They Grow Up So Fast, Part 2

Every once in a while, I wind up looking through the photo archives for something or another, and happen upon an old photo of a plant I still have, and am surprised by how much different it looks now. It should be hard to forget that plants grow. This is, after all, much of the point of having them, and one is regularly having to repot or prune or whatever. At the same time, it's easy to forget that it's going on at any particular moment, especially with slow-growing plants, so it's nice to see the evidence occasionally.

Here are four of the most dramatic examples I've seen lately (though sadly the photo quality could be better, particularly on the Before shots):

Ficus benjamina 'Black Diamond,' January 2008. Pot: 4" / 10 cm.
I brought home some cuttings of 'Black Diamond' from work and rooted them in perlite three years ago. Now, after a couple repottings (to 6"/15 cm and then to 8"/20 cm), I'm actually starting to get a respectable-looking plant out of it:

Ficus benjamina 'Black Diamond,' January 2011. Pot: 8" / 30 cm.
Though the leaves are no longer as dark as they were. Needs more light, I suppose.

Or there's my Peperomia glabella, which has gone from a 5- or 6-inch pot (13-15 cm),

Peperomia glabella, December 2008. Pot: 5" or 6" (13-15 cm).
to an 8-inch (20 cm), though it's been cut back a few times and doesn't look as large in the below photo as it really is.

Peperomia glabella, January 2011. Pot: 8" / 30 cm.

Nematanthus NOID, February 2008. Pot: 3" / 8 cm along the diagonal.
The Nematanthus also was from cuttings I took at work. I had actually forgotten that it was ever as tiny as the photo above. Give it three years to grow out, though, and it's looking decent:

Nematanthus NOID, January 2011. Pot: 6" / 15 cm.
I was amazed to find out that I've had my Coffea arabica for four years already.

Coffea arabica, October 2007. Pot: 4" / 10 cm.
I may have to adjust the PATSP difficulty level. Granted, it's not as lush and green now as it was; there have been some problems with chlorosis, and a few of the leaves have burnt from something or another, but I've changed the fertilizer on it (Miracle Gro, with micronutrients, instead of Osmocote without), and the stupid thing's gotten six inches (15 cm) taller in a month. Hopefully I'll get regular-colored leaves again soon.

Coffea arabica, February 2011. Pot: 8" / 30 cm.
Of course, plants in my care don't always get bigger and better with time:

Adiantum capillus-veneris, December 2010. Pot: 4" / 10 cm.
I've only had the Adiantum two months, and it was in a terrarium the whole time, and I still let it get too dry once and all the fronds dried up and died. It's made a considerable comeback since then, though:

Adiantum capillus-veneris, February 2011. Pot: still 4" / 10 cm.
And obviously I'll be more careful with it now that I know.

Some plants, though, you just can't reach. I got my Radermachera sinica at the same time as the Adiantum --

Radermachera sinica, December 2010. Pot: 4" / 10 cm.
-- and it has been a complete asshole.

Radermachera sinica, February 2011. Pot: 5" / 13 cm.
The individual plants in the pot have been dying off one by one: tick, tick, tick. At this point, I don't even want the plant to recover, but I have trouble throwing out a live plant even if I wish it ill. It's sort of a win-win: either it will get itself together and be an okay-looking plant, or it'll continue to suck and I can throw it away. Never again a Radermachera, though. This was my second one; the first didn't last much longer or do much better. I fail to see the point in trying a third time. They're obviously not good plants for me to have.

However, Radermachera issues aside, mostly the plants improve with time. You'd think this would be something I could just assume by now, having as many plants as I do, but I actually do get so focused on acquiring new plants sometimes that I forget that the old ones do more than just sit there, and that I'm getting better at growing them as time goes by besides. These are nice things to be reminded of.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Since Sheba's been getting all the photos lately. I don't have much to say about this one, though. It's hard to get pictures of Nina doing anything new, and, sadly, for the time being it looks like she's not going to get a change of scenery either.

I am yet again, or still, discouraged about the new-terrarium thing. It turns out that the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser actually scratches the glass, and that was the last thing I was going to try before giving up, I'd said. I guess I didn't mean this, because I'm not ruling out baking soda, lemon juice, Bon Ami, Bartender's Friend, steel wool, strong acids, strong bases, and the various other things that have been suggested at some point, but optimism is feeling less and less justified.

Also the Adiantum has died, or if it isn't actually dead, it's significantly less pretty. They do love their water, Adiantums do.

*sigh*

In other news, I was apparently looking extra hard at things on Christmas Day, because my glasses broke around 7 PM. The bridge was constructed weirdly, and it just kind of . . . pulled apart, in such a way that it couldn't be put back together. And then three hours after that, my computer monitor made a funny little *pop* sound and all the pictures went away.

Both these problems have since been at least partly resolved: I got new glasses on Monday, and we had a spare computer monitor, which we'd been using in conjunction with the spare computer to watch Hulu, so now we watch Hulu on the husband's laptop instead. But still. I was scared to open my eyes for a while last week, lest I kill again. First I can control the weather, now I'm destroying things with my eyes --

HOLY CRAP I'M TURNING INTO THE X-MEN. All of them. Simultaneously. Yikes. (Maybe teleportation comes next? I wonder if there's an X-Man who's special power is glass-cleaning. . . .)

More New Plants

These are the latest batch of plants, from the trip to Cedar Rapids last Wednesday. Mostly what impresses me about these, if anything does, is that most of them were very cheap, for what they were, especially relative to the ex-job (which is still what I weigh plant prices against, those being the prices I know best). One in particular.

In the order of purchase:

Peperomia verschaffeltii. Earl May, Iowa City, $9.
(Well, okay, this one wasn't cheap.) This is one of the two plants I bought specifically for Nina. I'd passed it up at least three times before this: though I wanted it, in part because it was the only one I'd ever seen, I've also had pretty consistent bad luck with the non-succulent Peperomias (P. caperata, P. argyreia). P. argyreia was particularly frustrating. So I only bought P. verschaffeltii because I knew I had a terrarium to put it into.

The logic seemed sound, but then we got to Cedar Rapids and I saw one at Peck's for either $5 or $6, which made me wish I'd waited.

Adiantum capillus-veneris. Peck's, Cedar Rapids, $6.
Speaking of Peck's: I hadn't been there in at least a year, I think, because the last time I was there, everything seemed really ordinary and expensive, and the time before that, everything was covered in Christmas crap and it took me like twenty minutes after I left to stop dry-heaving.

And then a month later they sent me a bill for the glass door I (allegedly!) ran through in my haste to escape the glitter and poinsettias. But, you know, if I can't go to Pierson's anymore -- and I cannot -- then it seemed like maybe I should reconsider Peck's.

And although, yes, somebody'd left a six-inch layer of Christmas on everything in the store with a cement mixer, the houseplants were more or less left alone, and the music was at a low enough volume that I could ignore it, so I bought some stuff anyway. I would never ever ever have bought an Adiantum if not for the terrarium (When I was still at the ex-job, WCW told me once that they had trouble keeping Adiantums going even with the greenhouse, never mind in the drier air of somebody's home.), but since I have one, we're going to try it. It'll be pretty if it works.

(Unfortunately, I finally tried cleaning the new terrarium yesterday, and am no longer optimistic that it's ever going to be usable. Yesterday was a fairly bad day all around, and I'm easily frustrated, so this is not the last word on anything, but let's don't go expecting miracles.)

Radermachera sinica. Peck's, Cedar Rapids, $5.
I've tried Radermachera once before, and it was underwatered to death very quickly, which put me off them for a long time. I'm going to try again, though I'm not sure I have much higher hopes for this specimen. I'd consider it in the terrarium, but I think it'd probably outgrow the terrarium so fast there'd be no point. Can anybody opine about whether that would be a good idea?

(I'm pretty sure you can: what I mean is please would you.)

Saintpaulia 'Shimmer Shake.' Frontier, Cedar Rapids, $4.
We're also being brave again about Saintpaulias. I've kept one alive for over a year (maybe two years?), so maybe I can do this. It didn't photograph particularly well, but African violets with blue or purple flowers never do, and it was nearly bloomed-out besides. If it survives long enough to flower, it'll be prettier.

Schlumbergera NOID. Frontier, Cedar Rapids, $3.50.
I was planning to wait until after Christmas to pick up Schlumbergeras, but there's so little variety out there this year that I figured I should grab a yellow one when I saw it: Frontier is the only place I've seen with yellow holiday cacti this year. (Includes: Reha's, Earl May, Peck's, Lowe's, Wallace's) Everybody's favoring the red ones really, really hard, and then most of what's left over is pink. Is it always like this?

Anyway. So I was happy. And this is a very pretty flower, too, with a little flush of pink around the center. However many thousands of seedlings had to be grown out and evaluated to get this, it was totally worth it.

Oncidium Tsiku Marguerite NN #1. Frontier, Cedar Rapids, $10.
And then there were orchids. Frontier had them the last time I was there, and I didn't have money to buy any, which sucked because they were the cheapest I'd ever seen for a non-Phalaenopsis orchid that was old enough to flower. So it was a relief to see that they still had some. This Oncidium's flowers aren't especially beautiful, but they're fragrant in a weird way -- the scent reminds me of cardboard, that vanilla/woody/chemical smell. (Another opinion, from a poster at orchidboard.com, is that it has a "comfortable" smell, like the poster's grandmother's house. For what that's worth.)

Mainly, though, I was impressed by the number of roots. Which is perhaps a weird thing to be impressed by, but the plant's practically bursting out of the pot, and there are roots all over the place, so it seemed really healthy, if nothing else.

I assume that I should wait to repot until at least after the flowering is over, right?

Potinara Eye Candy 'Sweet Sensation.' Frontier, Cedar Rapids, $10.
More orchids. This is the one that caught my eye first, the one I knew for sure I wanted to get. No detectable scent, but the colors are particularly nice, and long, careful examination of the Wallace's Orchid Show photos led me to the conclusion that Potinaras are my favorites. (Or one of my favorites.) Can I grow them? I don't know, but I've had a Brassolaeliocattleya for two years now, which is related, so maybe. And unlike the Blc., I know that these orchids are all old enough to flower, so there's more hope of reblooming.

Potinara Eye Candy 'Mellow Yellow.' Frontier, Cedar Rapids, $10.
Orchids again. Same cross as the preceding plant, but a different clone. No scent on this one either. I'm surprised that it's colored so differently from 'Sweet Sensation,' but I suppose I shouldn't be. I don't think I've ever seen two different clones of the same cross side-by-side before.

I'm less impressed with the color of 'Mellow Yellow,' but it looks really good next to 'Sweet Sensation,' which is the main reason I got it.

Leuchtenbergia principis. Frontier, Cedar Rapids, $5!!!!
I already had a Leuchtenbergia, which I bought about a year and a half ago. It was in a 6-inch (15 cm) pot, and I paid $25 for it. It hasn't done anything very exciting, but it hasn't given me any trouble, either. So I didn't need this plant at all. But: it's rare to see it for sale, it's bigger than the first one, and it was priced about 1/8 of what it's worth. (The guy at the counter said that they'd had it for a long time and it wasn't selling, so they gave it a ridiculously low price to get rid of it.)

I don't have a good place to keep it, of course. But I'm sure something can be worked out.

Walkaways Part 10

Okay, well. As promised when I posted about my newer plants last Wednesday, these are the plants I didn't buy. As a group, they're probably more interesting than the ones I actually bought, but I have my reasons for not buying them.

The first three, two succulents and a cactus which happened to get my attention, were at Lowe's.

Euphorbia polygona cv. 'Snowflake.'
I would have bought this in a heartbeat, but for the fact that all of the Euphorbias with this kind of "corn-cobby"¹ habit I've ever bought (specifically: E. anoplia, E. enopla, E. horrida var. noorsveldensis) have gotten etiolated² really easily, and seem to be considerably worse about it than the larger-growing columnar species (e.g. E. pseudocactus, E. ammak, E. grandicornis). Though I love the look of the plant and would like to have one, I don't really want to buy one just to watch it slowly turn grotesque and unhealthy.

Kalanchoe eriophylla.
According to the tag, K. eriophylla is similar to K. tomentosa (panda plant) except for being more of a low, trailing plant. Which I don't mind trailing plants, but the genus Kalanchoe and I have a long history together which has not been satisfactory to either party, and K. tomentosa and I in particular aren't good together. And it's not like it's ever really going to be beautiful, right? Only fuzzy.

I mean, not that beautiful is a requirement, but it's nice to be able to think it's a possibility.

Melocactus azureus.
I just liked this one. I'm not sure why I didn't buy it; it may be that I thought I had too many bluish cacti at home already (Pilosocereus pachycladus, Cereus peruvianus, the one that may or may not be Browningia hertlingiana, Leuchtenbergia principis). Kind of regretting the choice, now that I re-examine the picture.

Next up, plants I didn't buy at the ex-job:

Begonia 'Soli-Mutata.'
I maybe should have asked for some leaf cuttings, to take home and propagate. I couldn't have afforded the whole plant, but I'm reasonably confident in my ability to start new plants from leaves, which is way cheaper.

Begonias and I don't get along amazingly well, but it might have been worth a try. The texture on those leaves is pretty cool.

Selaginella flabellata.
No spikemosses or clubmosses ever, at least not in an extra-terrarial sense. This one isn't even especially pretty, though it kind of looks like a piece of arborvitae (Thuja spp.) or something, which is interesting. The common name, according to the tag, was "cypress fern," which pleases me, because it's another instance of a common name where all parts of the name are technically wrong. It's not a fern, it's not a cypress.

Zygonisia Cynosure 'Blue Birds.'
I don't normally include orchids in the walkaway posts, both because orchids usually get their own posts and because they usually don't count as walkaways: most of the time, they're far enough out of my price range that I can't ever even be especially tempted.

I wasn't especially tempted by this one either, although: I'm told that this was the only plant from the most recent shipment of stuff that WCW purchased, I haven't seen it before, or even anything terribly similar (Zygonisia is a cross between Aganisia and Zygopetalum, and I've seen Zygoneria, which is a cross between Neogardneria and Zygopetalum. So I can say I've seen a relative, maybe.), and the pot was small (4" / 10 cm), which briefly gave me hope that it might be more affordable. (Sadly, no: $35.)

That said, I took more pictures than just the above, so as long as we're here anyway, we may as well stop and look at them:




Okay. Now on to Wallace's, in Bettendorf, IA.

Pilea microphylla 'Pink.'
When I first saw this, I thought it was kind of neat. It's at least something I'd never seen before, and hadn't even imagined, so points there. And it was cheap ($5), and belongs to a genus I generally find congenial.

But then there's the part where it's, you know, kind of ugly. While I was looking around, at one point a mother and son (who looked about 10-13) came by, and the mother was talking to someone on the phone. She told the son to hurry up and pick something out for his grandmother so they could go, and then she went back to talking on her cell phone. He started reaching for this plant, which she noticed. She stopped her conversation long enough to tell him, in a what's-wrong-with-you tone, Not that one! What are you thinking? That looks half dead.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. She was right! It looks way better close up than it does from a distance, and despite the name, it's more sort of an ivory than a pink. Maybe for a small terrarium, though.

Aglaonema 'Cutlass.'
This was a serious temptation. Not that I don't already have a lot of Aglaonemas, but I like the look of this. They had a couple other Aglaonema varieties that I hadn't seen before ('Juliette' and 'Mystic Marble'), which were both sort of like what you'd get if you averaged 'Maria' and 'Jubilee:' just your basic Aglaonema with medium sized, elliptical leaves patterned in dark green and silver. Technically I hadn't seen them before, but I'd still seen them before, you know? 'Cutlass' I like, though: I've seen a few Ags with long, narrow leaves, but nothing this extreme. Perhaps we'll run into one another again someday.

Adiantum sp.
Not a serious temptation -- what am I, crazy? -- but I thought the Adiantum was worth noting. As far as I can remember, this is the first one I've seen for sale anywhere in, literally, years. I miss things, and forget things, so maybe I've missed or forgotten a maidenhair fern here or there too, but still. You don't see Adiantum around. This is maybe because as soon as someone ships them here, they wither, brown, and turn to dust. Just guessing.

Anyway. What about yourself? Anything cool you've passed up lately? Or anything dull, even: we don't judge, here at PATSP.³

-

¹ (Not a particularly good word, but the best I could come up with.)
² Etiolated: describes plants with thin, stretched-looking, and pale new growth, caused by insufficient light. Though they may produce normal-sized new growth if moved to a better location, the old growth won't bulk up to match.
³ Not technically true, but tell me anyway. I'll be nice.