Pretty picture: Phragmipedium Belle Hougue Point

The International Orchid Register website and Google don't agree on the spelling here; Google says it's Belle Hogue Point, and the register says Hougue.

So of course the tag at the show said something that wasn't either of those options. ("Belle House Point") I went with the IOR version, on the theory that they're more likely to proofread. (If not, please don't tell me.)

Phragmipedium Belle [Something] Point = Phragmipedium Eric Young x Phragmipedium caudatum.

In site news, I'm going to stop posting briefly (I hope briefly) because I'm planning a special post for Monday, and so far, it's been tough to find time to get it ready. We'll see how it goes.

Random plant event: Hoya carnosa

I have had at least one Hoya carnosa at all times, for the last seven years. My best guess is that I was averaging about three or four at any moment; the current count is five. In all twenty-five(-ish) of those accumulated Hoya-carnosa-years, not once has any of them ever attempted to bloom. H. lacunosa, sure, all the time. H. bella, quite a bit lately. But never H. carnosa.

Until now.

Which, we'll see if it's sincere about this; you know what happened with the Phalaenopsis.¹

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¹ Yes, I know the Phalaenopsis could still produce some flowers, and that whatever happened to it was probably my fault even if I don't remember it happening. You'll understand if I'm not holding my breath in anticipation, though.

Six Plants I'm Currently Mad At

This turns out to be a pretty competitive field (wait'll you see the Dishonorable Mentions), but I've narrowed it down to six. By "I'm Currently Mad At," I mean "the idea of throwing the plant away entirely and never attempting it again has crossed my mind," though that's only a serious possibility with three of the six plants on the list.

1. Phalaenopsis NOID
I am so tired of orchids and all their fucking orchid bullshit. I'm not even exaggerating for comic effect. I know I've said this before, but this time I'm telling you -- I'm telling you -- orchids and I are never ever getting back together.¹ Remember how cautiously excited I was two months ago?

Yes, well. I really should have known better. Here it is now:

And here's the end of the spike:

Yep. Just fell right off, the whole top of the spike, including all the flower buds. I have no idea what happened to it -- it's conceivable that the top of the spike got caught in the shelves when I took the plant off to water or something, but I feel like I would have remembered that. It can't really have been chewed off by an animal -- Sheba would have said something. So I'm thinking it just dropped the top of the flower spike as a way of giving me the finger, because it's an orchid, and orchids are fucking assholes.

The Phalaenopsis is being permitted to stay, for the time being, but the very first excuse I have to throw it out, it's going out. (Even if it calls me up and it's like, "I still love you.")


2. Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta'
If my fury at the Phalaenopsis is white-hot,² then with Furcraea I'm only a dull red. The plant's done well outside this year, and has grown some really nice, broad leaves, enough that I'm thinking the current pot is probably way too small for it. And for most of the summer, this was making me happy.

But I found a scale insect on it a week or two ago. So far, it's just been the one, and I did give the plant a pretty thorough inspection so that might be the extent of it, but what are the odds that it's really only one scale insect? Is it ever just one?

Et tu, Furcraea?


3. Polyscias balfouriana (variegated)
The Phalaenopsis is being spiteful, the Furcraea is disloyal, and the Polyscias balfouriana is catatonic. It's never been one of my best plants or anything, but when I got it, in July 2010, it looked like this:

And now, after growing for three years, one of the plants in the original pot has died,³ and the other looks like this:

Weak stem (it periodically leans over enough to throw itself off the shelf it lives on), not much foliage (that's actually the most it's had in a very long time, in that picture), regular spider mite infestations, which it passes to other plants -- P. balfouriana is another one that's probably going in the trash as soon as I have any kind of excuse. Considering its history, I should maybe not wait for an excuse.


4. Synadenium grantii
It was bad enough that Synadenium grantii caught the fungus that's been infecting all the Euphorbias.⁴ I moved it outside, in the hope that this would help it shake the fungus, and that actually seems to have worked.⁵ The problem is that it's not happy with being outside, either. Although when I did the research for the Synadenium profile, I found information telling me that they could survive temperatures down to about 20F / -7C, leaf damage apparently begins somewhere in the high 50s F, or about 14C, and takes the form of broad tan patches on exposed leaves:

I suppose this is my own fault, for not figuring out sooner that I was seeing cold damage. (I'd thought it was sunburn.) The plant could maybe have explained itself better, though.


5. Eucharis grandiflora
So I have three pots of Eucharis now. The one that's stayed in the house is doing fine. Not blooming or anything, but it's doing fine. The two that are getting to summer outdoors, on the other hand, started looking really ratty almost as soon as they went out. Well, I thought, that's to be expected -- probably it's a combination of sunburn and getting thrashed around by the wind. The replacement leaves will be better. But the replacement leaves were not better. And then, one day, I lifted up one of the pots for some reason and there was this fat, gray-green caterpillar underneath it. I picked it up and flung it into the yard, hoping the birds would deal with it. Then a few days later, I was watering, and I saw a similar-looking caterpillar, curled up, floating in the water inside the pot. So I picked it up and threw it out onto the driveway (figuring that the birds would be quicker to spot it on concrete than they would on grass). I haven't seen any caterpillars since then, but it almost doesn't matter: the replacement leaves are coming in slowly, and the older leaves are trashed almost beyond recognition. So the Eucharis won't be going outside next year either, even if they beg and plead and claim that that's the only way they'll ever flower.

The plants that got to go outside have, as a group, been very resistant to bugs -- the only other cases of visible insect damage outside have happened on two Agaves, and I think are also caterpillar-related. But the Eucharis have taken a real beating. Makes me unhappy.

The only positive note is that I have finally achieved houseplant pest bingo. (That'll teach me not to hope publicly for caterpillar infestations, even in jest.)


6. Epipremnum aureum 'Neon' and 'Marble Queen'
Lastly: I can grow Epipremnum aureum varieties just fine, beautifully even, so long as I avoid anything that they might interpret as transplanting.

Which is to say, I've had no problems water-rooting cuttings. But when I put the rooted cuttings into soil, I lose about two-thirds of them. Every single time, no exceptions. Soil-rooting cuttings is a little better, but even then, I lose about half. And repotting is a disaster every single time, no exceptions. (You'd think I would learn.)

'Neon' and 'Marble Queen' made the list because I've tried to root cuttings of 'Marble Queen,' and I've tried to repot 'Neon,' and both have been calamitous. Here's what 'Neon' looked like before the repotting:

And after repotting, removal of obviously dead vines, and cutting a few back in hopes that they'd resprout:

What did I do wrong? I have no idea. It certainly seemed like repotting was warranted: the plant was always wilted when its turn for water came around, sometimes badly, and it was dropping leaves as a result. Giving it more soil, to keep it wetter longer, seemed the logical solution. But instead, the plant punishes me by committing suicide. What a dick.

I don't have a photo for the 'Marble Queen' cuttings, but you'll have to just trust me that they look even worse. Everybody else in the entire world can do anything they like to this plant and it's fine, but -- I don't think it's for me.

So . . . yeah.

I'll have a post later, about plants that aren't making me angry, but I feel it's important for houseplant "experts"⁶ to acknowledge that there is no level of horticultural skill that will completely prevent plants from being douchebags.


Dishonorable mentions:

• Aloe variegata: overwatered, root rot. Still around. Unlikely to try again.
• Anthurium crystallinum 'Mehani:' never did very well here, probably due to dryer and cooler air than it would have liked. Was doing even less well this year, which I suspect might have been related to soil breakdown. Discarded. Almost certainly will never try again.
• Araucaria heterophylla (or maybe A. columnaris): root rot and massive branch drop because I overpotted last winter. Discarded. (This one was really painful: I'd had the plant for five and a half years.) I'll probably try it again.
• Begonia 'Puffy Clouds:' too much direct sun and/or too hot? Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Columnea microphylla: sudden decline for no discernable reason. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Cyanotis kewensis: stem dieback, possibly due to underwatering. Still around.
• Episcia 'Pink Smoke:' Never did well. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Episcia "prayer plant:" too wet, too dry, or possibly both at once. Still around. Will probably restart from cuttings.
• Episcia 'Suomi:' slow steady decline that turned into a fast and ever-accelerating decline; reason unknown. (I'm getting pretty fed up with Episcias.) Still around, but only barely. Will probably allow to remain until it dies and then not try it again.
• Euphorbia milii hybrid with large yellow flowers: I cannot make the fungus go away on the small specimen (indoors); the large specimen got blown over repeatedly so the leaves are all creased/torn/punctured/scarred. Still around.
• Euphorbia pseudocactus: one tall stem turned brown and rotted away for no obvious reason very early in the summer. A second big tall new branch started growing after that. It managed to hold itself erect for about a week, then flopped over, and has been growing more or less horizontally ever since. The rest of the plant isn't doing anything and never really has. Still around.
• Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks:' tried to blind me that one time. Still around.
• Euphorbia trigona: I cannot get rid of the fungus on the cuttings in the basement, though the parents, outdoors, are doing okay. Still around.
• Euphorbia trigona 'Red:' I cannot get rid of the fungus, but also the parent plants won't branch and sometimes get root rot. Still around.
• Ficus 'Green Island:' sort of continuously dropping leaves, whether in or outside. Refuses to grow vertically. Still around.
• Gasteraloe 'Green Gold:' definite severe root rot, due to overwatering. Still around, but unlikely to make it back into the house this fall. Unlikely to try again.
• Gasteraloe 'Midnight:' has never liked me very much. Probably some root rot. Almost certainly will never try again.
• Homalomena 'Emerald Gem:' both under- and overwatered, leading to substantial defoliation. And then the bugs (spider mite-like, but I was never sure if they really were spider mites) showed up. Discarded. I'm not desperate to replace it, but I might at some point, if I see one cheap.
• Kohleria 'Queen Victoria:' (chronically?) miswatered. Discarded. Pretty much certain never to try again.
• Neoregelia 'Fireball:' never rebounded from a repotting several years ago; I don't know what its problem was. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Pereskia aculeata var. godseffiana: scale. Discarded. I still have a back-up plant.
• Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald:' small, weak growth for about a year, year and a half now. Lots of leaf drop. Still around.
• Schefflera actinophylla: has not performed well outdoors. A tremendous amount of leaf drop, poor color, gets blown over a lot by the wind. Still around. I'll keep growing it, probably, but it's not going outside again next summer.
• Selenicereus anthonyanus: does not appear to understand how to grow the long, weird stems that are the main reason to grow it. I don't know why it won't and S. chrysocardium will. Still around.
• Vriesea splendens: flowered, then started to produce a replacement rosette, but the replacement rosette is really struggling for no obvious reason. Still around, but I suspect its days are numbered. The smaller duplicate plant rotted out and died last March.
• Zamioculcas zamiifolia: another one like Epipremnum aureum, that does beautifully until I try to pot it up, at which point it begins falling apart. A less water-retentive potting mix might help, but I'm more inclined to just let it die and never attempt to grow it again: I don't especially like the look of it in the first place. (The leaflet cuttings of 'Zamicro' are doing fine, but I haven't tried to repot them, either. Maybe I never will.)

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¹ Unless it's one of the blue-dyed Phalaenopsis, because I have a theory about the identity of the blue dye that I'd like to test. So I might buy one of those, but only so that I could grind up the flowers in a mortar and pestle and perform science experiments on them. Which would actually probably be kind of cathartic.
Also: sorry for the earworm. I couldn't resist.
² Probably more blue-hot, I think. (I feel like most of the energy being given off by my fury is being emitted in the ultraviolet / soft x-ray range.)
³ (I cut it back because it was hitting the lights and scorching, but it didn't resprout. I kept hoping, because the stem was staying firm, even if it wasn't producing a new growing tip, but eventually it went soft and I pulled it out of the pot.)
⁴ Synadenium grantii is officially Euphorbia umbellata, according to Plant List. The name I learned before that was Euphorbia pseudograntii. I'm sticking with the name I learned originally, partly because the taxonomists don't seem to have made up their collective mind yet, and partly because if I do decide to change it, there's a whole lot of blog posts that'll need to be edited too, and I would prefer not to do that.
⁵ It worked better on some species than others. E. lactea and E. tirucalli cleared up pretty quickly but weren't that bad off in the first place; Euphorbia milii and Synadenium grantii had pretty serious problems but improved after a few weeks. E. trigona took most of the summer to get there, but is good at the moment, as far as I can see. Pedilanthus 'Jurassic Park 2' may never shake the fungus.
⁶ (a designation I'm not happy seeing applied to myself, by the way)

Pretty picture: Cattleya Purple Cascade

This is the most severe example of my inability to get close to certain orchids at the show. I find these flowers really interesting, and I had hoped that I'd get a usable photo of them from far away, but now that I look at this, I'm not sure that I did. I suppose it serves the purpose okay, but I'm not going to be entering it in any photography competitions or anything.

Although it's tagged as Laeliocattleya, officially, it's a plain Cattleya now.

Cattleya Purple Cascade = Cattleya Interglossa x Cattleya Tokyo Magic

I looked for photos of the parents, but there don't seem to be many of Tokyo Magic by itself. (There is another cross involving Tokyo Magic in this year's orchid show pictures, but it, combined with this one, leaves wide open the question of what Tokyo Magic might look like: this one's white with contrasting purple tips; that one's solid orange.

Interglossa pictures are more common, and Purple Cascade looks a lot more like Interglossa, which is also purple and white, in the same pattern.

Saturday morning frog pictures

So a month ago, when I posted pictures of a frog I happened to see in the Ananas comosus 'Mongo,' I said I thought the frog in question was only passing through, since it wasn't there the following day. Since then, I've seen some identical-looking frogs hanging around the yard, on a few occasions, so maybe we do have a permanent resident.

Mostly I've seen them (or him, or her) when I had to move plants in and out a lot, due to cooler weather. Went to pick up one of the big Euphorbia trigonas and was met with this, right at eye level:

Good job on the camouflage, there, buddy. (The color match actually was pretty impressive in person.) I picked up the frog and put it in the marigolds, and continued moving plants inside, and then some minutes later ran into it again on a different plant: it seemed to be slowly making its way toward the house. And then the following night, it was on the cactus cart, right next to the house, and I caught it and relocated it.

A few nights later, I realized why it kept trying to get to the house: I saw it sitting on one of the basement windows, in the process of chewing up a moth it had just caught. The husband had seen it at the same window on other occasions, so apparently it migrates to the basement window every night to feed itself, sleeps in the plants when our lights go out, then gets up in the morning and does its frog business, whatever that is, until it's time to head back to the window. So I'm not seeing it in the same places, but it probably is the same frog.

It's also not necessarily just one frog. One day in the last month, I saw a frog among my houseplants, and then a short time later saw one sitting on a Canna, across the yard:

A determined frog could probably have crossed the yard and climbed the Canna between sightings, but I'm guessing they were different ones. So we possibly have a whole frog resort area going on. Certainly sounded like it, earlier this summer.

Unfinished business: Clivia miniata 'Aztec Gold'

I'd thought maybe, but it looks like I don't get a repeat of the Clivia flowers this year. Ah, well.

The seedlings are doing all kinds of different things. Some just sit there. Some get periodically covered with a white fungus. Some have leaves. I started the first batch in a glass jar: I put in soil and some water, microwaved it to heat and sterilize the soil (which apparently didn't work, since the fungus keeps appearing), then allowed it to cool down. I then removed the seed coats from the seeds, rinsed them in a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide, and dropped them in.

The top-down angle isn't ideal for seeing how much growth there's been, but it's a bit clearer than shooting through the side of the jar. . . .

The second batch, I just removed the seed coat and dropped them into small pots of wet soil. Only one of that group has done anything --

-- and I'm afraid that taking the photo may have set it back, since I brought it outside for the picture, along with a bunch of other plants in a box. On the way back into the house, one of them started to tip over, so I shifted the box, so then others started to tip, and in short order I had dumped them all out onto the ground. The Clivia seedling appeared unharmed, but it did get knocked completely out of its pot, so I'm worried anyway. (Clivia roots are pretty sturdy, though, right?)

But the point remains that there don't seem to be any appreciable differences between the two groups, in terms of survival or progress, so perhaps the microwaving and peroxide and all that was overkill. Time will tell.

The Black Bees

I mentioned in June that I've been watching very intently for honeybees this year. I'm not doing it for any particular reason; I've just been curious, what with all the talk of colony collapse disorder, about whether honeybees visit the yard, and if so how many, and so forth.

For a very long time, the closest I got was the bee-mimic fly (picture at the end of the above link). At some point in the last couple weeks, I finally saw my first honeybee. Which is much, much longer than I was expecting to have to wait.

It's entirely possible that the long wait to see one has a lot more to do with what we've chosen to plant here, and not much of anything to do with how they're doing overall. (However: I saw one yesterday on a marigold that didn't fly away when I approached it. I didn't sit there and poke at it or anything, but it didn't strike me as healthy.) In any case, because I've been watching so closely, I can report that the tiny bees and hoverflies from the June post have now given way to a different group of pollinators. The bee-mimic flies are still occasional visitors. The husband poured more concrete a week or two back and butterflies were really into that, and a few have stuck around for the marigolds. I see bumblebees here and there, though they're small: not the bumblebees I remember as a kid.

But then there are the black bees. So many black bees.

I don't know what species they are; Google has led me to a number of websites, but there are many, many kinds of bees. A carpenter bee of some kind seems most probable -- many of them are the right color and approximately the right size -- but I have very little confidence in that guess. I've never seen the black bees before this year, either, as far as I can remember, which is weird. (Also weird: the green metallic bees I saw four years ago are entirely absent this year.)

I'm very fond of them, whatever they are. In the mornings when I take Sheba out, the black bees are reliably all over the marigolds and Portulacas, even on the cloudy mornings when most of the Portulacas don't open.

I haven't bothered to take many pictures of them on the marigolds, because they're all business with the marigolds: land, nectar and/or pollen, fly away to next flower. With the Portulacas, they actually crawl down into the flowers a ways, and get all tangled in the stamens and such.

I doubt that bees experience "fun" in the way people (or even dogs) do, but they really do look like they're having fun: I can't help wanting to anthropomorphize.

They manage to collect an impressive amount of pollen. I know bees have "pollen baskets" on their legs for this exact purpose, but I can't figure out how they work to hold the pollen in. I mean, pollen is small, and the bees fly around a lot: how do they hold on to it? How do they get it back off again later?

I don't know if they sting; the husband said that he was out with Sheba a few days ago, and that he thought she'd caught one in her mouth, but she didn't seem to be in pain or anything, so if she did catch one, it apparently didn't sting her. They've never bothered me either, but then, I don't give them any reason to.

This is all just encouraging me to get even more intense with the Portulacas next year, of course. I kind of understand why they're not more widely planted -- most of the flowers that are open in the morning have closed up by the early afternoon, and the leaves and closed buds aren't particularly attractive.

But the flowers are so nice when they are open, and they're so easy to grow, that it kind of makes up for the afternoons. And anyway, pollinators dig 'em. My hands are tied. We're just going to have to plant some every year. Have to.

Question for the Hive Mind: Roadside Weeds / Wildflowers

The second and third of these are technically not roadside plants, but the first one is:

I don't recall ever seeing it before, but they're everywhere all of a sudden.

UPDATE: it's a Vernonia (ironweed), possibly V. baldwinii. Thanks to Claude and joeym.

The other two plants were in a heavily wooded park in Iowa City about a week ago. The first, I'm fairly sure, is some kind of Arisaema. I don't know if it's possible to narrow it down to a species from these pictures or not.

UPDATE: Everybody seems pretty convinced that this is Arisaema triphyllum (jack in the pulpit). Thanks to Ed Kramer, joeym, and anonymous.

The other plant from the park has flowers reminiscent of both chicory (Cichorium intybus) and meadow campion (Silene latifolia), but it's not either of those. Something related?

UPDATE: Looks like this is a Lactuca sp., possibly Lactuca floridana. Thanks to The Phytophactor and Review for their help.

Any guesses on any of these?

Pretty picture: Dendrobium Frosty Dawn 'Yen'

I've spent the last five days moving plants in at night and out in the morning -- we had a run of temperatures below 60F/16C. A lot of the plants that are outside will handle that fine (Agave, Strelitzia, Breynia, Amorphophallus), but a few won't so well (Coffea, Aloe, Synadenium, Araucaria), so they have to go back and forth. There are also some (Ananas, Furcraea, Euphorbia, Pachypodium) that might be fine, but I'm scared to leave them out for fear that they'll be damaged.

Moving plants is annoying, and exhausting, and then finding scale again this week is just the honeydew on the cake. I haven't even really gotten a chance to check the other plants for scale yet; I did look at the plants in the same room, and they seemed okay, but I added imidacloprid granules to some of them anyway because you can never be sure you checked everything.

I did also get to see scale through the microscope. It was harder than I expected to find them, and I didn't try to get any pictures because it was night and therefore way too dark. The nymphs are . . . not uncute, actually. Sort of plump like a tardigrade, but with bigger eyes.

That's a terrible description, but it's the best I can come up with. The adults, of course, are horrifying, just as you would expect.

Anyway. I'm thinking the next post'll be Tuesday, probably. In the meantime, here's a Dendrobium that I like. Every so often, the orchid show surprises me with something like this.

Dendrobium Frosty Dawn 'Yen' = Dendrobium Dawn Maree x Dendrobium Lime Frost

And then

And then the scale came back. In a room where I hadn't seen them previously (husband's office; the plant was the parent Pereskia aculeata var. godseffiana). Posting may be a bit off and on for a while, as I try to determine the extent of the problem and figure out what to do about it.

I'm also setting aside some time to pound my head on my desk, curse the day I was born, and that sort of thing.

Random plant event: Sansevieria cylindrica

Blogging in a hurry today, again, because I've realized that the post I'd planned for today is going to require me to get some more pictures; this was also the problem with the post I'd planned for Wednesday. Things do still keep happening, though, some more impressive than others. For example, my Sansevieria cylindrica. I didn't have it when it only had one leaf, though I assume that stage happened. By the time I got it,



It had two! Two leaves! Four years passed, and then last September, it grew another, which was extremely exciting.

So then we had three! Three leaves! I figured I'd have to wait until 2016 for a fourth, but guess what . . . ?

FOUR! FOUR GLORIOUS LEAVES! AH! AH! AH! [thunder, lightning]

One of the things this probably means is that I should have been letting it spend the summer outside all along, if I wanted it to grow. Live and learn.

Pretty picture: Hibiscus 'Heartthrob'

Not a lot to say about this one; it was at the ex-job, and I noticed it partly because hardy Hibiscus flowers are very difficult to ignore, and partly because I'd already been noticing them around in people's yards as we rode into Iowa City.

There's also not a lot to say because I've been heavily preoccupied by dental matters since Saturday. Saw somebody yesterday, and apparently the pain I've been feeling doesn't indicate anything particularly wrong and isn't something that requires any kind of intervention by a dentist. So everything's fine. It was still hard to convince myself to calm down, though, after spending a whole weekend on red alert over it. Dental problems have a way of seizing one's attention.

Microphotography: Portulaca grandiflora

I'm unclear on the specifics of where and how, but the husband, knowing that I've been looking for a microscope for some time, somehow obtained a used one for me. Which is one example of how he's the best husband ever.

The catches -- and of course there are catches -- are:

1) Okay, I don't know the proper names for anything here, but I'm going to call that thing in the middle, with the four things sticking out from it, the microscope's "udder," because that's what it looks like. Each of those barrels on the udder has a different level of magnification (I don't know what levels of magnification, because I cannot decipher what the barrels say), only two of which appear to function.
2) It's a regular, old-school, 1960s-ish microscope, so it wasn't designed with digital photography in mind. If the camera lens is not exactly centered over the eyepiece, the camera doesn't register anything being there at all. Likewise if it isn't precisely the right height above the eyepiece. My hands shake way too much to get pictures by holding the camera in the right spot myself, and although we do have a tripod, the base of the microscope is just large enough to get in the way of the tripod's legs, so I can get within about a centimeter (0.4 in.) of the eyepiece, but then no further. Except! When I took the below pictures, I actually could get the tripod directly over the eyepiece. I just couldn't do it again a few days later when I moved the whole thing outside to try to get a better set of pictures in stronger light, and I don't know why, and the whole thing was very frustrating. Which leads us to the third problem, which is:
3) Even when I do manage to line the camera up, using the tripod, the amount of light coming through the eyepiece is small, so my camera uses long exposure times, which results in blurry pictures, even at its best.
4) And at its worst, the camera autofocus chooses to focus on the eyepiece itself, instead of the image in the eyepiece. Or it focuses on some part of the microscope outside the eyepiece, so I get a perfect shot of the top of the udder but the actual image I'm trying to capture is too fuzzy to make out.

So the point is that there are some problems with this, and you should, consequently, not expect to see a lot of these pictures until such time as I can figure out how to get better ones. And I would love some suggestions from other people, because I know there's got to be someone out there who's taken photographs through a microscope's eyepiece successfully.

Having said all of that, there have been some pretty cool moments with the microscope already, which I will hopefully be able to share with you someday. Portulaca grandiflora seeds, my only successful photos to date, turn out to be much more interesting than the gray, metallic dust they appear to be with the naked eye. For example, I had always imagined them as more or less spherical, since a lot of seeds are, but they turn out to have a specific, weird shape, somewhere between a comma and a nautilus:

At the higher magnification, they also have an unexpected texture, which is probably the coolest and most surprising thing I've seen in weeks. It didn't photograph well, of course:

The pattern is sort of approximately that of a bunch of tiny interlocked cogwheels, covering the whole surface of the seed. Which is even stranger in combination with the overall iridescent metallic gray color. (I now suspect that Portulaca grandiflora are robotic plants.)

I also tried for photos of the pollen, but that went even less well, and wasn't very interesting:

And those are the only actual pictures I'm able to provide to you at this point. Possible coming attractions, if I can figure out how to take the pictures:

A lot of leaves are hairier than I would have guessed. (Pedilanthus being the most surprising.) Though most leaves are disappointingly boring.

The serrated edges on Yucca guatemalensis are a lot less regular in shape and spacing than I expected.

Cryptanthus pollen is even more dull than Portulaca pollen: basically just irregular little white rounded things. At least Portulaca pollen has a color to it.

Ceropegia woodii flowers look exactly the way you would expect them to look, and brought to mind both "eyelashes" and "houseflies." Aeschynanthus speciosus flowers are boring and look just like they do with the naked eye, except bigger. Neofinetia roots didn't do much for me. (Think "styrofoam.") The Euphorbia fungus (yes, I still have Euphorbia fungus) looked exactly like I expected (sort of a creeping white net), and was dull.

Broadleaf plantain (Plantago major) really does have flowers (when you let it bloom), and the flowers are actually sort of pretty. I mean, if they were twenty times bigger, you'd grow the plant as an ornamental: there's a white, fluffy bottlebrush sort of stamen, with lots of white spherical pollen grains, and then the stigmas, or something I take to be the stigmas, are sort of shaped like white tulips with purple stripes down the center of each petal. (Plantago major is high on the list of stuff to get pictures of, whenever I figure out how to do that, but you can get some idea from the picture here at Wikimedia Commons. There must be some natural variation, though, because that's a darker, solid purple than what I was seeing.)

Another high-priority item: Anthurium spadices. It's a little easier for me to believe that those are flowers, now that I've seen them close-up. (I'd link to a photo, but I couldn't find one easily on Google image search.) It should probably be noted that they're still not pretty. At best, interesting.

Spider mites are every bit as horrifying as you'd think they would be, and they will continue to suck sap out of a leaf even after it's been removed from the plant. They also do this weird thing where they either shake their back legs like a dog getting a belly rub, or they rub their rearmost pair of legs together like a person trying to warm their hands. I only saw it do that once, and it was fast. I was so surprised and freaked out by there being, suddenly, movement, that I can't tell you exactly what it was. It also convinced me to throw the leaf in the trash more or less immediately afterward.

I think I've seen spider mite eggs now, though they weren't all the same color, so I'm not 100% on that. (They were all somewhere in the yellow or yellow-orange color range, but the darkness varied a lot, from pale yellow down to almost black.)

Some unknown white thing that was on our lettuce was one of the scariest things I've ever seen. It somehow managed to evoke deep-sea crabs, skeletons, spiders, and ghosts simultaneously, and I'm pretty sure seeing them come into focus in the microscope took a year off my life. The best match I found on-line for them was here, on a forum where they were identified as the shed exoskeletons of a molted aphid here. (The pictures at the link aren't magnified enough to be upsetting, FWIW.) So "skeleton" and "ghost" were actually pretty close. That also explains why they weren't moving.

So the point is, there's a lot of potential for interesting new posts, if only I can figure out how to get the pictures. It's going to take some experimentation, and I only have so much time, so if anybody has any relevant expertise, I'd sure appreciate hearing from you.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Mr. Wonderful

I'm not sure Paphiopedilums can ever be less than okay, in my book. That said, "Wonderful" sort of sounds like it's trying too hard.

This particular hybrid dates back to 1916, though; maybe the word had different connotations then.

Paphiopedilum Mr. Wonderful = P. Knock Knock x P. Gloriosum

Saturday morning Sheba picture

I should maybe start giving Sheba treats after taking her picture. It's hard to get her attention.

Unfinished business: Amorphophallus konjac

Back in February, I asked the hive mind whether my bulb was coming out of dormancy; I haven't had it that long (since April 2012), and am still getting used to what it does, and when. The response from readers was somewhere between "not necessarily" and "probably not."

I went ahead and potted it up anyway, about six weeks after that, but it took forever to do anything visible. I started to get worried that it had rotted by late May / early June, just because it seemed like it had had more than enough time to grow, if it intended to, and I still wasn't seeing anything. Out of laziness and hope, I left it alone, and finally, on 11 June, I saw the tip of a leaf poking out of the soil. After which point things progressed more or less normally.

11 June 2013.

16 June 2013.

22 June 2013. This is possibly my favorite stage of development for this plant. Like somebody stuck a squid headfirst into the soil.

25 June 2013.

27 June 2013.

13 July 2013.
I'd thought, when this all started to happen, that it had started significantly later than in 2012, but when I checked the old posts here, it was basically the exact same date: the "squid" Amorphophallus picture in this post is dated 19 June 2012, as opposed to 22 June 2013. With any luck, I'll be able to remember this next year, and not spend so much time worrying about it.

Speaking of Amorphophallus -- did everybody else see Zach's recent posts about propagating A. atroviridis from leaflet cuttings? If not, you probably should: the first is here, and the second is here.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work on A. konjac, so I won't be able to try it for myself. (Unless I find some way to acquire another species of Amorphophallus, which I'm looking into. . . .)