Random plant event: Ananas 'Mongo'

I'm still trying to catch up with everything that's happened in the last few weeks. This is one of those things.

It's not visually very interesting, I suppose. I mean, you've probably seen a pineapple before. The main points of interest here are:

1) It just kind of came off spontaneously when I tried to adjust the stalk. (The stalk didn't actually fit into the shelf that the plant's been on since it came inside last fall, so from time to time I have to try to squeeze it back in there without breaking anything important.) It makes total sense that a pineapple's fruit would detach on its own, but for some reason this idea had never occurred to me before.

2) It smells so good. It's probably technically edible, but it's also very tiny, and not bred for taste ('Mongo' is an ornamental variety.), so I'm probably getting more from smelling it occasionally than I would from eating it once.

3) It's tiny, for a pineapple. The actual fruit, excluding the leaves, is only 2 1/2 inches (6.4 cm) long.

When I got 'Mongo,' I was under the impression that it was a cultivar of A. comosus, but at some point along the way I began to doubt this for some reason I don't remember, and started calling it just A. 'Mongo.' After smelling the fruit, I'm now thinking that no, it probably really is a variety of A. comosus after all. (So why not acknowledge that in the post title? I don't know.)

The plant is probably not going to go outside this summer, because I remember how exhausting and unrewarding it was to be moving plants in and out all the time last year. Not that it was going to produce fruit again right away anyway, but that's probably going to slow down the development of offsets.

Grab bag

Not much to report lately; I'm heavily preoccupied with trying to dump imidacloprid into all the plants. It isn't particularly difficult to do: it just makes watering take longer, so there's less time for anything else. And of course I'm still finding scale as I go, though less of it than I expected.

Here are five things I've found interesting enough to stop and photograph, but not interesting enough to write a whole blog post about, in the last couple weeks:

1. Coffea arabica

Of the eight pots of Coffea seedlings I started back in February, I still have six. (The other two got sold at a consignment store in Iowa City.) I up-potted them to 6-inch/15 cm pots a couple weeks ago, because they were drying out before their turn in the watering cycle came around. I've been surprised at how quickly they've grown: I once believed that the plants we got in at the ex-job, about this tall, in 4-inch pots, were probably about a year old, but it seems more likely now that they were only six months. If even that.


2. Corn

The cornfield behind the house got harvested yesterday.¹ Sheba sometimes worries when the machinery shows up to do things to the field (understandable: it's a large, blurry object making growling noises in the back of the house where she plays: I'd be alarmed too), but she either didn't notice it this time or she's getting used to it.

This is slightly sad for me; I like when the field is planted in corn better than I like when it's planted in soybeans. Since we've lived here, they've alternated plantings, so next year will probably be a soy year.


3. Neoregelia 'Gazpacho'

As expected, the Neoregelia 'Gazpacho' has continued to bloom. Less expected is the fuzzy white fungus that appears to be growing on the spent flowers. I can't recall seeing this before, and my ongoing battle with fungus on the Euphorbias has me worrying more about this than I otherwise would, even though I doubt it's the same fungus.

Aside from that, though, the Neoregelia is behaving normally. It already has two good-sized offsets on it.


4. Ananas 'Mongo'

Speaking of offsets.

This is a lot faster than I was expecting. The fruit is still on the plant and everything, though the reduced light indoors has made it lose a lot of its color. Pretty sure all the true flowers have opened and closed already.


5. Spathiphyllum NOID

Finally, one of my older Spathiphyllums (I got it in January 2007) has self-pollinated a number of times, and has produced a couple hundred seeds, but the seeds have so far mostly fallen to fungus, instead of germinating. I had been hopeful that this spadix, which appeared to have been pollinated successfully, and which seemed to be developing normally, might provide another chance, but instead it started to get these white cauliflower-like bumps, and then I accidentally broke it off its stem while I was trying to get it ready for photos, so I never got to see the cauliflowers develop into whatever they were going to develop into. This may be a good thing, depending on why the atypical growth was happening, but I was a little bummed all the same.

There is one exciting thing to report on the whole Spathiphyllum-breeding project, though: my biggest peace lily (likely 'Mauna Loa' or 'Sensation'²), which I've had since January 2003, is blooming right now, after a long bloomless period. The spathe hasn't opened yet, and I don't know for sure if it will be interfertile with my other plants when it does, but I've wanted to propagate it for years now. In almost 11 years, it has never offset, so the only way I'm going to propagate it appears to be by seed. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

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¹ (Also our first snow, though I didn't get a picture of that.)
² I'm guessing those cultivar names on the grounds that they're the main varieties of Spathiphyllum that I'm aware of which get really big. 'Mauna Loa' is one of the oldest and most popular of the big varieties, and 'Sensation' is the largest variety the growers' guide could come up with that's at all common -- supposedly 'Sensation' can reach 5 feet (1.5 m). Mine's not anywhere near 5 feet tall, but it's been indoors for 11 years, so some stunting would be understandable. Even under my non-ideal conditions, the leaves are all a solid 13-19 inches (33-48 cm) long, and it's vastly bigger than my other spaths.
Allegedly there are even peace lilies out there somewhere that can reach 9 feet (2.7 m) tall, though the largest I've personally seen was this guy:

Who was maybe 5 or 6 feet (1.5-1.8 m), and sold to us as 'Sensation.' Even if not the world's largest Spathiphyllum, I wouldn't want to run into it in a darkened alley or anything. Not considering some of the things I've said about spaths in the past.

Random plant event: Ananas 'Mongo'

September 2013.
I've had Ananas 'Mongo'¹ since November 2008, when we got some in at the ex-job. This is long enough ago that I don't remember much about the event, but I blogged about it at the time, so you can read that if you're interested.

It's grown pretty reliably ever since, and this year I put it outside for the summer. This was at least partly because it had gotten so big, and I wanted it out of my way, which is counterproductive because that only made it grow faster, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Depending on how much sun it was getting, it fluctuated between brown, green, and brown-and-green striped, and it got big, and it attracted frogs, and so on, and then at some point in mid-September, I noticed that it was getting really red in the center. Which was confusing, because I was pretty sure all the plants were getting less light, as we approached the equinox, but I took some photos and went on, as you do.

And then it got more intense. And then I started to see a bunch of little tiny bracts emerging from the center of the plant, and I clued in to the fact that this was the beginning of an inflorescence.

Since then, things have gone pretty much how you'd expect. First the inflorescence appeared --

-- and then the true flowers (lavender) began popping out.

Though they never pop out in focus. Dunno what that means.

This is easily the Big Plant Event of the Summer, like last summer's one-two punch of Epiphyllum and Clivia. I mean, other things have happened, some of which were also very exciting, but this is the most dramatic and unexpected. Like with the Clivia, I'd pretty much assumed that my conditions weren't going to be suitable for a bloom, and it was just going to be a foliage plant for me forever, and I was fine with that. So blooming is a huge bonus.

This is my favorite picture of the plant so far. I feel like it ought to be on top of a Christmas tree or something.
Next up: offsets. And the inevitable attempt to root all of them, no matter how little room I have.

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¹ Has probably been referred to previously as Ananas comosus 'Mongo' on the blog before, but the most recent web-surfing I've done on the subject suggests that it is not in fact a cultivar of A. comosus, but is instead a hybrid. Nobody will say what species are involved in making the hybrid, but there are only about eight or nine possibilities.^a If I were being forced to guess, I'd guess that there's probably some A. nanus in there, because nanus has the small, bright pink fruit, and because many of the websites talking about 'Mongo' make reference to how small it is. (The smallness, in my opinion, is overstated. If smallness can be overstated. My plant is a solid 3 or 4 feet^b across, which is medium to large for plants in my collection.) The color suggests some A. lucidus genes are in there too. But that's totally a guess.
     ^a Wikipedia says eight; Plant List says nine. The two sources agree on A. ananassoides, A. bracteata, A. comosus, A. fritzmuelleri, A. lucidus, A. nanus, and A. parguazensis. Wikipedia adds A. erectifolius, which Plant List claims is a synonym of A. lucidus, and Plant List includes two species not on Wikipedia's list: A. monstrosus and A. sagenaria. We will leave the question of which of these, if any, is a legitimate species to the pineapple taxonomists to fight out among themselves in tequila-fueled motorcycle cage matches, as is the pineapple taxonomist custom.
     ^b (0.9 to 1.2 m)

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part LI

The plants are coming in for the winter, and I've got a gigantic backlog of photos to deal with, so it's time for transmitted light pictures again.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Cissus rhombifolia.
Rotate it 90 degrees clockwise and there's a (subtle) peace sign!


Euonymous alatus, autumn.
Well. It's certainly very red, isn't it?


Ficus elastica 'Burgundy,' dying leaf.
This photo is very old (actually all of these photos are very old; I'm still working on a backlog of transmitted light photos from like 2009), but seems particularly appropriate right now. I had two Ficus elasticas. I just threw the small one out because it had scale, and I was like, whatever, I don't like trying to get rid of scale and it's a duplicate anyway, so I'll pitch it and grow the other one. But then the other one came in from outside, and it's been growing mostly horizontally the whole time it was outside because it's apparently one of those trailing rubber trees,¹ so I don't have any spot large enough to put it. And it's not like I'm hugely fond of F. elastica even when they're grown well. So I'm seriously considering throwing it out, or restarting from cuttings, or trying to sell it on Craigslist, or something like that. It's actually looking like a lot of the plants are going to have to be thrown out, sold, or restarted, in order to make space for the ones I actually want to keep. October's gonna be rough.


Pilea peperomioides, newish leaf.
Pilea peperomioides is probably not the most difficult "easy" plant I've ever tried to grow, but it's definitely on the list somewhere. And I have no idea what I was doing wrong.


Episcia NOID.

Ananas comosus 'Ivory Coast.'
This is perhaps not as flashy as some of the photos that follow it, but I think it's my favorite picture from this set. It's possible that I'm just a sucker for parallel venation.


Caladium 'Cardinal.'
Look out green! The red is right behind you! Run! Run! Aiiiieee!


Canna 'Tropicanna.'
As much as I love the red-blooming, green-leaved Cannas (and I do, very much), it seems weird that I haven't yet made it a priority to get one of the other varieties. Not necessarily 'Tropicanna,' (does it even come true from seed? Probably not, right?) but something. It's not as if there aren't a lot of options to choose from. Maybe 2014 will be the year.


Fittonia albivenis NOID.


Graptophyllum pictum.
I've seen Graptophyllum for sale exactly one time since I've been blogging, and I didn't buy it, because it was kind of underwhelming in person. (The books make it look a lot cooler.) Also you have to figure that if it were a satisfying houseplant, people would already be growing it everywhere. So I'm thinking I didn't miss much, but the picture still wound up pretty cool.

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¹ A joke: there is no such thing as a trailing rubber tree. Though there is a rubber vine (Cryptostegia grandiflora), which is neither related to Ficus nor to Hevea brasiliensis, the "real" rubber tree. Common names are dangerously misleading! Shun them!

Saturday morning frog pictures

Ha ha! This picture isn't of Sheba either! Will there ever be a Saturday Sheba picture again? WILL THERE?

Yes, actually. Most likely. But there are other animals around now. You know how it is.

The frog here is in the Ananas comosus 'Mongo.' The plant is now large enough to be sort of menacing, but I suppose that makes it a better home: harder for other animals to get in.

I'm not 100% on the ID, but my guess is that we're looking at another Hyla versicolor, or eastern gray treefrog. The other likely possibility is Cope's gray treefrog, H. chrysoscelis, which is so similar that the two species were considered a single one for a long time. Their ranges mostly overlap (eastern half of the U.S., though H. chrysoscelis is absent from the southeast corner of the continent -- basically Tennessee and North Carolina, and all points south, have only H. versicolor). The difference I find most interesting about the two of them is that apparently they differ in chromosome number: H. chrysoscelis is diploid, and H. versicolor is tetraploid.

Whichever it is, it only lived there for one day. It was a little disturbed by me photographing it, as you can see from its posture above, and I suspect most of our frog visitors are only passing through in the first place. Presumably it moved on to wetter pastures.

Unfinished business: various

One of these again.

The first bit of unfinished business that I should bring up is the announcement I hinted at last Monday. I am really, no fooling, finally in the process of writing a book, as of Wednesday night.

I am doing it entirely wrong, of course. I have no idea whether it will wind up being a book. I have no publishing deals. I've not even talked to any publishers since a couple years ago, nor are there any plans to do so soon. And I don't know whether it will ever be for sale as a self-published thing either. I also don't know how long it's going to take me to write or how long it will be. Basically, I have no idea what I'm doing at all. But the thing is: I have been intending to write something for a very, very long time now. You're surely tired of hearing me say this; I'm definitely tired of saying it. And I haven't been writing anything, all this time, because I've been trying to get everything lined up properly in advance. What do I write about? How shall I format it? Should I try to write a book proposal up for a real publisher, or plan on self-publishing? Etc.

As of Wednesday, I am officially no longer caring about any of that. Those are not fun things to think about, and I don't know how to make those decisions with the information I've got at the moment anyway. So I am going to write a thing, and then I will try to decide what to do with it after that. At this point, I'm only planning to do plant profiles, and I have twenty-one candidates.¹ Probably not all of those are going to happen, and others will turn into something else. Also I might well give up on the whole idea before finishing any of them, but: what little vision I have of the future is currently revolving around those twenty-one plant profiles. For whatever it's worth, I'm starting with Madonna.

I'll eventually set up a progress page or sidebar or something to let you know how it's going.

I do not know, at this point, whether this is going to affect blogging frequency or quality. The hope is kind of that writing the profiles -- which I always used to enjoy, however much I also complained about them -- might make me more excited about, and interested in, plants again, so you may not notice a difference.

And now some plant-related content.


Random plant event: Columnea orientandina (30 August 2012)

The near-perfect pentagon formed by the leaves of the Columneas wasn't planned; I didn't notice it until after I uploaded the photos.
A few of the Columnea orientandina seedlings I started last summer are still with us, though most aren't -- I transplanted twelve pots' worth of C. orientandina seedlings, I think, and only three of those still contain living plants. Eight of the remainder got too dry or too wet or both; one got thrown out because of scale.

I've started two additional rounds of seedlings since then, but the sprouts are so tiny and stringy when they first emerge that I'm scared to handle them. Consequently, I haven't transplanted them yet, and they're probably going to die before I can psych myself up to do it. In the future, I'm going to try starting them directly on soil, rather than trying to start them in vermiculite and then transfer them. If it works, then I don't have to worry about hurting them during transfer, and if it doesn't, well, there will be more seeds later.

Though it sort of doesn't matter anymore, since the seedlings in those three pots are large enough to take cuttings from. I don't have to start them from seeds if I don't want to.


Selling and Trading (30 April 2012)

For all intents and purposes, I won't be selling or trading plants in 2013. It's the whole scale-and-thrips business, mostly: the worst of that seems to be over, but I don't know if I've actually gotten them all. There are other reasons too (mailing plants is a big time drain; sometimes people are supposed to pay for their plants and then don't; I don't always know what I'm going to get when I agree to a trade), but not wanting to mail bugs to people is the main thing. And anyway, I supposedly have a new project now; see above.

Having said that, I'd now like to undercut it by saying that if you've seen a plant on PATSP that you're desperate to have, and you've checked the "Plants I've Tried" list and I'm still claiming to have one, feel free to e-mail and ask about it. (Especially if it's something I've talked about offering for sale in the past.) I'm not going to try to be all organized and official about selling and trading this year, but there are still a few plants I could send out, and maybe a few plants I'd be interested in bringing in, so we'll see what happens. If you're looking to trade, you should check out the "Plants I Want" page first, because there's a whole big list there at the bottom, of plants I am definitely not interested in, and checking that could save us both some time.


Somewhat last-minute grab bag (3 April 2012)

The Philodendron bipinnatifidum sucker is still there. Not growing very quickly, but still there, and the parent plant keeps getting bigger (very slowly), so I guess it didn't signify anything bad.

The poor plant has been terribly, terribly abused, so it's a wonder it's even still alive, never mind growing and self-propagating and all that.

Euphorbia milii 'Candyland' eventually succumbed to the Euphorbia-ravaging fungus. The leaves kept fuzzing over. I pulled them off, but it kept happening. I tried spraying with various things. It kept happening. Finally, in frustration, I cut the top off the stupid thing. The theory was that if there weren't any leaves to infect, the fungus would give up and go home. Instead, the plant got upset about being beheaded, and rotted, and I wound up throwing it out anyway. Oh well.


Unfinished business: various (6 March 2012)

The Excoecaria cochinchinensis lasted until February 2013, so not quite a year. It wasn't dead, and I didn't have a strong recurrence of spider mites (there were occasional small infestations), but it had dropped a lot of leaves, it wasn't replacing them quickly, and it had gotten floppy in a way that was inconvenient. I could have let it stay if it had continued to be pretty, but it wasn't even doing that, and this was during the spell when I was trying to get rid of a bunch of plants I didn't like anymore, so out it went.

The Hatiora with magenta flowers is still around, but it obviously hates it here. Only two of the original four salvaged pots are still around, and one of those just shattered because I moved it up to a bigger pot. Also it's never rebloomed, though that's probably because it's in the basement, where the days are always too long for it to set buds.

The Ananas lucidus is still doing nicely. Here it is in March 2013:

Random plant event: Crassula perfoliata var. falcata (5 March 2012)

And now I'm like 0 for a billion, on Crassulas. This was the one Crassula that was halfway working for me, but then I had to move it out of the south window because it got too big, which it didn't like. Then in the late fall I dropped it, or something fell on it, or something like that, and the main stem broke off. The remaining branches grew for a little while after that, but since they weren't getting the same amount of sun, and the plant was taking up water more slowly (both because there was suddenly a lot less plant there and because it was colder), they eventually wound up rotting. So I'm just done done done done done with Crassulas. They have nice qualities, but they're not well-suited to what I can do here.

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¹ The "people:"
Juliet Capulet • Little Brother • Drag Queen • Patient Zero • Sinead O'Connor • Night Owl • Character Actor • Madonna • Lab Assistant • Stunt Double • Wanker • Fish Out of Water • Understudy • Michelle Rodriguez • Real Estate Developer • Joan Jett • Rosemary's Baby • Labor and Management • Stick in the Mud • Yayoi Kusama
I'd list the plants that go with those, but at the moment, I'm thinking I'd rather not give too much away in advance. Even if I gave you a random-order list of the plants involved, some of them are obvious enough that you'd be able to figure them out, ruining the surprise anyway. So for right now, I'm not going to say which plants, other than to note that two of them are plants I've already written profiles about, but I think I can improve on those so I'm going to attempt to write them again.

Assorted Stuff / Hiatus Announcement

SPECIAL NOTE: I try not to go two consecutive days without a post, but a bunch of stuff popped up on Monday that made it impossible for me to get one together for Tuesday. And then Tuesday was complicated as well (malware on a computer -- not mine, but one I use for Sims and Hulu -- plus unprecedented levels of family drama¹ and the usual barely-doable-within-the-time-available watering), and none of those problems have been resolved yet, so we may as well treat this as the beginning of another long hiatus, 'cause that's what it's going to turn into whether I like it or not. (You can't say you weren't warned.)

Orchid pictures will probably continue to go up about every four days, with minimal commentary, since they're already uploaded and scheduled.

Previously-arranged plant sales, blog comments, and e-mail correspondence should all continue to happen, albeit possibly a bit slower.

So here's the last regular post for a while. I was trying to make up for missing Monday and Tuesday by cramming lots of little fragments of posts together into one (Sort of like a blog-post McNugget.), until my Tuesday went to hell and I ran out of time.

1. Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips'
Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips' is the first plant I've bought in two months, and only the third plant I've purchased in the last six months. (The previous two purchases were the Salvia elegans, which I'm now thinking was a bad decision,² and the Ananas lucidus, which is doing quite well.)


Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips.'
I wouldn't have gotten this one either -- it was on the pricey side,³ and is a genus I haven't tried to grow before -- but I've been wanting a Mangave to try for a very long time, and this is the first thing I've seen for sale that was even close to a Mangave. So we're trying it. So far, so good, though it's lucked into one of the outdoor spots, so I really won't have any idea what it's like to grow indoors for another six months.


2. Amorphophallus konjac
I got an Amorphophallus konjac bulb from a reader at the end of last summer, as part of a trade. Stored it in the plant room on a low (cold) shelf, then potted it up this spring, around the end of April. And then there was a lot of waiting for it to do something.

It still has a ways to go, but I should be seeing an actual unfurled leaf fairly soon. Kind of excited.


The one bad thing about Amorphophallus is that plants with pronounced dormancies, that need to be stored dry during the winter, make me really nervous -- I'm always scared that I'll kill the plant accidentally and not find out until I go to start it again. I don't know why this is more scary to me than the plant-killing I do all the time, but it just is.


3. Grocery Store
Saw some unusual houseplant-related items in the produce section of the grocery store last week; Hylocereus fruits --


-- and Aloe vera leaves.


I knew Hylocereus ("dragon fruit") were sold, though I don't think I've ever seen any around here before. Didn't see a price on them. The opposite is true for the Aloe -- I've seen plenty of Aloes, but never expected to see the leaves for sale without the rest of the plant being attached.


4. What Fresh New Hell is This?
From the ex-job:


The plant looks fine -- some kind of NOID Rhipsalis, I'm guessing -- but what the hell is it growing in? Is that all coconut fiber? Can epiphytic cacti live in something like that?


5. Zea mays
One way to know that you live in Iowa next to a corn field is to check your lawn for . . . hmmm. I don't know if there's a term for these or not.⁴ I'm going to call them "cornweed," until I hear a better name.


There's also a few in the garden along the fence, though you can't see them clearly from this photo.
Squirrels drag unharvested corn cobs from last year's crop into the yard, then scatter the seeds around as they eat them. The corn these will produce isn't likely to be anything we'd want to eat (field corn is gross), so it's kind of pointless to leave it, but all the Iowanness in me rebels at the idea of pulling up a cornstalk, so they stay.


6. Gomphrena 'Audrey White'
In other news, Gomphrena now comes in white. Maybe it always did. I wasn't aware of it until this year, though. I don't know how I feel about it.




I guess that's it for now. See you when I see you.

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¹ I and the husband are personally fine, and don't expect to be directly affected by any of what's going on. Just in case you were worried.
² I had a bunch of cuttings going in the basement, which were doing fine, and then I let them get too dry and lost 4 out of 5 of them. There may have been spider mites as well. This is exactly what happened to the previous batch of S. elegans, as I described back in April, so it's possible that it's just not a plant I can grow anymore.
³ ($14.99 plus tax for a 5-inch pot)
⁴ (There's "volunteer corn," which are the seeds that fell into the soil instead of getting harvested, which come up the following year and are generally removed, but I'm looking for something more specific to the situation of having corn spontaneously appearing in one's lawn.)

Unfinished business: various

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

Random plant events: Assorted little things

I'm working on the Schefflera actinophylla profile, but it isn't done. Or close to done. I'll let you know. (UPDATE: Done!)

Meanwhile, I have a set of semi-recent random plant events; they're all noteworthy to me, but none of them seemed quite substantial enough to warrant its own post.


First up, one of the two very tall Cereus peruvianus plants (photo here) has decided to start growing again. I repotted them in October, which might be why. It could also be because the days have been getting longer (the one that's starting to grow is in the slightly brighter spot), or because I added fertilizer with trace nutrients just before the growth started. I don't know.

I have mixed feelings about this, since there's only just so much room left for them to grow, after which point I suppose I'll have to cut them back and start over. I've had them for seven years, so that will be quite the day.


When I was writing the Ananas comosus profile, I found a number of references to the leaves having spines along the margins, but my personal plant, an A. comosus 'Mongo,' has never had any. I assumed that was just a quirk of the cultivar, until a couple weeks ago.

They're not terribly intimidating marginal spines. In fact, they're pretty marginal marginal spines. But the plant remembers how to make them, I guess.


You're not going to think this is exciting at all, but -- I've had this Monstera for four and a half years, and only at the very beginning of its stay here has it ever grown split leaves. I've tried everything I could think of short of putting the plant outside (there's never been a good place to put it), but it's insisted on producing only smallish, unsplit leaves. Until now. Does this mean it's reconsidered, and is going to be making split leaves for a while? I wouldn't bet on it. But we're getting somewhere.


Finally, I'd started some Pedilanthus from cuttings about a year and a half ago, not long after we moved. By now, they're a respectable size, though some of them have been growing horizontally instead of vertically. (This seems to be on purpose, since they're well-rooted and get plenty of light. I have no idea what they're thinking.) This particular plant caught my eye when I was watering because, in the couple weeks since the previous watering, one of its branches has decided to revert to solid green.

The variegated variety is prettier, but I'm going to encourage and propagate this if I can anyway. I don't have a solid-green Pedilanthus yet.