The Very Slow and Occasionally Sticky Inferno

So here's what's been going on.

Watering the plants has always been time-consuming and tedious, but it got worse in April. I've been watering almost everything in the house on a 14-day rotation. A lot of the plants would prefer more frequent checks than that, but 14 days is what I'm able to do, so they either live with getting watered every 14 days, or they die, or I make a special exception for them and check them every seven days. Previously, the special exception category was limited to about 10-15 plants on a small table in the plant room, but in April, I decided that about 500 plants in the basement also needed to be getting checked every 7 days, because a lot of them were seedlings or newish cuttings or plants that are just really drought-sensitive, and they wouldn't survive if I tried to keep them on the 14-day schedule.

What this has meant is that instead of checking about 1000-1050 plants every 14 days, I was suddenly checking about 1500-1600 plants every 14 days. So I took the most tedious and time-consuming part of the hobby and made it like 50% worse, basically.

And because of the extra work, I thought to myself at some point in May or June or probably both: I bet I'm never going to be lying on my deathbed thinking, "Gee, I wish I'd spent more time watering plants." And as I started mailing out plants to people I was selling to or trading with, I started fantasizing about how I could scale back the collection in a way that didn't involve outright killing anything, because that always makes me feel bad.

Open this in its own tab and you can even see its disgusting little legs.
And then the scaling back started to happen, in the most literal way possible: I started finding scale insects on the plants. One plant at the end of March. A handful at the beginning of May. And then at the end of June, the floodgates opened and I was finding scale everywhere:

1 Alpinia zerumbet variegata (plant room; 31 March; discarded)
3 Alworthia 'Black Gem' (basement; 1 May; discarded)
1 Aloe NOID (basement; 8 May; discarded)
1 Albuca bracteata (basement; 28 May; treated)
1 Strelitzia reginae (plant room; early June?; treated)
1 Aloe polyphylla (basement; 26 June; discarded)
1 Philodendron squamiferum (living room; 27 June; treated)
1 Agave desmettiana, variegated (basement; 28 June; discarded)
1 Agave titanota (basement; 2 July; treated)
1 Agave americana (basement; 2 July; treated)
2 Agave 'Blue Glow' (basement; 2 July; treated)
2 Agave lophantha (basement; 2 July; treated)
3 Aloe vera (basement; 3 July; discarded)
3 Gasteraloe x beguinii (basement; 3 July; discarded)
1 Aloe x 'Silver Ridge' (basement; 3 July; discarded)
13 Alworthia 'Black Gem' (basement; 3 July; discarded)
5 Hoya polyneura (basement; 9 July; discarded)
1 Philodendron hederaceum micans (basement; 11 July; discarded)
1 Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald' (basement; 11 July; treated)
4 Pereskia aculeata var. godseffiana (basement; 12 July; discarded)
1 Ficus benjamina 'Black Diamond' (basement; 12 July; treated)
1 Hippeastrum 'Red Lion' x ? (basement; 16 July; discarded)
1 Hippeastrum 'Red Lion' x ? (basement; 23 July; treated)

I think there were three separate infestations here, based on what plants were affected and when I noticed.

The first plant, the Alpinia, was I think was a single isolated infestation: I don't know where the scale could have come from, since I hadn't brought anything new into that area, but the plant was stressed, so it's possible it had a low-grade infestation for a long time, and then it got a lot worse really fast when it got stressed.

Scale on the Alpinia.
The second infestation barely counts: somebody sent me a cutting in June that had some scale on it, but I found them pretty much immediately, and it wasn't very advanced, so I think that's not going to be a big deal either.

And then the third. I think it came in on an Aloe polyphylla I received in December as a gift, because the outbreaks have all been taking place on plants that had been grown near the plant in question at one point or another. This is the infestation that swept the basement, might still be sweeping it, and what's caused all the troubles.

It's now been a couple weeks since any new scale was spotted, so possibly the worst is over. For a while there, though, I'd have to throw out more plants every time I watered, and that was depressing as hell.

But did I let myself sink into despondency and depression? Hell, no! I took action! For a few plants that I suspected had been exposed, but which I couldn't find any scale on, I decided to get out there ahead of the infestation and spray neem oil on them, to stop the infestation before it became visible. Which sounds like a good idea, right?

Yes. Well. You know how the directions on neem oil say not to use it on plants that are in direct sun, or that will be exposed to sun within a few hours of application, and all that? They should probably also add fluorescent lights to that warning, because within 24 hours, I'd completely defoliated two small Euphorbia trigona cuttings, and produced a few bleached spots and several ominous dark brown blisters on my baby Agave victoriae-reginaes. The former have bounced back, but the latter look to be permanently disfigured:

Agave victoriae-reginae, neem damage.
Which was even more discouraging, not that I learned my lesson. I then sprayed a plant room Euphorbia milii and Pedilanthus tithymaloides with neem because there was some kind of fungus that had been growing on their leaves. The Euphorbia responded by dropping about 95% of its foliage, immediately. The Pedilanthus was less of a drama queen about it, and only lost about 30% of its leaves, over the space of a month. Either way, though.

Euphorbia milii, after neem oil treatment for fungus. It was technically a success, I suppose, in that I'm no longer even remotely concerned about the fungus. Probably what happens next here is that I take cuttings and start new plants, but I haven't tried that yet.
Also, some of the Agaves I treated with neem and stuck outside also bleached (no blistering, though); they'll probably come back inside again in the fall, because the scale is probably not a problem anymore, but it'll be sad regardless, since they looked better when they had scale but no sunburn: I didn't really have the time or means to try to ease them into the outdoor light, and we don't have much for shady spots.

So then I started sinking into despondency.

All this was happening on top of the usual plant attrition, too. Not saying I encourage it or anything, but it's normal for me to lose a plant here, a plant there, for various reasons over time, and this was an exceptionally good summer for that.

I finally had it with Crassula ovata 'Gollum' and threw the lot out, because they persisted in developing a stupid fungus (maybe the same fungus, maybe a different one; I have no idea) even though I told them not to, and I didn't have a way to make them stop if they weren't going to listen.

The Salvia elegans all dried out (even getting checked weekly, they still dried out!) and died, save for one, which had a round of spider mites and is only barely alive now.

The Aeschynanthus radicans all gave up due to underwatering.

I threw out most of the Gynura aurantiacas I had when became clear that nobody was ever going to want to buy one. This is something I should probably have learned last year, but I'm slow.

The Fatshedera x lizei got spider mites and was thrown out. In fairness, I should note that I'd been expecting that to happen for almost two years, so it should probably get some kind of posthumous medal.

One of the Hatioras ("Easter cactus") imploded, the way they do.

And so on.

It was basically like the plant collection had caught fire. A very slow, and occasionally sticky, inferno. Everything was sort of slowly falling apart: scale, drought, scorching, defoliation, 50% more watering to do, spider mites, and fungus. It also wasn't getting any better. I had no way to know what plants might go bad next. There wasn't much I could do about it. And when I tried to do something about it, I mostly just made things worse.

The upshot of all this being that for about two or three weeks, I basically hated my plants. I didn't want to think about them, talk about them, or take pictures of them, and I sure as hell didn't want to water them, because the surest way to find something horrible hiding in your plant collection is to pick them up and look at them. Which you have to do, in order to water the way I water. (I still did take care of them, of course, because I recognized that I'd probably like them again eventually, and that there was no point punishing the healthy plants upstairs for the scale infestations of the plants downstairs. I just hated doing so more than usual.)

Echinacea 'PowWow Wild Berry,' at the ex-job, with what I believe to be aster yellows disease. PATSP has an official celebratory flower (Gazanias), so it seems only appropriate that PATSP should have an official flower of depression (It's pretty amazing that I've gotten by without an official depression flower for four and a half years, honestly.), and this was kind of the best I could come up with. My apologies to any Echinacea fans in the audience.
It's now been a couple weeks since I've found a new scale infestation. (New mealybugs as of last Wednesday, alas, but the scale seems to have slowed down.) In the last couple weeks, the plant collection has done two big things which I am choosing to interpret as apologies too. I won't tell you what those are yet, but there should be posts about them in the relatively near future. So we're getting back to the point where I'm able to appreciate plants again, somewhat, but I'd still rather not spend a lot of time thinking about them.

The blog, consequently, will be a bit up in the air for a while. I'm officially no longer on hiatus, but I'm probably not going to be posting very often, and I'll probably only be doing that when something exceptionally cool happens. And I'll keep going like that until . . . something changes and I start doing something else, I guess. Your guess is pretty much as good as mine right now.

List: Houseplants With Brown or Partly Brown Leaves

Brown is a pretty unusual color for a living plant, though it's such a common color for dead ones that one wonders why more living plants don't try it, for the camouflage.

This is a particularly tough category, so some of these are a stretch, and others aren't a stretch but the pictures don't show it well. If anybody has some recommendations for brown-leaved plants that I've left out, I'd be happy to hear them.

Alworthia 'Black Gem.'

Cryptanthus cvv. (some cvv.)

Cyanotis kewensis.

Kalanchoe orgyalis.

Kalanchoe tomentosa 'Chocolate Soldier.'

Lithops sp.

Philodendron 'Prince of Orange.'

Pilea 'Moon Valley.'

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Tilt a Whirl.'

Vriesea splendens.
I have varying levels of experience with the above set of plants, so my recommendations may be less reliable than usual, just so you know. The three of the above I would recommend most strongly would be Alworthia 'Black Gem,' Philodendron 'Prince of Orange,' and Vriesea splendens. None of them are particularly good in low-light situations, but that's true of everything on the list.

My favorite is the Alworthia: I've had one (and then, later, several) for a long time, and I can't recall them ever being any trouble. The brown color doesn't develop without pretty intense light, but even when they're just green, they're good plants.

Second favorite would have to be Vriesea splendens, which is maybe not the brownest of the plants on the list, but it's also pretty easy to grow. Easier than its reputation would have you believe, anyway.

Third would be Philodendron 'Prince of Orange,' which is not, technically, a plant I've grown, but I've had the related plants 'Moonlight' and 'Autumn,' and those have both (eventually) become well-behaved citizens of the plant collection. Light was apparently the main issue, though temperature might have been a problem also. 'Autumn' was all but brought back from the dead, i.e., it was restarted from cuttings, and 'Moonlight' has always been pretty-well behaved, but it turned into a rock star when moved to the plant room about a year ago. (Fertilizer, it turns out, is also helpful. I should do a fertilizer post sometime.) I have no reason to think 'Prince of Orange' is significantly worse than the others. The brown coloration is very temporary, and happens somewhere during the leaves' transitions from orange (brand new) to green (old), but if you're not too picky about the definition of "brown," it's in there.

The anti-recommend probably ought to be Lithops spp., but I've been hard on Lithops lately and feel bad going after it a second time. So instead, I will un-recommend Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Tilt-a-Whirl.' I managed to keep a number of coleus indoors over the winter, even propagating them as I went, but even with lots of artificial light, I was unable to keep them from getting leggy and hideous on me (particularly 'Splish Splash'). Though they can be overwintered indoors, and extremely motivated persons can grow them under lights year-round, I don't recommend bringing them inside if there's any chance of growing them outside.

Not pictured:

Calathea makoyana, a little
Codiaeum variegatum, some cvv.
some Episcia cvv.
some Gasteria cvv.
some Kohleria cvv. (thanks, Andrew!)
some Pelargonium x hortorum cvv.
Philodendron 'Autumn' (in the same way as for 'Prince of Orange')
Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk' (?)
Polyscias scutellaria, a little bit
Sansevieria kirkii var. pulchra 'Coppertone' (thanks, Karen!)
Zamia furfuracea (in high light)
Zingiber malaysianum (under certain viewing conditions)

Really, Really New Plants, plus bonus pretty picture

After a very long period (a couple weeks?) of neither gaining nor losing any plants, the count ratcheted up a couple times last Thursday and Friday. They're not all incredibly interesting, but a few of them are unusual enough to be noteworthy.

Also I should show you the new Iresine herbstii 'Blazin' Rose' that I got at Wallace's when I went there for the orchid show, just because I think it's cool. Are Iresines supposed to be huge like this, or is this something specific to this variety? 'Cause seriously, some of these leaves are like five inches long, and almost as wide. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. It's practically a croton.

Iresine herbstii 'Blazin' Rose.' The pot is five inches (13 cm) in diameter.
But better, obviously, on account of not actually being a croton.

Then the batch from last Thursday came from Jake Henny, of the blog Plant Daddy (that's right: the Jake Henny! E-mailed me!), who offered to send an Aglaonema 'Golden Bay,' since I said a few posts back that I didn't have one yet, in passing, while complaining about the disappearance of Dieffenbachia 'Tropic Forest.' I expect to like 'Golden Bay;' other white-stemmed Aglaonemas ('Peacock,' 'Brilliant') have done really well for me, and 'Golden Bay' was well-behaved at work when we had them.

Aglaonema 'Golden Bay.'
That was nice enough on its own, but then as a bonus, he threw in a couple plants of a new variety of Philodendron hederaceum, 'Frilly Philly,' which I had seen on-line a few times but had not yet viewed in person. It didn't look quite like I expected: a lot of the on-line photos were unclear, or had the plant trained vertically, so I couldn't really tell what it was like.

So what's it like?

Philodendron hederaceum 'Frilly Philly.' (Henny uses P. scandens oxycardium as the species name. Tomato, tomahto.)
Well. You wouldn't think it was a P. hederaceum to look at it. The leaves are narrow, and fairly small, not even remotely heart-shaped. When I showed the husband, his comment was that it looked almost like a trailing bamboo or something. Everything about it on-line so far appears to be press releases, so it's very new, but 'Frilly Philly' was developed via irradiation (a mutation technique touched on in the profile for Begonia rex-cultorum, q.v.) of P. hederaceum (see .pdf file) and the mutation is apparently stable. It's also supposed to branch a lot more freely than other varieties of the same species. Do I like it? I'll let you know. For right now, I'm mostly just surprised at how different it is, both from the parent plant and from my expectations.

Then on Friday, I was going a little crazy from not getting out of the house since the trip to Wallace's, so we went to Iowa City and I stopped at my former workplace. I had every intention of not buying anything; I was just going to take pictures to use on the blog, talk to whomever was around, and then go, but you know how these things work.

So I got a replacement Crassula muscosa (I'd had one a while ago, but I pitched it when it got mealybugs) --

Crassula muscosa. Sometimes also Crassula lycopodioides. I'm not sure whether lycopodioides is an obsolete synonym or a different species entirely.
-- and an Agave victoriae-reginae. I had one of these already, but this one -- which has been at the store for years, by the way; I was the one who divided it off its parent and potted it up originally -- looks like it's offset seven or eight more rosettes, which in theory could be divided. Even if I lose half and only get four plants out of it in the end, that's still a pretty good deal, for a plant that's not found that often around here.

Agave victoriae-reginae. The pot is three inches wide diagonally. I haven't tried to count up how many offsets there are here, but it's a lot. Some are just very very tiny.
Also I bought a plant that was labeled only "Haworthia hybrid."

"Haworthia hybrid."
I suspect it is actually an intergeneric Aloe x Haworthia ("Alworthia") or Gasteria x Haworthia ("Gasterworthia") cross, rather than a hybrid of two Haworthia species, mostly based on the flowers.

The flowers on the "Haworthia hybrid." It was, obviously, already in bloom when I bought it.
All the Haworthia flowers I can recall seeing are small white five-petaled things with a greenish stripe down the center of each petal; all the Gasteria flowers I can think of are pinkish-orange tubular things with a slightly bigger base (the botanical name comes from the Greek gaster, meaning "stomach," and refers to the shape of the flowers). The flowers on this seem like a pretty straightforward compromise between the two things, being tubular five-petaled flowers with a pinkish-orange, slightly bigger base, shading to white with greenish stripes, so I suspect Gasterworthia more than Alworthia. But there are Aloes with tubular pinkish-orange flowers that end in green-striped white as well; witness Aloe 'Doran Black:'

Flowers from Aloe 'Doran Black,' or something I think might be Aloe 'Doran Black,' photographed in front of Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender' flowers. Secondary colors!
Which means that 'Doran Black' is a cross-generic hybrid too and I've just misidentified it, that Aloe is a really variable genus, that flowers are not sufficient to identify specific genera within the Asphodelaceae family, or some combination of these. So I don't think I'm ever really going to know what this is. But it was a largish Haworthia-oid thing, so I had to have it. Because that is just how I roll.

[UPDATE: There appears to be agreement that this is a Gasterworthia / Gasworthia / Gasterhaworthia, possibly 'Banded Pearls' or 'Royal Highness.' Neither appears to be especially common, so there aren't a lot of photos to investigate in either case, and the photos I did manage to find are fairly variable, suggesting that there's either a lot of misidentification going on out there or that they're highly variable plants. So for now we'll call it Gasterworthia cv.]

[ALSO: Gasworthia, Gasterworthia, and Gasterhaworthia all appear to be used to describe Gasteria-Haworthia crosses. Searching Google for each turns up 245 incidences of Gasworthia, 984 Gasterhaworthias, and 13200 Gasterworthias, so Gasterworthia is the one I'm going to use.]

And speaking of large, and really, really new: Philodendron 'Spicy Dog.'

Philodendron bipinnatifidum (?) 'Spicy Dog.'
This is so new that there's basically nothing about it on the internet (I found exactly two mentions on the whole internet, neither one of which contained any useful information beyond confirming that the plant exists), so I have no idea what kind of ride I'm in for, whether it's available under a different name, whether it's a hybrid or a variety of Philodendron bipinnatifidum, or basically anything else. All I know at this point is that the pot had a sticker on it identifying it as P. bipinnatifidum, it looks like the P. 'Xanadu' that ate Cleveland (the longest leaf is 14 inches / 36 cm), the petioles are spotted, and the name makes no sense whatsoever -- there's nothing spicy or canine about it as far as I can tell. (I checked with Sheba, in her capacity as resident canine expert, and she concurs.) It looks like injury to the leaves and the consequent leaking of sap leads to a mold problem sooner or later; the undersides of some of the leaves had the sooty black mold on them that I've seen on other plants. But it came off.

I don't, of course, have room for it, but it's getting warm enough to be thinking about keeping some of the plants outside, so maybe some of them will move out, leaving room for new indoor residents. We can hope.

List: Houseplants With Totally or Mostly Black Leaves

I don't think there are actually any plants that are genuinely black black, but quite a few of them can come close, usually as very dark greens, reds, or purples.
There are also a couple very dark grays out there, but they're few and far.

As a group, these don't photograph terribly well. Too much light and they no longer look black; too little light and you can't see them against a dark background.

As always, I am aware that I've left things out, because there's no way not to. So I'm open to suggestions if anybody wants to leave some.

Alocasia 'Polly.' (African mask plant) More of a really dark gray-purple than a black.

Alworthia 'Black Gem.' I know it doesn't look like it in this photo. That's because it's not. Grown in bright light, though, this will turn a very dark green-black.

Begonia rex-cultorum 'Harmony's Red Robin,' and other Begonia cvv. to greater or lesser degrees. This is not a good example, since the leaves are mostly red, but the solid-color, darker plant I have, which is 'Texas Coffee Star,' 'Gladys Meyer,' 'Black Coffee,' or something like that, photographs weirdly.

Calathea NOID, possibly 'Medallion.' Also some other Calathea cvv. Usually just very dark green, though the leaves usually have a red or purple back to them which makes them look a little darker.

Ficus elastica 'Burgundy.' (rubber plant) The exact color depends on how the light hits it and growing conditions, but this is also a very good approximation of black.

Ludisia discolor. (jewel orchid; Ludisia discolor) Very dark red.

Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Niger.' (black mondo grass) Very dark green. Not much of a houseplant, really: it doesn't do a lot indoors. But it can be grown there. And it's very, very dark. So.

Pellionia pulchra. (watermelon plant) Very dark gray with even darker veins. This picture makes it look greener than it appears under normal circumstances.

Schefflera (Dizygotheca) elegantissima (false aralia) I still prefer calling it Dizygotheca, partly because it seems more appropriate for a plant with such dark green leaves to have a name containing the word "goth."

Zingiber malaysianum. (midnight ginger) Very dark red, sometimes verging on dark orange. Older leaves may be more green than red, especially in lower light.

If I had to choose just three, Alworthia 'Black Gem' would definitely make the cut, as would Zingiber malaysianum and probably Schefflera elegantissima. Though there are others in the above list I like, too. Alworthia 'Black Gem' is definitely the easiest of the above, and it self-propagates well, which are both endearing qualities as far as I'm concerned. Zingiber malaysianum is much harder (somewhere around a 6.1 on the difficulty scale), but the color of the leaves is fun (especially when light is shining from behind them), and the plant also has a light, spicy, gingery scent, which is only appropriate since it's a ginger.

Schefflera elegantissima, which I am still calling Dizygotheca in my head, is also kind of a pain, mostly with regard to pests, but the color and shape are either unique or very uncommon, and at least one of my plants is growing very well for me. (I had three others at one point in the past, which did not.)

Not pictured:

• Aechmea 'Black Chantinii'
• Aeonium 'Zwartkop'
• Alocasia 'Frydek?'
• Aloe variegata (in bright light)
• Anoectochilus chapaensis (jewel orchid) (strongly resembles Ludisia discolor)
• Anoectochilus formosanus (Taiwan jewel orchid)
• Anthurium x 'Marie'
• Aphelandra squarrosa (zebra plant)
• Codiaeum variegatum, some cvv. (croton)
• Colocasia cvv., some cvv. (elephant ear)
• Cordyline fruticosa, some cvv. (ti plant)
• Cryptanthus cvv. (some cvv. like 'Black Mystic')
• Cyclopogon elatus (jewel orchid) (strongly resembles Tradescantia zebrina in the davesgarden photo)
• Dossinodes Indra's Net (jewel orchid)
• some Episcia varieties (flame violet) have dark gray or brown leaves
• Ficus benjamina 'Midnight' ('Midnight' ficus tree)
• Ficus microcarpa (at least some cvv.; the one I have cuttings of is very very dark, except for new growth)
• Goodyera reticulata (jewel orchid)
• Haworthia attenuata (zebra plant)
• Haworthia limiifolia var. limiifolia (fairy washboard)
• Haworthia pumila
• Macodes petola (jewel orchid)
• Maranta leuconeura 'Marisela,' other M. l. cvv. to some degree or another (prayer plant)
• Nematanthus cvv., some cvv. (guppy plant)
• Neoregelia cvv., some cvv.
• Peperomia caperata, some cvv. (Emerald Ripple, ripple peperomia)
• Philodendron 'Black Cardinal'
• Philodendron 'Imperial Red'
• Philodendron 'Pink Princess'
• Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk'
• Pilea 'Silver Tree'
• Sansevieria trifasciata, some cvv. (snake plant, mother-in-law's tongue)
• Solenostemon scutellarioides, some cvv. (coleus)
• Syngonium wendlandii?
• Tradescantia zebrina (wandering Jew)
• Vriesea ospinae var. gruberi
• Vriesea splendens (flaming sword)

Site-related: Difficulty numbers

Back in November, I sat down in front of the computer with the difficulty-numbers spreadsheet and started anew, plugging in whatever numbers seemed appropriate without consulting the old numbers first. This took a stupidly long time and failed to accomplish anything meaningful: most of the new numbers came out pretty close to the old ones. However, in a few cases, the experiences I'd had with a plant since generating the old difficulty numbers meant that the new difficulty numbers were significantly different. So I've had vague plans to change the numbers over to the new ones for two and a half months now, and I've decided to do this today. The sidebar list has already been put into the new order; I'll be going into the profiles to change the numbers there over the next day or two. This is unlikely to affect you in any way whatsoever, though in theory if you click on the right profile at the right time, you might see no number at the top, or something like that.

I won't give you the full list of changes, since, as I said, most of them were pretty similar to the old numbers anyway (and in a handful of cases, they were exactly the same), but here are the biggest movers, and reasons, where applicable:

Went from easier to harder:

Clivia miniata 'Aztec Gold,' without flower.
Clivia miniata (3.2 to 4.4) -- I think the main change here has to do with the fairly extreme switch in care between summer and winter, though I also may have initially underestimated their capacity for getting bugs. (Mine don't have bugs, knock wood, but I've seen mealys on other people's Clivias often enough that I'm taking it more seriously as a risk.)


Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana.'
Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana' (1.2 to 2.6) -- still an easy plant, overall, but I've had a lot of weird little things happen that make me think I was overestimating it before. Growing tips have died and resprouted (a side effect, I think, of watering from overhead; they don't like to get water stuck inside the growing tip), sprouts from the side of a cane have suddenly blackened for no reason, that kind of thing.


Begonia rex-cultorum 'Harmony's Red Robin.'
Begonia rex-cultorum (8.0 to 9.6) -- subsequent bad work experiences, plus the realization that nobody else is that great with these either, leads to Begonia stealing the most-difficult spot away from Gardenia. Though I still like my 'Texas Coffee Star,' or whatever it is, and it seems not to hate me nearly as much as every other rex begonia I've ever met.


Ledebouria sp.
Ledebouria socialis (2.2 to 3.9) -- Had some watering problems last summer. I still haven't figured out whether I was watering too much or not enough, but whichever it was, they weren't happy about it. It probably didn't help that I'd divided my plant into three last spring.


Dracaena sanderiana.
Dracaena sanderiana (1.1 to 3.5) -- Part of this is sheer unreasoning hatred: I've never liked these. But I've also had some problems with a plant that used to belong to the husband, that I've taken over care of. Some of the growing tips are dying, the soil has springtails (or something), I've seen lots of other people's plants just up and die over nothing. They're not good long-term plants.


Aspidistra lurida 'Milky Way.'
Aspidistra lurida 'Milky Way' (1.1 to 4.8) -- I recently lost my third A. lurida, in the winter, to unclear cultural problems. I thought I had it figured out the first time, but then the second died. So then I bought a third one, and it stuck around for an admirably long time, but it's died too. AND I DO NOT KNOW WHY. So I hate this plant. No more Aspidistras, ever. Even A. elatior, which I've never even tried before. Just because it's related.

Went from harder to easier:

Cissus quadrangularis.
Cissus quadrangularis (2.4 to 1.2) -- I don't actually know what numbers changed here to make this jump happen.


Pilea cadierei.
Pilea cadierei (6.0 to 4.8) -- Though still more difficult than your average plant (mostly because it needs more warmth and humidity than most), I think I was overcautious when I came up with the original numbers. It doesn't appear to have particularly unreasonable humidity requirements, and it's been growing fine in the basement all winter, so temperature isn't that big of a deal either.


Alworthia 'Black Gem.'
Alworthia 'Black Gem' (3.3 to 1.8) -- I have yet to have a problem with these. It's likely I was being more skittish about overwatering than has proven to be the case. (Though some of my success there may be because I have a really lean soil mix; I'm not sure if I'd be as confident if I were using Miracle Gro or something.)


Senecio macroglossus.
Senecio macroglossus (5.4 to 3.9) -- I still don't especially like the plant, but I suspect the watering problems I talked about in the original profile were partly a matter of bad soil and overpotting. I probably also wasn't giving the plant enough light, then. They seem fairly resilient, if still a little more difficult than the average houseplant.


Homalomena 'Emerald Gem.'
Homalomena 'Emerald Gem' (5.6 to 3.8) -- We've reached some sort of agreement, is all I can say. It's possible, again, that overpotting was part of the problem originally; it always threw leaves after I watered, and then stayed wet for a long time. Lately, though, it's been getting much better about this. It wilts slightly when it needs water, I give it water, and then it sends up three new leaves in quick succession. It still doesn't look as good as it did when I bought it: by this point, the stems are getting kind of leggy, and all the leaves are pointing straight up, because I have it under a fluorescent light and it doesn't really get any light from the side. But the new leaves are large and increasingly abundant, and there are even some new suckers. So we've turned a corner.


Synadenium grantii.
Synadenium grantii (3.5 to 1.7) -- Aside from some understandable trauma very recently (I transplanted some cuttings to a large pot, and they dropped leaves), and occasional dropped leaves to let me know I waited too long to water, I've never seen Synadenium grantii have a problem with anything. Not sure how it got the 3.5 rating to begin with, but I think 1.7 is about right.


Hylocereus sp.
Hylocereus undatus (3.1 to 1.2) -- It's a fugly, fugly plant, even when it's more or less healthy (and mine actually is a little etiolated, which doesn't make it prettier), but it's not hard to grow. I actually kind of wish it were a little harder to grow, so I had more of an excuse for the extreme hideousness.

How to Divide an Alworthia

As you may have noticed, I'm trying to do more how-to posts lately:

• How to Rebloom a Peace Lily,
• How to Repot a Plant Which is Nearly Your Own Size and Means You Harm (not the original title, but accurate),
• How to Make Your Own Ferns at Home,
• How to Get 550ish Plants Into a 2-Bedroom Apartment, etc.

This is sort of the natural consequence of 1) not being able to rely on pictures from work for posts to the extent that I used to, and 2) not working also means that when I have to do stuff around the house, I'm a lot more likely to have the time to take pictures of the process.

So this particular task involves my Alworthia 'Black Gem.' I got it as a single little rosette in the mail, through a plant exchange in 2007, and in the two years since, it has grown into a tightly-packed bundle of plants, which is awesome.¹ When this sort of thing happens, I want to propagate, because . . . well, because that's just what you do when you have an easily-propagated plant that grows well for you. I mean, what were my other options?


(Aloe and Alworthia cvv. vary considerably in their tendency to offset, by the way. Many of mine have not offset at all. This may be, to some degree, a function of how long I've had them and what kind of care I've given them, but at least some of the latter group are "tree aloes," which grow tall and branched, rather than producing offsets in low clumps. 'Black Gem,' 'Walmsley's Blue,' and 'Doran Black' are all good offsetters, though, and even many of the trees will offset occasionally.)

Anyway. So to divide a clumping Alworthia like 'Black Gem,' first you pull the plant out of its pot and assess the overall situation.


You can't really see it in the picture so well, but these are all connected to one another by thin underground stems. I didn't want to remove the soil to show you because I figured I'd be traumatizing the plant enough already as it was.

Separating the plants from one another is so easy I'm not sure how to tell you to do it. You just grab the base of one rosette gently and pull it away from the rest of the plant: that's it. Generally the daughter plant will come away with a bit of a root system already, though if it doesn't, it's not that big of a problem. You'll notice the one furthest to the left in the below picture doesn't really have anything you could call a root yet. It'll be fine.



From this point on, it's basically indistinguishable from repotting. You fill a pot loosely with dirt:


Then you stick your finger in to make a hole in the dirt:


Then you set the plant in the dirt:


Then you add soil as necessary and firm it up around the roots, so the plant stands upright on its own:


And then you're basically done. I personally water mine in afterward:


Watering in is slightly controversial, in that the usual recommendation is to, at the very minimum, wait for a few days before watering, and some people will even tell you to pot the plants up a few days after separating them, giving the plants time to callus over any wounds incurred in the process of separating them. I don't disagree with this, exactly, but I've also never done it, and I've never lost any plantlets as a result, as far as I can remember. (With Aloes, I'm much more likely to have a plant root and do well for several months, and then die when I overwater it during the winter.)

Certain things might make the callusing / delayed watering thing more necessary: if you're having to reuse old soil from a sick plant, or garden soil (you should not do either of these, but I know some people will anyway), then there's more risk of a fungal or bacterial infection, and allowing some time to callus will do the plant some good. It might also be worth waiting a day or two to plant and water if the plantlets didn't come loose easily: if you think you might have injured the plant a lot in the process of pulling the plantlets off, then by all means, wait.²

However, if you're using clean, sterile soil, as you ought to be, and the plantlets came free easily, your actual risk of rot is pretty minimal, and my experience is that there's no penalty for impatience if you're not cutting corners elsewhere.

Something that is very important is your soil composition. Not only should it be a clean, sterile, and loose mix, but you want to avoid soils that will retain a lot of water. This means no Miracle Gro, or any other mix that's mostly peat moss. Your mix needs to drain quickly, it needs to be permeable to air, and it needs to dry out quickly when it's wet and re-wet quickly when it's dry. Miracle Gro has none of these characteristics.³ I prefer Ball Potting Mix with a bit of Schultz Aquatic Soil⁴ mixed in to speed drainage up a little bit, though you can vary the recipe somewhat. With Aloes, any decent potting mix will work, ideally with a little coarse sand, aquarium gravel, or "aquatic soil." All it really needs to do is sit there and not rot, dissolve, or absorb water.⁵ Perlite, though it will absorb water, does a good enough job of allowing air into the root ball that it's also okay to use, though I still like my aquatic soil better.

Water the new plants cautiously. You should have been doing that anyway, because they're Alworthias, but it becomes even more important with freshly divided plants. I've also found it useful to use bottom heat and bright light while the plants establish: Aloe aristata x Gasteria batesiana offsets were the main beneficiary of the top-light-bottom-heat system I described in the post about my shelving set up, and the 'Black Gems' seem to be settling in very quickly already. I think I'm even seeing new growth already, even though I only did this a couple weeks ago.


This is fairly basic stuff, but it comes up often enough at places like Garden Web, so I figure there must be someone who wants to know.

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DISCLOSURE: Mr_subjunctive was not compensated to endorse Ball Potting Mix or Schultz Aquatic Soil in any way, though if someone from Ball or Schultz wanted to cut him a check after the fact, he would totally deposit it. He would also accept a lifetime supply of either product. Ball, Schultz -- think about it, okay?

¹ As discussed at some length in the Alworthia 'Black Gem' profile, I was not much of an Aloe fan, to begin with: I'd initiated the exchange because I wanted an Aloe variegata, which were (and still are) impossible to find in Iowa, for some reason, and I got a whole bunch of other Aloes thrown in for free. Some of these have worked out better than others: 'Black Gem' is one of the biggest successes, but A. maculata and A. greatheadii var. davyana have also done quite well, and A. 'Walmsley's Blue' is a monster. (In the good way.)
That fall, the husband found me a bunch of assorted succulents for my birthday, including the Gasteraloe previously mentioned, which I like so much it placed #5 in my Top 10 Houseplants list. So I've been forced to progress from a mere tolerance of Aloes and their relatives to actual enthusiasm for them. I even bought a new one, an A. vera, on Sunday. (I hadn't gotten one previously because everybody has them and I find them boring, but Lowe's had one on the sale rack for $1 and I couldn't pass it up.)
² There are situations where it is important to callus a plant before sticking it in soil: if you're taking cuttings of certain cactus or Euphorbia species, for example, you probably need to do this. Some succulent cuttings will work much better if allowed to callus, too, like for example jade plants (Crassula ovata). I don't worry about callusing so much for plants like Aloe, Gasteria, Haworthia, and the like, because these all tend to be somewhat pre-divided: they usually already have some roots, the points of attachment to the rest of the plant tend to be fairly constricted and dry already, and so forth.
³ Well I'm sorry, but Miracle Gro is not particularly good stuff to use for indoor plants, whatever the people at Scotts tell you. It's a particularly bad choice for succulent plants like Aloes and Alworthias. The best mix I've found so far is Ball Potting Mix, which is what we used at work (and sold a lot of, too, as far as that goes). It's more or less perfect directly out of the bag for your average tropicals; for succulents and cacti I do like to amend it a little (keep reading).
I don't know that I necessarily endorse Ball as a company overall: no doubt they're as bad as anybody else. But I will buy their potting mix so long as they keep the composition and price the same, even if I find out it contains puppy blood, because it's really good.


Maybe I'm kidding about the puppy blood. But maybe I'm not.
Ball's product is not cheap, unfortunately: we were selling it at work for $22.50 per 79L bag (the size in the picture) when I left work. It's possible to get it cheaper than that, but around here you have to know people who know people (which I do) and make plans (which is harder), and I haven't gotten it together to do that yet. But then, with any luck, I won't need any more for a long time.
⁴ Schultz Aquatic Soil isn't what you normally think of as "soil" at all: it's basically just a bunch of pieces of fired clay, of more or less uniform size. It's outrageously priced for what it is, but as with Ball's mix, I will be loyal until presented with a better option, because it improves drainage very nicely, even in small proportions, and it won't add fluoride to the soil like perlite will, so it's safe for fluoride-sensitive plants like Dracaenas and Chlorophytum comosum. Prices vary a lot, and less-expensive substitutes may be available (I haven't ever really looked into it that much), but a bag this size will run you maybe $6 at Menards, if you're shopping at the right time of year and in the right store:


⁵ Not quite true, actually: it also needs to have a fairly large particle size. If the particles are too fine, as in very fine sand, they can pack together tightly and cut off air to the roots. So it needs to not rot, dissolve, or absorb water, it needs to be coarse enough in texture that it won't pack around the roots and kill them, and it can't break down immediately into something that will pack around the roots and kill them, either.