Materials and Techniques: White Oil

As you have probably guessed, I've started spraying the "white oil" on the plants in the basement (as of August 4). This leaves me basically no time to do anything else, so I'm not doing anything else.

Points of interest about the oil-spraying process so far:

1) It is very messy. Oil and soap and water gets everywhere. I'm still doing it inside, because . . .

2) It's also very time-consuming. Watering a round of plants (bring plants to the tub, put plants in the tub, water, drain, take plants out of tub, return the plants to their original location) normally takes me about 15 minutes. Having to bring every plant to the tub means more trips, and then spraying all surfaces of every plant makes each round of watering take longer, so watering is now happening at less than half the usual speed. Taking the process outside would only serve to make a time-consuming and messy process more so: having oil, soap, and water dripping on the plant room floor is the lesser evil.

3) Emulsification is totally real, you guys. When I started the whole process, I had the oil and the dishwashing liquid in a milk jug, and I shook the jug around to mix the two together, and they mixed, but the mixture wasn't stable, so by the time I was ready to dilute and spray a new batch, the stuff in the jug had mostly separated into two layers again. When it was freshly shaken up, it poured pretty much the same as the oil -- noticeably thicker than water, but not by very much. At some point, though, I shook it up and it thickened into something very different, roughly the consistency of mayonnaise (which is also an emulsion made of about 70-80% vegetable oil, water, and an emulsifier¹), yogurt, or thick shampoo. Pourable, still, but much slower, and it sticks to the measuring spoon terribly. That's gotten a little thinner over time, but it's still very different from the oil I started out with.

White oil concentrate (left) and in the spray bottle I actually use (right).
4) I'm also using roughly three or four times more of the oil/detergent mixture than the recipes I found on-line recommended (I'm using 3 Tbsp in a little less than a quart of water; they recommend 1 Tbsp in a full quart), because after a few test sprayings on a Gasteraloe, I wasn't convinced that there was enough oil in the spray to be accomplishing anything. It is possible that this will turn out to be a disastrous decision, but the plants haven't reacted badly so far, aside from the Breynia disticha, which may have been having other problems.

5) And I'm still seeing new thrips and scale, though I wasn't necessarily expecting them all to vanish like magic at the first application. Not sure I expecting them all to vanish ever, as far as that goes.² But I am having a more difficult time locating thrips, if not scale, so maybe progress is being made.

6) Because of the slowness and messiness, posting is likely to be light for the next couple weeks, as much of my free time will be spent drunkenly sliding around on the plant room floor in a pool of soybean oil and soap,³ and/or cleaning up from same. There'll still be orchid posts every five or six days, unless I forget.

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¹ The emulsifier in mayonnaise is egg, not dishwashing liquid. Or at least it's not dishwashing liquid in your better brands of mayonnaise.
² There's a post to be written, sometime, about the claims I found in a number of sites that were pushing the white oil, that because the oil wasn't a chemical, and because it works by suffocating the insects, there was no way they could evolve resistance to it. Sadly, that is not the case: 1) any atom, whether alone or in combination with other atoms, is a chemical of some kind or another. Vegetable oil is not an exception; it just happens to be one of the chemicals that we can eat large quantities of safely. 2) No, thrips are not likely to evolve beyond the need to breathe oxygen, but they can still evolve resistance to white oil. If I ever get around to writing that post, I'll describe some ways that that could happen. But don't hold your breath, no pun intended.
³ (Not that I'll actually be drunk. Though that may not be the worst idea I've ever had.)

Random plant event: Breynia disticha

I now have three Breynias in the house: the original, and two (barely) smaller plants from cuttings of the original. If they were easier to propagate from cuttings, I would have even more than that, because I like them,¹ but a lot of cuttings fail. (Cutting failure is a good thing in this particular case, though, because they get big quickly, and if all the cuttings had been successful, we would probably have had to give them all their own room.)

I happened to notice a couple months ago that the original Breynia had decided to bloom. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, to the point where although I know I've seen them once before,² I could easily believe that my plants have flowered several other times without me noticing.

This has no real practical application to anything -- I doubt I could pollinate them successfully. Nor is it particularly decorative, appealingly fragrant, or otherwise desirable. But it is news, technically, in that it is something that has happened. So make of that what you will.

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¹ They're easy, except that they always seem to need water. With a lot of plants, you could just move the plant up to a larger pot and get some relief, but Breynia roots fill any additional room they get almost instantaneously. So I've learned to just check for wilting more often, and water them out of turn if they need it.
Otherwise, Breynia is a good plant for me: not overly demanding of light, not prone to bugs (so far, though there have been brief minor spider mite infestations), copes well with indoor humidity and temperature. It's not my favorite plant or anything, but I like it well enough to have three of them.
If you live in a more tropical climate, be advised that Breynia disticha will propagate itself throughout your yard/garden, as well as those of your neighbors. If you live in Florida or Hawaii, in particular, you should not be growing Breynias outdoors. Not that it's going to bring back the native ecosystems, but you can at least try not to make things worse.
As houseplants, obviously, the damage to the ecosystem was done when the house was built, so grow whatever you want, just keep it inside.
² Those photos are better than these photos, if you care.

Six Plants I'm Not Currently Mad At / Poll for the Hive Mind

Oh, Mr. Subjunctive, you silly goose, why do you have to be so negative all the time? Why phrase it as "plants I'm not currently mad at," instead of "plants I love," or "plants that are doing well," or something along those lines?

That's . . . a really good question. I'm pretty sure some of it is just that I'm a relentlessly negative person.¹ And there's also the issue that lots of other blogs use phrasings like "plants I love," and I'm trying to be different.

But there's also the issue of plant betrayal. In the seven or so years I've been doing this, I've been deliriously happy with any number of plants that later turned on me. Euphorbia trigona, once a darling, is now a constant struggle with fungus. Hoyas always seem to succumb to some kind of dramatic and sudden collapse.² Cordyline fruticosa never quite shook the spider mites. I miss one watering and the Episcias all collapse on me, or get devoured by caterpillars, or turn brown and dry out. That sort of thing. And I occasionally wind up looking at one of those older posts, where I'm talking about how delighted I am with a plant, and feel stupid, because I know that a few months or years later, I couldn't stand that plant anymore, or it was dead, or whatever.

Therefore, it needs a qualifier. I'm not mad at them at the moment. Three months from now? Anything could happen. This is a terrible attitude to have, but . . . .

I guess I have no conclusion to that sentence; it's just a terrible attitude. (I never promised to be inspirational.)

These six plants are also the leading candidates for the next plant profile, by the way. I have no strong preference about which I want to write about, so I figured I'd put it up for a vote. So be ready for that, at the end of the post.

Here we go. In no particular order:

1. Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta'

Breynia disticha turns out to be a very different plant if you let it spend a summer outside than it is if you make it stay indoors all summer taking violin lessons, or whatever it is you make your Breynias do. It's not that it was growing poorly for me inside, exactly, but it wasn't getting enough light to produce any variegated leaves, the branches were flopping over into all the plants around them,³ and it wasn't branching very much.

Once it went outside for a summer, though, all that changed. Faster growth, all sorts of color, branching -- almost everything turned around. The floppy branches are apparently just Breynia's thing, because that part didn't get any better. But still.

It had been a pretty good plant for me before this, too, as far as that goes. Aside from a brief and easily-won bout with spider mites, there have been no pest problems, and although it wilts dramatically whenever I'm the slightest bit late with the water, it always bounces right back once I give it a good soaking. I've propagated from cuttings a few times (difficult, but doable), humidity seems not to be a big issue, and it's even flowered for me once, not that the flowers are a particularly big deal.


2. Philodendron mexicanum

My original cutting of Philodendron mexicanum got too long to be manageable, so I chopped it up into two-node cuttings and rooted them in water. They all got busy building roots immediately, so now I have a pot with three plants in it, which is the one in the picture.

Like some other vining Philodendrons, P. mexicanum is maybe a little too enthusiastic for its own good (I'm already contemplating chopping up the original cutting again, and it hasn't been that long. A year, maybe?), but the leaves are really lovely (I neglected to choose a photo that shows the red-brown undersides, though if you're interested you can check out this post.), and it's easy to grow, as far as I can tell. Fairly weak artificial light, normal indoor temperatures and humidity, water every two to four weeks.

My only problem to date has been with thrips, of all things. They weren't that hard to get rid of, but they were surprisingly fond of the plant, and apparently used it as a species headquarters, from which they launched expeditions to the neighboring plants.


3. Beaucarnea recurvata

This is probably the most unexpected plant to land on this list. It's not that it was ever doing poorly, exactly; it's more that it's never done much of anything at all. The reason turned out to be pot size and light intensity: after five and a half years of leaving it alone, I repotted it and gave it some direct sun, and bam, new growth. Quite a bit of it, even. (I'm sad to think of how disappointed it will be this winter: I doubt I'll be able to spare a direct-sun spot once all the plants come in from outside.⁴)

Even without new growth, though, it was one of those plants I could depend on not to give me any drama. It was fine with the variable temperature in the plant room, it never got any pests, and if it was unpropagatable, it was at least durable.

The propagation thing is likely to continue to be a problem in the future, but otherwise, I feel like I may finally have figured Beaucarnea recurvata out.


4. Polyscias fruticosa

And then Polyscias fruticosa is probably the most obvious plant to go on the list. I've even been publicly happy with it in the past. I have some pretty serious concerns about it for the future,⁵ but right now, at this particular moment, all is well, and it's been thriving. I'm also pretty pleased with the cultivars I have ('Elegans' and 'Snowflake,' which is just variegated 'Elegans'), and have managed to propagate 'Elegans' a few times, albeit with some difficulty. They're all perfectly happy, and even pest-free (knock wood), so long as I give them some direct sun every day and don't get too unpredictable with the water (both too much and too little leads to defoliation, though too little seems to be worse).

The best part is that as it ages, the plant is developing a sort of Cousin Itt (or possibly Gossamer?) look, which I enjoy.


5. Scindapsus pictus

I have one main problem with Scindapsus pictus, which is that I tend to forget that it exists. Which is to say that whenever I'm listing plants in my mind, in whatever category, I never remember to include it.

It's a perfectly nice plant, as plants go. I treat it horribly: it's on a shelf a couple inches below other plants, which block most of the light. It gets air-conditioning blasted directly at it during the summer. I'm pretty sure the soil hasn't been changed since I bought it in July 2008. But no worries! Scindapsus just keeps plugging away, slowly building leaf after leaf, without complaining or getting bugs. It's the damnedest thing.

I've had an S. pictus many years ago that wasn't nearly as forgiving; this is far enough in the past that I couldn't guess what the problem might have been. So it's possible that I've just been bizarrely lucky for five straight years.

I have yet to attempt propagation, because it's not necessarily a plant I want more of. Maybe someday.


6. Stromanthe sanguinea cvv.

Finally, I continue to be impressed with Stromanthe sanguinea. I have two varieties of it, 'Triostar' (shown) and 'Magicstar,' both of which are much easier to grow than anything from the Marantaceae ought to be.

It's not perfect. There's an unfortunate tendency to develop spider mites, and there are limits to how large of a pot I can use here in the house, because the root systems are relatively shallow and rot-prone, so I can only up-pot for just so long before it's time to start over again with a freshly-propagated plant. Even so, being able to grow something this attractive at all is awfully cool. And when I need to propagate, it's always been game, which is a definite bonus.


So see? I can say nice things about the plants sometimes.




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¹ No. Really. I am. It's okay. I don't mind. Usually.
² Though it's possible that I'm on the verge of figuring that one out. All the Hoyas that have succumbed to Sudden Hoya Death Syndrome were also not getting any direct sun at the time of death. The cause-and-effect relationship is murky, but in the absence of any other leads, I'm thinking this must be the key, somehow.
³ Which was a problem, because the plants around the oldest and largest Breynia were mostly Euphorbia trigona. Top-heavy thorny plants shouldn't be placed next to floppy-branched leafy plants, as a rule: you wind up losing hours of your life trying to untangle them from one another.
⁴ Next summer, though: look out! I'm putting the Beaucarnea outside, and fully expect it to grow substantially before autumn arrives. A friend in town has a Beaucarnea that she puts outside every year, and it is amazing. (Had I been thinking, I'd have gotten a picture for you, but I wasn't.)
⁵ It's 1) a very big plant, with 2) brown, woody stems and 3) lots of delicately-cut leaves, living 4) in a room where scale has recently been discovered. If scale decided to take up residence there, I stand very little chance of catching the infestation early. I've added some pre-emptive imidacloprid to the soil, as well as to the soil of some of its neighbors, but if you look closely at the photo, you may be able to make out a faint aura of doom around the plant.

Random plant event: Breynia disticha

I knew that Breynia disticha (aka B. nivosa) was capable of suckering like this when planted outdoors as a landscape plant, but I didn't expect to see it indoors, on my own personal specimen. I figured my personal plant was probably not happy enough to do that: it's grown fine, but I'm sure it doesn't get as much light as it would prefer, and it has to endure the occasional drought, too.

And yet.


In fact, I noticed last Saturday when I was watering that a second sucker has popped up in the pot, though it is still very tiny and refused to photograph well.

The suckers sprout from the roots and are supposedly pretty easily pulled up, so I'm treating them gingerly for the moment, but suckering is plausibly a better route to propagation than taking cuttings, as long as the plant keeps producing them. Cuttings have only been working for me about 40-50% of the time.

List: Houseplants Native to the Southern Pacific Ocean

One of the things I did in October / November that led me to the point of burnout by November / December was, I spent a lot of time trying to track down the native ranges for a bunch of different houseplants. This was a lot more complicated than it might sound, because there doesn't seem to be any central authority for these sorts of questions, so I had to refer to multiple sources of information, and different sources occasionally contradict one another, and on occasion it's tough to find any source that will hazard a guess at all, so the whole thing wound up taking a good chunk out of my November and I'm not even confident that the information I gathered is correct. I mean, it should be mostly correct, but there will be occasional errors. So I probably won't be any more error-prone than any other sources, but it may be important to keep in mind that this list, and the others like it, may contain errors, so you shouldn't use it for any work where getting a plant's native range wrong might result in someone's death. For example.

The main source of information, incidentally, was GRIN, which is awkward to use and woefully deficient about certain genera of plants, but which at least tries to provide range information for most of the plants it does cover. I'm mostly using their method of dividing up the globe, as well. GRIN has differing categories for the Southwest Pacific (#45 on the map below) and the South Central Pacific (#44) --

Image credit: GRIN.
-- which I'm combining because I only found two houseplants from the South Central Pacific, so I can't make a South Central post, so I may as well combine Southwest and South Central. What that means is, we're talking about the mess of little islands to the southeast of Papua New Guinea and northeast of Australia, places like Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Samoa and American Samoa, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and all those other little places I'd heard of before but never really bothered to locate on a map.¹

But now I have! Map from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, by way of Voice of America.
This is not a particularly good part of the planet to hunt for possible houseplants; out of a 622-plant list, only 23 (3.7%) come from this part of the globe, and only a handful are exclusive: most were also found in India, China, Indo-China, Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, or some combination thereof.

Other sources of the information consulted for this list and the ones to follow, in descending order of trustworthiness: Plant List, biodiversityexplorer.org (not linked because I've been unable to connect to it and am unsure if it still exists), general Google searches, Wikipedia, Tropicos,² and possibly a few other places I can't remember and didn't write down. I've tried to select plants for the photos section that I'm most confident are native to the South Pacific, leaving the ones I'm less certain about for the end of the post.

The whole native-ranges project should be good for another twenty or so posts like this, though obviously the whole globe won't be represented. Very few houseplants come from Siberia, for example.³

Here we go.

Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island pine) is found exclusively on Norfolk Island,⁴ which is located a bit to the south of most of the other plants on this list. GRIN considers Norfolk Island to be part of Australia, not part of the Southwest Pacific, but Norfolk Island surely has more in common with New Caledonia than it does with Australia, so I'm saying it belongs here.

Breynia disticha (snowbush), green revert of the variegated cv. 'Roseo-Picta.' This one is from New Caledonia and Vanuatu, and nowhere else.

Codiaeum variegatum (croton), variety 'Petra.' Crotons have a broader distribution than Breynia, but it's still centered on the right general area: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, northeastern Australia (specifically Queensland), plus the Southwest Pacific islands of Fiji and Vanuatu.

Epipremnum aureum (pothos), officially belongs to the South Central Pacific, according to GRIN, because it's native to French Polynesia, which is to the east of most of the other plants under discussion. Close enough, though.

Murraya paniculata (orange jasmine) has a fairly broad range, extending as far west as India, north to China and Taiwan, south through Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia, and east to the Northern Marianas islands in the Northwest Pacific. Also the islands of New Caledonia and Vanuatu, in the Southwest Pacific.

Pandanus veitchii (probably a synonym for P. tectorius? Common name is screw pine). Nobody seems to have a terribly good idea where P. veitchii came from, but GRIN says Indonesia and the Philippines, south through Papua New Guinea into eastern Queensland (NE Australia), then throughout the Pacific Ocean as far north and east as Hawaii. The germane islands for this list are New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, French Polynesia, and Vanuatu.

Phaius tankervillae (nun orchid) can be found in Fiji and New Caledonia, but also north to China, west to India and Sri Lanka, and south to Australia. The photo isn't of P. tankervillae (it's P. Microburst Octoberfest), and I was unable to locate the parentage information for P. Microburst Octoberfest, but P. tankervillae is the most widely cultivated Phaius, so PMO probably includes tankervillae genes, and as near as I could determine, tankervillae also has one of the larger native ranges, so the odds are that the picture's fairly representative of the species even if it's not actually the species. Especially since it's not a particularly good picture anyway. (It was all I had showing both blooms and foliage.)

Polyscias fruticosa. (ming aralia) Mostly a Southeast Asia species: it's found in Indo-China (Cambodia, Vietnam), northward to China, west to India, and south to Indonesia. Fiji, in the Southwest Pacific, is at the southern tip of its range.

Dizygotheca (now Schefflera) elegantissima (false aralia). Finally another one that's definitely on this list: S. elegantissima is exclusively native to New Caledonia.

Scyphularia pycnocarpa (possum-tail fern) is only found on Fiji.
Now for the recommendations.

I would enthusiastically recommend Pandanus veitchii, because once established they're incredibly easy to grow. (I have lost a couple offsets to unknown causes before, but they're usually easy to establish, too.) Screw pines are too big and prickly to be suitable for everybody, but if you don't mind big and prickly then you should track one down. They don't seem to be bothered by dry air, as far as I can tell they're pretty flexible about watering, I have yet to see any bugs attack them,⁵ and they'll stay alive in a wide range of light conditions, though some sun is helpful.

Epipremnum aureum and I have had some missteps in the past: specifically, I've lost plants after repotting, more than once, and I'm not sure why. They do well for almost everybody else, though, and I've been doing better with mine for the last couple years. Pothos is likewise fairly flexible about water, light, and humidity, and not overly bothered by any pests.

After those two, it becomes more or less impossible to choose. I adore Auraucaria heterophylla, Breynia disticha, and Murraya paniculata, for differing reasons: Araucaria has been remarkably easy for me, and is one of the plants I've had the longest, though spider mites can occasionally be a problem, and it will do best in a cool, humid, and bright spot without direct sun. Breynia disticha is likewise slightly prone to spider mites, and will drop leaves if allowed to dry out too much, but it's flexible about light, temperature, and humidity, and grows gratifyingly fast. Murraya paniculata will produce lots of small white flowers with a heavy fragrance resembling orange blossoms, which can self-pollinate to form small inedible red fruits. It has no particular pest problems and is very tolerant of indoor conditions, but needs bright light, lots of water, and abundant fertilizer to grow well.

⁶

The anti-recommend is Codiaeum variegatum, because the anti-recommend is always Codiaeum variegatum. If you get a nice specimen, in a suitable (very bright, warm) spot, that doesn't have spider mites to begin with, and you don't bring home any other plants that might have mites: then you have a shot, but if you bring in other plants very often or buy your plant from a place that has spider mites anywhere on the premises, I can pretty much guarantee that your plant is eventually going to get covered in mites, defoliate, and die. I don't even consider buying Codiaeums anymore, and haven't for years.

Not pictured:

• Carmona species (fukien tea) are sometimes sold as bonsai specimens. They're native from Northern Australia, northward through Indonesia and Indo-China, up as far as China and Japan. They go as far west as India and Sri Lanka, and as far east as the Solomon Islands. I've never tried growing one (bonsai, even the fakey mass-produced plants sold as bonsai, are always out of my price range), and suspect them of being difficult besides,⁷ but the foliage has a strange/wonderful astringent smell to it.
• Castanospermum australe (lucky bean plant) is one of those plants I have yet to see in person, though I keep hearing about them from elsewhere. Their native range is small: just Queensland (NE Australia), New Caledonia, and Vanuatu. I have no idea what they're like as houseplants.
• I've never grown a Cocos nucifera (coconut palm); we tried sprouting one from a coconut at work once, but nothing happened, and I think we brought one in to sell once as well, but it sold too quickly for me to get much of a feel for how it worked. I understand they're supposed to be fairly difficult, requiring a lot of light, water, and warmth. Their native range is from Indonesia, south and east through Papua New Guinea and the Philippines, Australia, and Vanuatu, though they've been introduced to basically every tropical habitat in the world.
• Ficus benjamina (ficus tree) can be found on the Solomon Islands, though it has a range extending north as far as China and Taiwan, west as far as India, and south as far as Australia. Like Polyscias fruticosa, they can alarm the unprepared, but are pretty good houseplants for anyone who can give them consistent care.
• Ficus microcarpa (Chinese banyan). Pretty much the same range as F. benjamina, though its range extends a bit further to the west and north. The significant part of the range for this list are New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands. They're a little less prone to panic defoliation than F. benjamina, though I've had waaaaaaay more trouble with spider mites on my F. microcarpas than I ever dreamed of with my F. benjaminas, so I suppose it's a tradeoff.
• Several somewhat obscure Hoya species are from the South Pacific as well, according to hoyor.net; the relevant species are H. affinis, attenuata, australis, barrackii, betchei, bicarnata, chlorantha, cominsii, crassior, diptera, dodecatheiflora, filiformis, guppyi, inconspicua, intermedia, limoniaca, marginata, megalantha, naumanii, neocaledonica, neoebudica, pilosa, pubescens, pycnophylla, schneei, trukensis, and vitiensis. I don't know what any of them are like to grow indoors.
• Polyscias crispata (also P. cumingiana) also comes from the whole Indonesia / Malaysia / Papua New Guinea / Philippines area, plus New Caledonia. I assume its care is similar to that for P. fruticosa, though I've never grown one.
• Solenostemon scutellarioides (more correctly Plectranthus scutellarioides; less correctly Coleus blumei -- most people just call it coleus) has a wide range from China to India in the north, to the northern coast of Australia in the south, including basically everything in between, as well as the Solomon Islands. It's not difficult indoors exactly, but it wants to be huge, grows really fast, can't dry out for long, and needs a completely unreasonable amount of light. Hard to keep up with; I prefer to treat mine as outdoor plants that just have to come inside occasionally for six-month stretches.
• Spathoglottis species (ground orchids) are from diverse habitats within the India / China / Australia / South Pacific rectangle that I'm getting tired of typing out. S. plicata can be found in New Caledonia, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and Tonga. I don't know whether they make good houseplants.

Borderline cases:

• GRIN basically punted on the question of where Acalypha wilkesiana (beefsteak plant, copperleaf) is from. They think "Oceania," which is the general area we're considering, but it's so widely cultivated that the actual origin is unclear. I've never grown Acalypha wilkesiana, since it looks to me like another fast-growing, sun-needing plant like coleus, and I have enough trouble with coleus.
• I wasn't sure whether to include Didymochlaena truncatula (mahogany fern) on the list or not, because GRIN says that it's basically from everywhere. All of tropical Africa, including South Africa and Madagascar, the whole India / Indo-China / Indonesia / Philippines area we've been talking about with everything else in this post (including, relevantly, Fiji), Southern Mexico, and most of South and Central America. This seemed . . . implausible. I mean, it's a fern, for fuck's sakes, how is it going to get from South Africa to Fiji? But other sites backed GRIN up on the claim, so I guess it could be true. My personal experience is that it makes a lousy houseplant: it's way too touchy about missed waterings for this particular house, and consequently mine pretty much always looks like crap. I do enjoy saying Didymochlaena, though.
• Medinilla cvv. is another questionable inclusion; not only do I suspect most Medinillas being grown indoors are probably man-made hybrids, I suspect that almost no Medinillas are being grown indoors. Not for very long, in any case. (They don't even do terribly well in the ex-job's greenhouse.) They seem to be pretty common in Indonesia and the Philippines, and GRIN lists at least one species as being from Fiji.
• Musa spp. (banana) is another weird case: the genus is generally within the India / China / Australia / South Pacific rectangle, but they're also widely cultivated and naturalized, so they're pretty certain that some Musa species are from the South Pacific, but I didn't care enough to want to sort through the tangle of species and ranges to figure out which. There's also been some hybridizing going on, too, so the question may be moot for some ornamental types. I have mixed feelings about them as houseplants: mine's been less trouble than I was expecting when I bought it, and has done much much better in the last year than it did when it first arrived, but they're still not a plant I'd recommend to people.
• The natural range of Paphiopedilums (slipper orchids) stretches from northeast India, east and south through Indo-China (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc.), Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Southwestern Pacific, though I don't know specifically which islands. (GRIN was unhelpful on this one.) Virtually all commercially-available paphs are man-made hybrids, though, so this may not be relevant. As for what they're like as houseplants, well, they like to tease me:⁸ I don't know how they act for other people.
• Spathiphyllum species (peace lilies) are primarily from Southern Mexico, southward through Central and South America,⁹ but GRIN swears that there are a few Asian species, and that at least one can be found in the Solomon Islands. This may not be relevant, since I'm pretty sure any peace lilies you can pick up in a store are going to be man-made hybrids anyway, but I suppose it meets the minimum criteria for inclusion, so hey, here it is. They make fine, if generally uninspiring, houseplants.

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¹ Sorry, Pacific Islanders. It's not personal, it's just that there are so many little islands. If it makes you feel any better, I could probably locate some of them correctly now, after doing this post.
² Tropicos is tricky, because the locations they name are not necessarily locations where the specimens were actually collected, and it took me a while to figure this out. It's frequently unclear whether the location given is the location where the description was published, where the plant was collected, where a cultivated specimen has been grown, etc. Consequently, I tried to use Tropicos only in cases where there was nothing to be found anywhere else. It's possible that this is just me being stupid, and that there's a perfectly clear reference somewhere on Tropicos that will give me exactly the information I want, but it's the least user-friendly of any of the plant reference sources I consulted.
³ I don't think any of the zones on the map actually came up as having zero houseplant species in them, but that's largely because a few genera are ridiculously widespread: for example, Origanum (oregano), Goodyera (a genus of orchids, containing a few tropical species which are sometimes given the common name jewel orchids), and Drosera (sundews) all came up as being present in Siberia. Which no doubt there are species representing all three in Siberia, but these are almost certainly not the species people try to grow indoors.
⁴ (But it's not a pine.)
⁵ Though when I had one outside a couple summers ago, something did cut circular bites out of a couple leaves. None of the usual indoor pests seem terribly fond of Pandanus, though.
⁶ I'd also like to say that I think the difficulty of Polyscias fruticosa is often overstated on-line. Much like Ficus benjamina, it drops leaves when conditions change in ways it doesn't like. People often see this and panic, thinking that the plant is desperately unhappy, so they try to fix it with more water (because watering is the only thing most people know to do with plants), which leads to other problems. But once in a suitable location (normal indoor temperatures, filtered sun or bright indirect light) and given consistent care, they're really not nearly as scary as people think. One caveat: they are somewhat attractive to spider mites. I've never had that problem with my personal plant, but the plants at work sometimes had trouble.
⁷ They had a tendency to defoliate on us at work; I never figured out what that was about, but they almost always did it before they sold, so then we had a bunch of naked pretend bonsai sitting around.
⁸ "Look, look, I have roots! Whoops, now I don't! Hey, now I have roots again! Oh, never mind! Hooray, roots! Ha: tricked you!" The most frustrating thing about my paph is not that it's unhappy with me, it's that it won't just fucking die already. I know it wants to; I'd like to see it happen myself, yet it refuses to just give up and do it. If it survives to spring (it probably will), I'm going to mail it off to some nice PATSP reader via contest or something, 'cause this is getting ridiculous.
⁹ SPOILER: basically everything is from Central and South America. I expected most houseplants would be from Southeast Asia, but no: if it's succulent, it's from South Africa or Northern Mexico, and if it's not, then it's from Central or South America, particularly Brazil. Nobody would even bother growing houseplants, if we lived in a South-America-less alternate universe. That's how big of a deal South America is.

Top 16 PATSP posts of 2011

2011 was a weird year for my relationship with the blog, which I've recently described -- ad nauseam -- so coming up with this list was a stranger experience than usual. I had a lot of good stuff at the beginning of the year, I think, and then basically nothing after July. But it was a very good year for photos, and if pressed, I imagine I can come up with nice things to say about some of the text too. So here are the highlights of 2011:

16. Music Video: "Russian Unicorn" (Bad Lip Reading / Michael Bublé) (29 Sep 2011)


Okay, so this is kind of a cheat, 'cause I didn't have anything to do with making it. But I'm still unbelievably fond of the song,¹ and wanted another chance to say so, because it's worth repeating. Also it's my list and you can't stop me.


15. Wednesday morning Marcia, Jan, and Cindy picture (25 May 2011)


Don't know what became of Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, of course: no way to tell them apart from any other robin,² and the odds are unfortunately high that they didn't all survive to the fall. (The deck is stacked against robins to a surprising degree.) But one hopes. Same for barn swallows Greg, Peter, and Bobby, though we didn't get as much time to get to know them.


14. Random plant event: Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta' blooming (8 Aug 2011)


I'm not sure why this one makes it into the top posts post. I think I'm maybe just pleased by how strange the flowers are, and how well the photos turned out. Breynia turns out to be just full of surprises (if you bother to feed it), as you'll see later this year if I ever get it together to sort some photos.


13. In Which I Lose All Respect for the Burgess Seed and Plant Co. of Bloomington, IL (3 Mar 2011)


Not that I had a lot of respect to begin with. Included in the list mostly because "This Ficus is my god now!" still makes me chuckle.


12. Fungus Gnats: Like Puppies That Try To Fly Up Your Nose (15 Mar 2011)


I feel a little bad about writing a post to help people get rid of their fungus gnat infestations, 'cause I actually find fungus gnats kind of adorable.


11. Random plant event: Kalanchoe tomentosa flower (14 Jun 2011)


Not a fan of the plant (more accurately: they're not fans of me), but I hadn't seen the flowers before, and the photos turned out nicer than I'd expected.


10. Storm Review: 2011 Blizzard (2 Feb 2011)


Winter 2011-12 has been a huge disappointment so far: we've only had one snowfall of any consequence, and that snow was only around for a day or two before it all melted. But we've had good snows in the past, and winter's only 1/3 over, so there's still hope, I guess.


9. Pretty picture: Convallaria majalis flowers (23 May 2011)


It's a little too easy to take a nice picture of Convallaria majalis, actually.


8. Phalaenopsitrocity (28 Mar 2011)


2011 will be remembered as the year in which plant retailers finally gave up and decided to sell artificial plants instead.³ I don't do New Year's resolutions, never have, but if I did, I'd resolve to find a way to kill the market for dye-injected plants in 2012. All ideas welcome.⁴


7. Mary Richards and the Incredible Plant Lady (18 Feb 2011)


In which Helen Hunt is dethroned as the patron actress (possibly "actress mascot" would be more accurate? Less oxymoronic, anyway.) of PATSP and replaced by Mary Tyler Moore (with an assist from Valerie Harper).


6. Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum St. Swithin (3 Jun 2011)


Best orchid ever, yeah?


5. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Houseplant (11 Apr 2011)
I had trouble figuring out what I was trying to say with this one, or whether I was trying to say anything at all. I'm not sure I ever figured it out, actually, but my readership sure seemed to like the post anyway.


4. List: Plants Which Someone on the Internet has Said Bring Bad Luck (12 Oct 2011)


I'm not sure if the people who read this post will come away less superstitious or more superstitious. It probably depends on how superstitious they were when they started reading it: people who were already prone to see plants as lucky or unlucky now have longer lists, and people who aren't, don't. But I tried.


3. Widower (Persea americana) (16 Feb 2011)


As I explained in last year's list, I try to leave off the plant profiles when making these lists, because the point of these best-of lists is to call attention to posts readers might otherwise have missed, and I figure the profiles are already linked in the sidebar so there's no need. But, also like last year, I'm making an exception for the profile I liked the best, because giant ground sloths and gomphotheres are were kind of awesome, and more people should know about them.


2. Pretty pictures: Rime ice (12 Jan 2011)


Several kick-ass pictures at the rime post, but this particular one is probably my favorite photo for the whole year of 2011.


1. All the Rumble Among the Jungle posts (14 Sep to 15 Nov 2011)


Probably cheating to include this, too, since the Rumble wasn't a single post, and y'all did at least half the work there, but, you know, the Rumble was a big deal. It kinda has to be #1.

-

¹ It may not be my favorite Bad Lip Reading song; there's like a four-way tie between "Russian Unicorn," "Black Umbrella (The Right Stuff)," "Morning Dew," and "Rockin' (All Night Long)." The one I listen to the most often, though, is "Rockin' (All Night Long)." It took a while to get into, but I listen to it all the time now.
² (Though the one that chirps with a lisp is probably Cindy.)
³ Quote from this article:

"We are an industry of plant nerds who hold our plants and Latin naming on a silver platter," says Olivia Sellards, Syngenta Flowers. "But we are first a service industry and should hold our customer demands before our personal preferences. Absolutely sell a (dyed) plant, a glittered poinsettia or a bunch of blue tie-dyed cut flowers. Remember, if they aren't buying real plants, consumers will buy fake ones."

Well. Cleeeeeeearly the solution is to blur the line between real and fake, then: take real plants and spray-paint, dye-inject, or glitter-bomb them until they look artificial. (That was my sarcastic voice, in case that was unclear.)
Also, Ms. Sellards: I care that you've created a plant that people can only enjoy once. This has nothing to do with Latin name snobbery; this is about deceiving customers and creating impossible expectations. It's fine to sell people plants they're clamoring for; my question is whether the customers know what they're getting. (I'm also upset with y'all for creating a tacky and garish product. But mostly the deceiving and the expectations-setting.)
I would also question whether it makes any sense to disparage an industry of plant sellers for holding their plants "on a silver platter." Ms. Sellards' thesis is that the plants should be . . . less important?
⁴ (#OccupyTheXylem!)

Random plant event: Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta' blooming

The one cutting of Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta' (also sometimes Breynia nivosa -- as goes Plant List, so goes my nation) that was under lights in the basement, and was producing variegated leaves there, has decided to bloom.


The trigger for blooming appears to have been that I moved it into a larger pot. (The trigger for moving it to a larger pot was that it was drying out faster than I could keep up with.)


The flowers aren't particularly pretty, but they are weird. I don't know what pollinates them in nature; Google was unhelpful. Does anybody know?

They Grow Up So Fast, Part 3

I've had a wouldn't-it-be-nice sort of project to get all the plants photographed this summer, or at least to try to get decent pictures of 1) the species/varieties for which I have no good photos already or 2) the ones that have grown significantly since the last time I took pictures. For most of the summer, though, I've been thwarted by the weather, lack of time, or whatever.

Then a couple weeks ago, we got a run of three days that weren't completely unbearable outside, and I dragged plants around and got like 1000 photos (literal) to sort through, which kept me occupied until . . . well, until basically now.

And then I thought: oh, wait, what was I going to do with all these pictures again?

So this post is an attempt to justify the photos I've taken already, as a way of psyching myself up to take more (hopefully the weather will cooperate Thursday and Friday mornings). Also, I thought that people who had sent me plants in the past might be interested in how they were faring here.

So. This isn't a comprehensive list, both for space reasons and because I don't have all the plants photographed yet. You shouldn't assume that if a plant you sent me isn't on this list, that means it's dead.

Though in some cases, yeah, that's what it means.

Philodendron mexicanum

May 2010. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
I didn't have much hope for this one when it first arrived; the original sender said it had been accidentally severed from the main plant and wasn't rooted or anything: basically just the two leaves you see in the photo plus a little bit of stem.

Dec 2010. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
But it rooted like a champ anyway, and seven months later, it was an established plant that was outgrowing its spot in the basement.

Jul 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
It's not a common plant in the trade, and I'm not sure why, because it seems to be easy enough to grow. I could see how it might have a problematic habit (it's a climber, so I suppose it might suffer a bit if you don't have something for it to climb), but I'm still enjoying mine.

Anthurium schlechtendahlii

Aug 2010. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
If I thought Philodendron mexicanum was hopeless when it arrived, I was almost angry about receiving Anthurium schlechtendalii. Surely these tiny seedlings were never going to survive, and this was a waste of time.

Feb 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
And yet. I kept it in the basement, under lights, and kept it covered to maintain high humidity, and it actually did quite well there. Eventually it outgrew the spot in the basement, so I moved it to the husband's office (also under lights) and kept it in a large V-shaped vase with a plant saucer on top, and it soon outgrew that spot as well.

Jul 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm) though it has since been moved to a 6 in / 15 cm pot.
So now it's in the living room, without any covering, and it's going to have to make do with the humidity levels it finds in there.

I can't say A. schlechtendalii has been free of problems -- it insists on playing with spider mites, even though I've forbidden it from doing so and explained at length how they're a bad influence. The leaves have also been yellowing in the last few months, which may or may not be mite-related (also possible: too much light, nutrient over-/underdose). Still, though, this is the best I've ever managed to do with any of the foliage Anthuriums, and damned near miraculous considering the starting point.

Sansevieria hargesiana

May 2010. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
I received Sansevieria hargesiana when at a particularly low point in my Sansevieria-growing confidence level, but it's survived me anyway.

Jan 2011. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm) though it has since been moved to a 4 in / 10 cm pot.
This is a plant I don't have a good July 2011 photo for, but it hasn't changed that much since January (the plantlet on the right is perhaps slightly bigger now), so this still works. My confidence level is slowly edging back up again, but Sansevierias still make me nervous.

Euphorbia flanaganii var. cristata
Sep 2010. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
The Euphorbia flanaganii var. cristata from Cactus Jungle has had some ups and downs; it didn't do much for quite a while after arriving, possibly because I was scared to feed it much.

July 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
It's done better since I started using the fertilizer containing trace elements. (This is a common feature of my relationships with Euphorbias -- unlike some plants, they won't try to grow if the nutrients aren't there. Almost all of my plants have begun new growth this spring or summer, even the ones that had done nothing for years prior.) I did have to cut off a piece that was dying at one point this spring, but other than that, it's been a pretty quiet, well-behaved plant.

Pereskia godseffiana

May 2011. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
This was a very recent acquisition -- I've only had it two months -- but I'm pleased that it has, in fact, decided to root and grow.

Jul 2011. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm) though it has since been moved to a 4 in / 10 cm pot.
Not surprised. Just pleased. Pereskias are apparently very easy to root; everyone says so.

The cutting's even grown a new set of tiny, bright pink leaves since the second photo was taken.

Agave americana

Aug 2010. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
Agave americana may become a problem in the near future. I knew they got big, but I didn't think this one would get so big, so quickly.

Jul 2011. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
I don't really have a suitable spot for it at the moment, so I guess I'll have to keep my fingers crossed that it slows down until I do. It was never likely to reach full maturity inside the house, but I would like to have it a couple more years, at least.

Agave americana medio-picta alba

Aug 2010. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
The variegated version, on the other hand, is growing much more slowly. I mean, yes, I expect it to be slower, because it doesn't have as much chlorophyll to work with, but it's a lot slower than it should be. It even gets some full sun, which the non-variegated one doesn't. (The non-variegated one is in the basement under plant lights, so it may have more consistent light, and maybe even brighter light, but they should still be pretty comparable.)

Jul 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
It's still grown, though. I can't complain. Agaves are unpleasant to handle and will eventually get too big, but they're really very cooperative houseplants otherwise, if you have enough light for them.

Begonia 'Tiger Kitten'

Aug 2010. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
Begonia 'Tiger Kitten' arrived in rough shape (plants with brittle, fleshy leaves like Begonia, Episcia, Saintpaulia, etc. tend to be difficult to ship), so I wound up cutting one of the leaves into sections and starting new plants in vermiculite. The original died, but several of the leaf-sections grew. Unfortunately, only one survived being transplanted to soil.

Jul 2011. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
That one plant, though, is doing well. It looks a bit darker and less colorful than the original (it's probably getting too much light), but at least it didn't die. Rhizomatous begonias are a decent substitute for rex begonias -- they're considerably less fussy, and look close enough as far as I'm concerned.

Eriobotrya japonica

Aug 2010. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
Eriobotrya japonica (loquat) hasn't done much since arriving, and I'm not sure if that's because it's naturally a slow plant, or if I'm doing something wrong.

Jul 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
I've been warned that they're prone to spider mites, but so far that hasn't been a problem for me. I haven't really had any problems at all, actually, aside from the slowness.

Ceropegia woodii, variegated

Aug 2010. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
I had some concerns about this one, because previous attempts to root Ceropegia woodii either failed immediately, or succeeded so slowly that by the time there was new growth, I didn't care anymore. This was pretty slow, too, but once it got going, it made up for the lost time.

Jul 2011. Pot: 3 inches (7.5 cm).
Such a strange little plant, though.

Hoya obovata

Jan 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
Hoyas are kind of upsetting me lately. They grow great for a year, two years, three years, and then suddenly die for no reason. This has now happened with H. carnosa 'Krimson Queen' (though I managed to salvage cuttings, which are doing well), H. pubicalyx (no salvaging possible), and most recently H. tsangii 'DS-70' (we'll see if cuttings can be salvaged; so far about 25% have died too). I don't know why this keeps happening, but it's a pattern now.

Jul 2011. Pot: 4 inches (10 cm).
So I'm scared for H. obovata. Its behavior here has given me no reason to worry so far; it's a champ, in fact. On the other hand, it's a Hoya, so I worry anyway.

Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta'

Nov 2009. Pot: 6 inches (15 cm).
I didn't get a picture of my Breynia disticha when I first got it (October 2008), but I'd estimate it was about half as tall as in the above picture. It's always been a steady grower, if not a particularly fast one. During last winter and spring, I cut it back a few times (to get cuttings to root) and started feeding it differently, and it's responded and responded and responded:

Jul 2011. Pot: 8 inches (20 cm), though it has since been moved to a 9-10 inch / 23-25 cm pot.
There have been a few short-lived problems with spider mites, and it drops a lot of leaves whenever I let it get too dry, but neither has been particularly serious. I'd like it if I could get it to produce the multicolored leaves I know it's capable of, but even without that, it's getting to be a favorite plant.