing at all. Seriously, I don't know when the last time it produced a new leaf was, but it's been at least a year. And of course when I check the books to see what I've done wrong, all they do is reassure me that it's the world's easiest plant and there's no possible way it could go wrong, which is UNHELPFUL. Add to that the fact that even in good conditions, they're apparently still pretty slow, and neither the leaves nor the flowers are especially flashy, and it's clear why a tropical plant grower might not want to invest in producing them.

That said, they're nevertheless available around here, very occasionally. We had them once or twice at the ex-job, and I've seen them at a couple other places in the area, though only once for each place. We eventually stopped bringing them in at the ex-job, because they always got spider mites right away, plus they were a lot more expensive than similarly-sized plants of other genera, because of the slow growth. So it was one of those deals where it was either going to sell in the first fifteen minutes off the truck, or it was going to get spider mites and find itself shoved under a table until somebody decided it was ugly enough to discard.

Asplenium bulbiferum. Photo by Daderot, from Wikimedia Commons, and is in public domain.
Asplenium bulbiferum (hen and chicken fern, mother spleenwort) seems to have lost a lot of popularity in recent decades. I don't know anything about what it's like to grow A. bulbiferum specifically (I have a vague memory of being told once by somebody that it was difficult), but if it's anything like the other Aspleniums I've attempted,² that's just as well.

I've never seen one for sale. A likely explanation is that it was probably never that commercially viable: plants that self-propagate easily tend to get passed from person to person through informal sales or trades, instead of being bought and sold, and A. bulbiferum produces tiny rootable plantlets at the tips of the fronds.

Aucuba japonica. Photo credit: Digigalos at Wikimedia Commons. Size-adjusted.
Aucuba japonica (gold-dust plant) is the biggest mystery on this list. Four out of the five books mention it, but I have never seen one in person, for sale or not. Nor have I seen any indication that it's an especially problematic plant, either. It's possible that it's just been made redundant by plants like Dracaena surculosa and Codiaeum variegatum 'Gold Dust,' though if that's the case, I'm actually more interested in growing it myself, because I haven't been especially happy with either of those.

Unknown bamboo species. Photo by Tom at The Midwestern Jungle; used by permission. Original photo here.
Real bamboos³ (Bambusa, Chimonobambusa, Phyllostachys, Pleioblastus, Sasaella, and others) get mentioned occasionally in books, and I know at least one blogger who has had a terrifyingly tall real bamboo in his home. That said, I've only ever actually seen one for sale, Pogonantherum paniceum, which was an unsatisfactory experience for me and the plant both. The main obstacle seems to be that they're difficult: this site says that as a group, they need high light, high humidity, and perfectly-timed water. (Certain individual species may vary from the above.) I also understand they're inclined to spider mites, though my Pogonantherum never got old enough to catch spider mites.

Billbergia nutans. (My photo.)
Billbergias seem to be showing up around here a lot more often in the last couple years. We could go to the ex-job and pick me up a Billbergia 'Hallelujah' or 'Borracho' right this second, if necessary. This is still a pretty recent development, though, and as far as I can recall, those are the only two I've seen being sold.

Billbergia nutans (queen's tears) is a great plant, as far as I'm concerned -- it grows fast, propagates easily, is difficult to kill, and produces short-lived but really interesting flowers in the late fall and winter. Unfortunately, all of those characteristics also make it a non-starter, pretty much, in retail. Growing fast and propagating easily means that anybody who has one can have as many as they want (not a particularly collectible plant, from a retail perspective); being difficult to kill means that once you have one, you're likely to continue having one (can't sell replacement plants), and the short-lived flowers means that they're only really appealing to consumers for like twenty minutes out of every year and the rest of the time they just look like a strange big coarse grass.

The other Billbergias are similar, in that they seem to be easy to grow and propagate, though they're colorful enough that we might see them more often as foliage plants in the future. If you do see one for sale: highly recommended.

Brunfelsia pauciflora. Photo by Carl E. Lewis at Wikimedia Commons. Cropped, color adjustment.
Brunfelsia pauciflora (yesterday, today, and tomorrow) is another that's constantly mentioned in the books but that I've never seen for sale. (Or, possibly, I've seen it for sale but not recognized it as such.) They do apparently get kind of big, and the plant doesn't seem especially interesting outside of the flowers, so I could see favoring production of other plants, but the flowering period is apparently long, and obviously people found them worth growing indoors at some point, if all the books keep including them. I'm probably not actually interested in growing it myself, but I would like to know why I've never had the option.

Calceolaria cv. Photo © TopTropicals.com, used in compliance with the non-commercial use guidelines on this page.
I have only seen Calceolaria cvv. (pocketbook flower) being sold at the ex-job, and then only once or twice. The page at Top Tropicals hints at some reasons why this might be the case: they're annuals, they prefer cool temperatures, they're prone to stem rot. If this is in fact the case, then the question about Calceolaria is not, "why don't growers produce them anymore?" but instead "why did houseplant books ever include something so ill-suited to indoor culture in the first place?"

This particular topic doesn't lend itself well to recommendations, but in a perfect world, Anguloa spp. would be easy to grow. (In the actual world, Billbergia are.)


Not pictured:

• Acalypha wilkesiana (copperleaf): sometimes available here as an outdoor annual.
• Acorus spp. (sweet flag): sometimes available as an outdoor annual.
• Aerides spp./cvv. (cat's tail orchid): have never seen.
• Angraecum spp./cvv. (comet orchid): have never seen.
• Astrophytum myriostigma (bishop's cap): seen occasionally, but when I've actually wanted to buy one, they're nowhere to be found.
• Begonia masoniana (iron cross begonia): have seen once.
• Buxus spp. (boxwood): I have a dim recollection of seeing these sold for outdoor use, but I've never seen one sold as a houseplant. Nor, frankly, do I know why anybody would want one as a houseplant: they're pretty plain-looking. They're in all the books anyway, though.

Are any of these widely available where you live? Can you shed any light on why I don't see them in the stores? Are there plants I chatter about at PATSP all the time that you've never seen for sale? Which ones? Etc.

-

¹ Sure, this is almost certainly a lie, because orchids are evil and stupid.^a But still, that's the claim.
^aOh yeah. I went there.
² (A. nidus and A. antiquum)
³ (The "lucky bamboo" in stores is Dracaena sanderiana, and is neither lucky nor bamboo.)

And sometimes gardening is like this.

So the husband and I watched Mommie Dearest on Netflix Thursday night (new Thanksgiving tradition? Maybe!), and I found that this particular scene really speaks to me.



Although I didn't have that name for it until Thursday night, there have been many moments during the Scalepocalypse when I was feeling "Husband! Bring me the ax!"

Random plant event: Euphorbia milii hybrid

I've only had this since May, but somehow it seems like a lot longer. When I got it, as an unrooted cutting, it had a pair of flowers on it but no leaves; once the flowers dropped, it started growing leaves like crazy, but no flowers. I guess I must have given it a particularly strong dose of fertilizer a week or two ago, because suddenly it's regrowing flowers.

The original flowers were a mix of red and yellow, so I'm guessing the plant is telling me that it would like stronger light. Still, though. It's a really nice yellow. I'm not complaining.

Pretty picture: Phragmipedium Peruflora's Cirila Alca

Happy Thanksgiving (where legally and culturally applicable)!

I have a note on this one saying "full-size pic is AMAZING." I checked it out, and -- I'm right. It's a pretty good photo. So check that out if you are so inclined.



The ancestry on this one is Phrag. kovachii x Phrag. dalessandroi, if you care about such things. Kovachii is more or less this color (a little more purple than this), with a weird shape that I can't really describe except to note that the word that comes to mind is "over-inflated." Dalessandroi gives the cross the pointier, more compact shape, but only slightly influences the color. Or at least that's how it looks from Google.

Grab Bag

Various mostly-seasonal items today, just 'cause.

Not quite a lawn ornament, technically, because it's not intended to be permanent (the season and amount of deterioriation suggest a Halloween decoration), but close enough. More people should have monsters in their yard. I think it would be good for everybody. (Especially the monster-facsimile-production industry.)

Speaking of monsters: it's poinsettia time again. Ugh.

The previously-mentioned Cryptbergia x rubra flowers have begun to open. I'm underwhelmed. The color isn't even as strong as on Billbergia nutans: both the green and the blue are washed-out. (Admittedly, this is also not a great photo, but the flowers are paler in reality than I was expecting.)

Speaking of the Billbergia nutans -- which has gotten enormous since it arrived two and a half years ago -- it has a flower spike developing on it. I'd really like for it to produce more than one of those at a time, for photographic purposes, but I suppose there's still time.

I have previously reported being unable to smell Freesias. I could smell this particular batch, though. To me, they smelled like Froot Loops, which may or may not be standard. (One person described the smell that way in the previous Freesia post, so . . . possibly.) There may also have been interference from other flowers on the table -- there were tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa) and cyclamen and I'm not sure what all else. But so I may not be genetically incapable of smelling Freesia after all. Which I guess is a good thing.

It may not be easy to see from the picture, but what we have here is an artificial tree, constructed around a mechanism that blows tiny styrofoam balls up into the air above the tree, so that they fall down on it like snow. Some collect in the branches, some stick to ornaments via static electricity, and some fall down through the tree to the base, where a pump sucks them in and blows them back up through the tube again. I would have loved the fuck out of this when I was a kid. I bet it's also super-entertaining for households containing static-prone black cats that like to climb things.

The down side: they're expensive. Just the mechanism alone is $200, and then you have to buy a fake tree to cover up the mechanism. It also requires a large floor area, so all the styrofoam balls can be collected (though I bet you some of them find their way under the couch regardless). And of course there's the part where it's hard to decide whether it's cool, or kitschy, or so kitschy that it loops around and meets cool from the other side. I mean, tiny non-biodegradable styrofoam balls pretending to be snow, being propelled into the air by an electric motor that probably ultimately gets its energy from burning coal, so they can fall on non-biodegradable plastic pretending to be a tree! It's so early-21st-century!

Kitsch or not, I want, like, five of them, so I can point them all at one another and have a tiny styrofoam blizzard down in the basement whenever I want. (I suppose it would have to go next to the peat bog.) Anybody who wants to donate $1000 to make this possible should do so via the donation button at top right. I promise to take lots of pictures.

Pretty pictures: Phalaenopsis Brother Goldstone

I guess I'm feeling better again. That was unpleasant. Fortunately, I don't have to jump right into the blog again right away, 'cause it's time for another orchid.


Ancestry, as far as I can determine: Phalaenopsis Fortune Buddha x P. amboinensis.


I like this, actually. It's neat. Especially by Phalaenopsis standards.

P. amboinensis is pretty cool all by itself, by the way. You should google it.

The Scalepocalypse 2012 update:

Ardisia elliptica (15 Nov 2012, basement) -- washed by hand with soapy water and paper towel, rinsed, neemed again.
Cyrtomium falcatum (15 Nov 2012, basement) -- discarded. It hadn't been doing well over the last couple years anyway. Possibly overpotted.
Podocarpus macrophyllus (15 Nov 2012, basement) -- neemed. So much for not being mad at it.
Ficus elastica 'Tineke' or similar cv. (15 Nov 2012, basement) -- washed by hand, rinsed, neemed.

So basically two steps forward, two steps back.¹ They're staying confined to the basement as far as I can tell, which is good, and I haven't seen any on the east side of the basement in a very long time, so maybe I only have to get the west side clean and then the nightmare will be over.

Or, maybe they're still on the east side and I just haven't been looking closely enough. Or maybe they truly are confined to the west, but will migrate east as soon as they sense that I'm trying to get rid of them. Maybe they're scale from an alternate universe, and will come and go as they please through dimensional rifts that open up among the Begonias. It will tell you something about my present state of mind that all three of these options seem equally plausible.

-

¹ If you just had the thought "We come together 'cause opposites attract," congratulations! You and I are approximately the same age!

Sick Day / Callisia gentlei

Not feeling well on Thursday. Here are two pictures of a plant that is probably Callisia gentlei.

Pretty picture: Cochlioda Louis Posey

The tag on this one said, "Cochlioda 'Louis Posey' now ONC." I don't know what that means, exactly: my first thought was that they were saying that Cochlioda has been renamed Oncidium, but that appears to be one of the few things in the orchid world that isn't changing at the moment. As far as I could determine, Cochlioda is still a legitimate genus. So . . . no idea what the intent of the tagger was here, but at least they gave us a tag, and the ID appears to be correct, so there's that.



Cochlioda. Louis Posey is a hybrid of Cda. noezliana and Cda. sanguinea.

List: Houseplants That Have Red Flowers

The usual disclaimers apply, but let's run through them again just to make sure we're all on the same page:

1) This is not an exhaustive list of red-flowering houseplants; I'm not sure it's even possible to come up with an exhaustive list of red-flowering houseplants. And if it were possible, it probably wouldn't be desirable. This is plenty long as it is.

2) Also, many of the plants on the list are available in multiple cultivars, not all of which necessarily bloom red.

3) I'm approaching these lists from an interior-decorating standpoint, not a botanical one. If the plant has showy red bracts with tiny yellow true flowers, I'm counting it as a red-bloomer, because that's how most people would think of it.

4) As there are no sharp dividing lines between "red," "orange," "pink," and "purple," you may disagree with me about the redness of some of the flowers mentioned here. Which if it's all the same to you, I'm going to see that as more your problem than it is mine.

5) In some cases, I'm going wholly or partly by the results from Google image search for the plants in question. Since people sometimes post misidentified pictures, there is a small chance that some of the plants listed, especially more obscure plants, may be included in error.

Aeschynanthus lobbianus.

Clerodendrum x speciosum. (C. splendens x C. thomsoniae)

Cyclamen persicum NOID.

Episcia 'Silver Skies.'

Hatiora (formerly Rhipsalidopsis) NOID.

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis.

Kalanchoe blossfeldiana NOID.

Neoregelia 'Maria.'

Parodia microsperma. Some other Parodias have red flowers as well, though yellow is more typical.

Tillandsia ionantha. Some other Tillandsias have either red flowers (T. funckiana, T. latifolia) or red bracts (T. juncea, T. abdita, T. vinalesensis, T. boliviensis, T. tenuifolia, T. brachycaulos, T. queroensis, T. leonamiana).
This is a tough list to do recommends / anti-recommends for: for all of these, I either have 1) no experience, 2) exclusively bad experiences, or 3) very mixed experiences. If forced to come up with something, though, I would reluctantly recommend Aeschynanthus, Episcia, and Neoregelia.

My personal experience with Aeschynanthus lobbianus was mostly negative, but I don't think it was the plant's fault: I should have kept up better with the watering. Other Aeschynanthus species have done well for me, enough so that I'd feel comfortable recommending them to other people. The main obstacles to cultivation are light (they need at least bright indirect light, and I'd highly recommend at least some direct sun) and temperature (always above 60F/16C).

I enjoy Episcias, but varieties either tend to do really well for me ('Coco,' 'Suomi,' several NOIDs, 'Faded Jade,' 'Raspberry Parade') or really poorly ('Pink Acajou,' 'Kempenfest,' 'Burning Embers'), without much of a middle ground. 'Silver Skies' is one of the good ones, though it's a bit slower than the others, and stays smaller. Main obstacles to cultivation: temperature (always at least 60F/16C), water (don't let them dry out to the point of wilting) and humidity (higher is better).

I was a huge fan of Neoregelia at one point a few years back; I've cooled off on them somewhat since then, for various reasons, but they're perfectly fine plants if you have the space for them and don't mind getting caught on their sharp marginal spines occasionally. Biggest obstacle: light (at least bright indirect, with some direct sun strongly recommended).

For the anti-recommend, I guess I'll go with Hibiscus, though Cyclamen and Kalanchoe were really close. They all can be grown indoors successfully, but none are particularly well-suited to it. Cyclamen goes in and out of dormancy at erratic intervals and is easily overwatered as a result; Kalanchoe virtually always goes downhill once purchased, because it needs extremely bright light.

Hibiscus has both problems: it defoliates in the winter, to a greater or lesser degree depending on how it's treated, and it's very difficult to rebloom in the house if you don't have a lot of light. (Though it's easier than Kalanchoe.) Hibiscus has one problem that the other two don't, though, which is that they're incredibly appealing to pests. At work, we were always wrestling with spider mites, whitefly, and aphids; I've also had spider mites on plants at home. Hibiscus are gorgeous, obviously, but it's just not worth the hassle to bring them inside for the winter. People with huge windows or small plant collections might find Hibiscus more rewarding than I do.


Not pictured:

• Some Abutilon cvv.
• Acalypha reptans. (pinkish-red)
• Acalypha wilkesiana. (not particularly ornamental; pink-red; small)
• Some Adenium cvv.
• Some Aechmea spp./cvv. (bracts)
• Ananas comosus. (bracts; pink-red; true flowers are blue-purple)
• Some Anthurium hybrids are true red.
• Ascocenda Sweet Pea 'Ruby.' (pinkish red)
• Austrocylindropuntia subulata. (variable, ranges from orange-red to pink; usually closer to pink)
• Some Begonia cvv. (usually more pink or pink-red, though Reigers, wax, and tuberous begonias can all have true red flowers)
• Some Billbergia spp./cvv. have flower stalks with red bracts, though pink is more common. The true flowers are generally some combination of blue, green, and white.
• Some Bougainvillea cvv.
• Bryophyllum daigremontianum.
• Bryophyllum tubiflorum. (orange-red)
• Calliandra emarginata. (pink-red; possibly not actually a houseplant)
• A few orchids in the Cattleya alliance produce flowers that are red to some degree or another; two of the more striking examples are Laeliocattleya Rojo x Cattleya aurantiaca (picture) and Lyonara cv. (Schomburgkia undulata x Sophrolaeliocattleya Rojo) (picture)
• Clerodendrum thomsoniae. (white bracts / red flowers)
• Some Columnea cvv./spp. might qualify, though usually they're more orange or orange-red than red.
• Crassula falcata.
• Dischidia pectinoides. (true red to pink-red; small)
• Echeveria coccinea (red or orange-red; see post) and some other Echeveria cvv. (They're usually pink or orange-pink with a yellow rim/tip, though.)
• Epidendrum Max Valley (orange-red) and some other Epidendrum cvv.
• Some Epiphyllum cvv.
• Some Euphorbia milii cvv.
• Some Euphorbia pulcherrima cvv., though I would never recommend that anybody get a Euphorbia pulcherrima.
• Some Ferocactus spp./cvv.
• Graptopetalum bellum. (pink-red; I don't know if this is cultivated often enough to count for the list)
• Graptopetalum pentandrum var. superbum. (also sometimes called G. superbum; brick red at petal tips)
• Several Guzmania cvv. have red, purple-red, or orange-red bracts.
• Some Heliconia spp./cvv., though I'm not sure Heliconia should qualify as houseplants.
• The spathe of Homalomena 'Perma Press' is red (link). It's arguably not a houseplant either (too big), even though I'm growing it as one.
• Hoya DS-70. (variable: dark red, orange-red, pink, pink-red)
• Hoya polyneura. (dark red / pink-red / purple-red, with white)
• Hoya pubicalyx. (dark red)
• Several Huernia species have red flowers to some degree or another, usually very dark maroon or burgundy. These include: Huernia aspera (dark red), Huernia confusa (dark red), Huernia guttata (dark red), Huernia insigniflora (large red annulus¹ on peach petals), Huernia keniensis (flowers are white or pale yellow with a very dark red interior), Huernia leachii (dark red stripes on pale yellow), Huernia oculata (very, very dark red petals around a central bright white circle; I didn't know about it before this post, but now I want one really badly), Huernia piercii (dark red spots on white), Huernia plowesii (dark red annulus with dark red spots elsewhere), Huernia procumbens (dark red), Huernia schneideriana (dark red), Huernia transvaalensis (dark red annulus), Huernia zebrina (usually dark red annulus, plus dark red stripes on yellow petals, but color varies).
• Justicia carnea (true red) and Justicia spicigera (orange-red). Some Justicia species are grown as houseplants, though I don't know whether J. carnea or J. spicigera are among them to a meaningful degree.
• Kalanchoe tomentosa flowers are hard to describe. See the pictures at this link.
• Some (most?) Kohleria cvv.
• Loropetalum chinensis? (pink-red; uncertain about its suitability as a houseplant)
• Some Mammillaria spp. have pink-red flowers, though they're typically much closer to pink than to red.
• Some Mandevilla cvv. (link)
• Masdevallia schlimii (color varies in photos: brick red, dark orange-red, dark purple-red)
• Maxillaria tenuifolia maybe barely qualifies as red. (dark red-brown)
• Some Miltoniopsis cvv., arguably. (tend to be more pink-red or purple-red than true red)
• Some Musa spp. have some red in their inflorescences, though it isn't usually the main color. Ensete ventricosum has an inflorescence which is primarily dark red.
• The central leaves of several Neoregelias will flush red at the center when blooming, though the actual flowers are usually lavender or blue-purple.
• Some Nerium oleander cvv. (pink-red; suitability as a houseplant is questionable)
• Some orchids in the Oncidium alliance, though there doesn't seem to be a lot of true red: most lean toward either brown or pink. Some of the closer ones: Burrageara Nelly Isler (link; pinkish), Miltassia Charles M. Fitch x Odontocidium Black Beauty link; very dark red), Vuylstekeara Aloha Sparks 'Ruby Eyes' (link; washed-out and orange-red), Wilsonara Lisa Devos (link; brick red and pink), Oncidium Sharry Baby (link; dark red), Miltonidium Bartley Schwartz 'Highlander' (link; dark pink-red)
• A few Opuntia spp./cvv. flowers are red or orange-red, including O. aciculata and O. bergeriana. O. 'Claude Arno' is a dark violet-red.
• Pachira aquatica is not likely to bloom indoors, but the flower has yellow reflexed petals with lots of long, white, red-tipped stamens. You wouldn't look at it and say "now there's a red flower," but there's definitely quite a bit of red involved.
• At least one Pachyphytum sp. or cv. has flowers with dark red interiors, though I don't know which one and it doesn't appear to be typical for the genus.
• Pachypodium baronii has solid-colored, true red flowers; P. namaquanum has yellow flowers with petals that don't open very wide and are red-brown at the tips. All other Pachypodium spp., including the most commonly-grown ones, have white, yellow, or pink flowers.
• A few Pachyveria hybrids have flowers that look reddish in pictures, though pink, yellow, and green are more common.
• Phragmipedium orchids get close to true red once in a while. Closest two I've personally run into were Phragmipedium Sargent Eric 'Timberlane' (pretty true red; a bit orangey) and Phragmipedium Fox Valley 'Fireball' (pretty close to true red, a little pinkish).
• Pedilanthus tithymaloides. (unlikely to bloom indoors)
• Some Pelargonium x hortorum cvv. are true red or dark red.
• Pereskia bleo are either orange-red or red, according to photos; Pereskia flowers are more typically pink/lavender. I don't know P. bleo's suitability for indoor culture, though at least one Pereskia (P. aculeata) does well indoors.
• A few Phalaenopsis orchids tend toward something like red, though I have yet to see any true red phals.
• A handful of Philodendrons produce inflorescences with solid red spathes; the most commonly sold is P. 'Moonlight,' but the species P. eichleri also does. The spathes of P. martianum (aka P. cannifolium) are white with a dark red base.
• A few Pinguicula spp. have true-red flowers, most prominently P. laueana. Maybe also P. caryophyllacea?
• Some Rhododendron cvv. are brilliant true red, though I would argue that they're not houseplants.
• Some Saintpaulia cvv. are dark red or pink-red; I have yet to see true red.
• Salvia elegans.
• Schefflera actinophylla. (dark red, very unlikely indoors)
• Several Schlumbergera cvv. are vivdly red.
• Sedum burrito. (rare; variously pink, coral, or pink-red)
• Sedum morganianum. (rare; photographs show true red, red-orange, dull red, dark red)
• Sempervivum cvv./spp. flowers are typically (but not always) dull red or pink-red.
• Some Sinningia cvv./spp.
• Most Stapelia flowers involve dark red or dark purple-red somewhere, though it's never a particularly vibrant red, and not very many of the flowers give an overall impression of red. Most notable exceptions: Stapelia cedrimontana is black-red with red and yellow stripes near the center; Stapelia hirsuta has very dark red stripes on a peach background, giving the overall impression of dark red; Stapelia leendertziae -- which I also covet -- is solid dark red or dark purple.
• Stenorrhynchos speciosum.
• Stenosarcos Vanguard 'Fireball.' (pink-red)
• Some Streptocarpus cvv. (pink-red)
• Stromanthe sanguinea cvv. (red or pink-red; unlikely to happen indoors)
• Synadenium grantii. (dull dark red, small, unlikely indoors)
• Many Vriesea hybrids, and some of the species (notably V. splendens) produce inflorescences with red bracts.

As usual, I am totally open to it if readers want to make additional suggestions in the comments.

-

¹ The annulus is the raised ring around the center of some stapeliad flowers. One is sort of visible in the first picture on this post.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum NOID

I don't really like anything about this one, though it's possible that the photography is mostly responsible. The top petal is a little too broad, or round, or something (who decided that roundedness is a quality we want in orchids anyway?), and it's also my opinion that mustard is the only thing that should ever be mustard yellow.

Perhaps this one was left untagged was because it was too ashamed to identify itself.

wrong tags: 8
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 11

Anthurium seedlings update

I've been working on a couple of large posts lately, and I'd hoped to be ready to post one of them today, but I didn't quite finish in time. So, instead, please enjoy this photo of about 250 Anthurium seedlings:

This picture is from mid-September; there are 274 seedlings now, out of 288 started (95% success rate). My plan to give them all drag queen and/or roller derby names is still in effect, though it's harder than you'd think to come up with 274 of those.¹

As you can see from the photo, all seedlings are not doing equally well; the ones closest to the center of the flats seem to be happier than those on the ends. This is probably because the ones on the ends dry out faster (the air is more humid if you're surrounded by other plants), and the lights run down the center of the shelves too, so those in the middle get more light than the others. This has since changed for the oldest sets: I've had to spread them out a bit, into every other square on the flat, because they were getting so big that some of them were shading out others. This naturally results in some of them occupying different spots on the shelves, though some of them get to move more than others.

The basic set-up is visible here. This picture and the one following are also from September 2012.
Looking at the first photo, I'm actually struck by how much they've grown in the last six or seven weeks. The oldest ones are now about a year old, and although they're not producing adult-sized leaves yet, there are several individuals with leaves four inches (10 cm) long. The pots are only two inches (5 cm) on a side, so a four-inch leaf does seem pretty big.

It'll be another two years, minimum, before I start seeing flowers. Probably more like four years. Assuming they all live that long. There are already observable differences between the plants: the new leaves of some seedlings emerge plain green; others are green with a little bit of red along the main veins; others come in dark red and slowly lighten up to green. The first time I noticed that, it pleased me, so I can't imagine how I'm going to be with them once they start producing flowers.

Finally, because I know someone will ask if I don't address it now: the tags are handmade, by me, in a really time-consuming process.²

-

¹ Presently only the first 198 have names. Ten favorites, in no particular order:
• Nathan Ofithlam
• Frieda Runamuk
• Aurora Boreanaz
• Vanna Rocking
• Zach Treplica
• Phil Endeblanc
• Jay Gerschatz
• Mario Speedwagon
• Yvette Horizon
• Roxanne DeBree
² 1. Cut up milk jugs into more or less uniformly-sized rectangular pieces of plastic with a point on one end.
2. When seedlings are ready to be started, print a piece of paper from the computer listing the ID number, ancestry, and date germination started for each of the new seedlings.
3. Cut up the paper into strips of text.
4. Place a strip of paper on a manageable length of packing tape.
5. Set a plastic milk jug strip over the paper.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until there's no more usable length on the packing tape.
7. Cover the packing tape with a second piece of packing tape.
8. Cut around the plastic and discard excess tape.
9. Repeat steps 2-8 until there are no more seedlings to be tagged.
Though time-consuming, this poor-man's-laminator process was deemed necessary because nothing else was working. It had to be plastic from milk jugs because there wasn't anything else cheap and abundant enough that was also easy enough to shape. Sharpies are the only things that would write on the plastic, but they fade after a few months. So there you go.
When starting seedlings, I make similar tags, but hand-write the information on the paper instead of printing it. The paper tends to get wet anyway (perhaps because of the higher humidity in the germination chamber?), so the ink runs, but the germination-chamber tags don't have to last as long as the individual seedling tags do, and the ink doesn't run to the point of illegibility, so that still works out fine.

Random plant event: Cryptbergia x rubra

Discovered this on Saturday (3 Nov); the pot contains multiple rosettes, but only the one is blooming. I don't have a particularly good idea what the flowers are supposed to look like when they appear: Google comes up pretty much empty on photos, and what photos it does have are tiny, just barely large enough to show that they take more after the Billbergia side of the family (green with blue margins, on a tall stalk with red or pink bracts) than the Cryptanthus one (typically white, short, and bractless).

So we'll see what happens. If I am spectacularly lucky, there's a possibility that I might be able to cross this with a Cryptanthus that's starting to bloom in the basement and get seedlings, though 1) it's kind of a long shot, and 2) I'm not even sure that this is something I should be hoping for, considering the current seedling situation.

Pretty picture: Dendrobium sulcatum

This was tagged "Onc. sulcatum," a species unknown to Google. I can't imagine anybody who knows anything about orchids looking at this and thinking that it's an Oncidium, so it's probably a case of whoever was making the labels being distracted. Which is fine. Happens to all of us. But this is why one proofreads, no?

wrong tags: 8
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 10



I'm not thrilled with this picture, but the way the flowers hung down made it difficult for me to get a better one (this is the best shot of 4). Oh, well.

And of course we have a Scalepocalypse 2012 update:

Ardisia elliptica (1 Nov 2012, basement) -- neemed.
Phlebodium aureum 'Mandianum' (1 Nov 2012, basement) -- neem + imidacloprid granules.

Rough week in the fight against scale. The Ardisia is the one I grew from the seeds of the original plant; the Phlebodium had been looking exceptionally impressive in the last few weeks, and I was feeling quite pleased with it. So naturally it should get scale so bad that several of the fronds would need to be cut off.

The only bright spot is that I thought I saw scale on one of the Ficus benjaminas --

-- but it turned out to be something else. The bumps don't break when squished, they're present on both sides of the leaf,

and there's reason to suspect edema. The plant has been doing very well for me in the last year or so, well enough that I'd repotted it in August. Because it's now in a larger pot, it's staying wet longer, and because it's on a table next to the south window in the living room, it tends to be a bit on the cold side. The most reliable way to cause edema in susceptible species is to leave them simultaneously cold and wet, and that's what I think I've done. (Similar things have appeared on a few other plants in the house: Yucca guatemalensis, Billbergia nutans, Pachycereus marginatus.)

There's still the chance that it's something other than edema, but at this point I'm thrilled anytime something goes wrong that isn't scale.

Scale Poetry

(after William Carlos Williams)

This is Just to Say

We have spread to
the orchids
that are in
your basement

and which
you were probably
hoping
would bloom
someday

Fuck you
they were delicious
so sweet
so juicy

-

This is not factually accurate. There are no orchids in the basement, and as far as I know there are no scale on the orchids elsewhere, knock wood. I needed it to be the orchids so the "hoping would bloom" part would make sense. The photo is real, and was one of my plants, but it's a year and a half old.

Poetic license aside, this is precisely the sort of note I imagine scale insects would leave, were they capable.