Random plant event: Ctenanthe burle-marxii

For a plant in the Marantaceae, Ctenanthe burle-marxii has been pretty easy to grow, and I've managed to propagate it a number of times (by divisions), and it's been relatively unbothered by pests. Apparently the Ctenanthes are just like that -- this post, which mainly talks about growing them outdoors, says they're pretty easy-going.

Also, if you're wondering: the "c" is silent. Dave's Garden says it's pronounced "tee-NANTH-ee;" I've been pronouncing it "ten-ANTH-ee." Potato, pohtato, maybe.

No Ctenanthes are commonly-sold around here; besides C. burle-marxii, the only one I've ever seen for sale was C. lubbersiana, and it's never at a size or price I could afford to get.¹ C. burle-marxii itself was never actually for sale at the ex-job while I was there; my recollection is that shortly after I got Nina, I noticed a tiny, two- or three-leaved plant growing out of the soil on the greenhouse floor, and took it home for her terrarium, which it eventually took over, though I don't have any great photos of how much it took over. I was assuming when I brought it home that it was a Calathea, and then I thought Stromanthe for quite a while; it took a long time to figure out that it was a Ctenanthe.

In any case. The point being that it hasn't been a particularly difficult plant for me, but it's also never gotten me terribly excited, either -- it does its thing, and gets bigger, and it's handsome, and I like it, but it's never done anything new. Until now.

Which, this isn't especially pretty either, but it's the first time I've seen one bloom, so it's, like, exciting on a technicality, or something. And it's blooming a lot. This photo only shows three inflorescences, but that's because I couldn't fit the whole plant in the photo and still have the background. Really it's at least six:

Anyway.

I should maybe mention at this point that although I'm not quite back yet, I'm expecting to slowly ramp back up to a more frequent posting schedule in the next few weeks. (I hope you want to see some pink Anthuriums!) At some point relatively soon, we'll see round 2 of the Schlumbergera seedlings for sale as well, if there's anyone interested in those.

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¹ I've seen them at Lowe's before, but in like 10-inch pots, which is too big. The ex-job had a couple once, also in huge pots, and for like $40, and I asked if they'd sell me a cutting cheap and they said yes but then it never actually happened for some reason. Which is probably just as well, 'cause it's not like I need any more plants that get huge.

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

My last surviving grandparent died last week. This both was and was not a big deal, and consumed enough of my week that I was unable to work much on the blog, so posting will probably be light for a while until I can catch up.

Funerals remain horrible things that are not remotely consoling. I really have no idea why anyone would ever want one.¹ There was more family politics involved with this one than with the other three grandparent funerals, about which I have Feelings, but this is probably not the place to describe those. Let's just say that I like the deceased less now than I did three months ago.²

While we wait for me to get new posts together, here is another batch of transmitted light photos.

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

Cordyline fruticosa.

Pilea nummulariifolia.

Solanum lycopersicum NOID.

Dracaena reflexa 'Riki.'

Acalypha wilkesiana cv.

Polyscias scutellaria.

Ctenanthe lubbersiana. (This one is probably my favorite from the set.)

Stapelia gigantea, petal.

Begonia NOID.

Quercus sp., autumn.
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¹ I can appreciate the value of bringing the whole extended family together, because that part is actually kind of pleasant. (If you like your extended family, anyway.) I can appreciate doing something special to give everyone some kind of closure. But, well.
Let's say somebody steals your car, but leaves a note behind telling you that they stole your car for a really, really good reason, a reason they decline to provide any specifics about. And then let's say that everyone you talked to about how your car was stolen immediately reacts with oh, that's too bad, but I'm sure they had a good reason for taking it, and well, you'll probably see the car again sometime, like on the street or something, right?, and how about we drone some songs at 1/4 speed about how awesome your car thief was: whaddya say? And you're all like, but I don't really want to sing about how awesome the car thief is, 'cause the fucker, you know, stole my car, and they're like but you have to sing, everybody's going to be expecting you to sing, if you don't sing then people are going to be upset.
This is what religious funeral services feel like to me, except more so, because people are more valuable than cars.
² So in a roundabout way, I suppose the funeral was successful in making me feel less bad about the loss. Though I don't think that's how funerals are supposed to achieve that feeling.

Five Plants I'm Not Currently Mad At (A through G)

Just before bringing all the plants inside for the winter, I spent about a week trying to get some updated photos. Though a tedious and exhausting process, which is still not over yet (I'm still cropping and color-editing, etc.), I've made enough progress editing the new crop of photos that I can start posting a few of them.

This has been a terrible year for the plant collection, mostly because of the whole scale thing, but also in terms of just having accumulated too many plants to comfortably care for. Consequently, I've spent a lot of time being frustrated and angry, which is hard on me and the plants both, which you already know. In an attempt to make myself feel a little better about things, here are five plants that aren't upsetting me lately and have been here long enough that they could have upset me, if they'd really wanted to. This is just what was in the first part of the alphabet: I'm only up to the Gs on the photo-editing. Also, I'm trying to focus on stuff I haven't talked about lately. So, Coffea arabica is doing wonderfully for me, but it's not on the list because you've seen it a lot this year already (here, here, and here).

1. Cryptbergia x rubra

Date: September 2012.
Pot size: 6" / 15 cm.
The color, it's true, is not as strong as it was when I first got the plant:

Date: August 2010.
Pot size: 4" / 10 cm.
Presently I have it in an east window, which isn't strong enough light to maintain the color, but it's at least alive, it's grown a lot, and it's not been any trouble so far. The care is basically the same as for most of my plants: I water every couple weeks, giving it a good flushing and then splashing some fertilizer on top (probably not the ideal way to fertilize, but nothing about my setup is ideal). No pests in two years; hopefully that will continue. It gets whatever temperature and humidity is prevailing in the living room at any given moment.

It's offsetting a little bit, true to the Billbergia side of the family, but I haven't yet tried to propagate it yet.


2. Ctenanthe burle-marxii

Date: September 2012.
Pot size: 6" / 15 cm.

(As above.)
I may never actually know what the real name for this plant is: I've seen it Ctenanthe burle-marxii and Stromanthe burle-marxii, as well as assorted other ways (as a cultivar name 'Burle Marx,' with or without the hyphen, occasionally identified as a Calathea, etc.). Whatever it is, it seems to like it here.

Date: April or May 2009.
This is the original specimen; it wasn't potted up until after it outgrew the terrarium.
For something from the Marantaceae, this is damn near miraculous, actually. Not only is there this plant in the 6-inch pot, but I have seven others in 4-inch pots, all created from divisions of the original.

Care is pretty much the usual: water every two weeks, prevailing humidity and temperature. It gets artificial light, down in the basement, which is surprisingly adequate. There may have been minor spider mite problems once a while ago, but minor spider mite problems are extremely small potatoes now, now that I have the scale outbreak for perspective. The only issue I've had with it is, after a certain point, they do get sort of rootbound, and when they're rootbound, they dry out more than they should between waterings. I don't think I've ever lost a plant to that, but the leaves curl up and eventually dry and fall off. Of course, once that starts happening, you only need to up-pot or divide the plant and then everything's good again.


3. Euphorbia NOID (maybe E. ingens?)

Date: September 2012.
Pot size: about 7" / 18 cm.
It's not that this one's so amazing, exactly, as that this has been a bad year for my Euphorbias specifically: I have fungus problems on E. drupifera, half of the E. miliis, and E. bougheyi variegata. The E. tortilis, E. flanaganii, E. pseudocactus, and E. grandicornis have all etiolated and look sad. E. lactea fell over and severed an arm. And so on. It's not a complete disaster: a different NOID, E. ammak, multiple E. trigonas, and multiple E. tirucallis are all doing well. But as a group, it's been a bad year for the genus.

This one bucked the general trend; it hadn't been seeming like a very good idea until this summer. For one thing, it hadn't grown at all, in more than a year. This summer, it got to go outside, which is apparently what it had been waiting for all along -- it's not a huge amount of new growth, but it's something. (Everything above the constrictions near the top of the stems is new as of this summer.) I'm assuming that similar growth happened below the soil line -- when I first bought it, I checked to see if it needed a bigger pot, and not only did it not need a bigger pot, but the plants were barely even rooted.

Date: January 2011.
Pot size: about 8" / 20 cm.
Aside from being unresponsive, it's been an okay plant. No rot, no bugs, no problems. I had it in a west window previously, this being the best I could do. Having seen what it's capable of if properly motivated, I've now given it a spot in the small south window in the living room. When it was indoors before, it had been getting water every two or four weeks, depending on how quickly it seemed to be drying out. No special considerations for temperature or humidity. I haven't tried to propagate it yet, obviously (you can see from the photo that it hasn't been cut at all), but at least it's trying to get along, which is more than I can say for some Euphorbias.


4. Begonia 'Puffy Clouds'

Date: September 2012.
Pot size: about 4.5" / 11.5 cm.
'Puffy Clouds' and I have never gotten along all that well, probably because I wasn't giving it enough light -- for most of the time I've had it, it only got artificial light, and probably not as much of it as it wanted -- but things have been better since it got moved to an east window in the living room.

Date: August 2010. This is what it looked like when it got here, but I cut it back (and tried unsuccessfully to propagate it) almost immediately. Also a stem or two resprouted and then died before I had the sense to move the plant, leading to the current picture.
Pot size: 4" / 10 cm (diagonal).
I'm not saying I love it even now, but I'm appreciating Begonias a lot more than I used to. (In retrospect, starting with B. rex-cultorum varieties was probably the worst possible way to get reacquainted with the genus.) I'm optimistic that the recent strong growth will continue. Worse things could happen.

It's been getting the standard care: water every two weeks (which is probably not quite often enough), a little splash of fertilizer along with the water, light from an east window, and the temperature and humidity that everyone else is getting. To its credit, everything that's ever been wrong with B. 'Puffy Clouds' has been my fault: the plant itself seems easy-going enough if you don't torture it.


5. Ficus lyrata

Date: September 2012.
Pot size: 10" / 26 cm.
And, finally, Ficus lyrata. Nobody ever seems to be that into F. lyrata. I mean, the books all dutifully mention it, and they're for sale often enough that I don't think I'd have much trouble finding one to buy, but I never hear anybody saying that it's their favorite plant. Hell, I never hear anybody saying they think F. lyrata is even nice or interesting or anything like that, unlike F. elastica, F. binnendijkii, or F. benjamina.

And yet, you know, F. lyrata is not that bad. A little goofy-looking, perhaps, but the leaves get huge, it's been, if anything, a little easier for me than F. elastica (though weirdly not as easy as F. benjamina, which I'm also appreciating a lot more these days than I ever thought I would), and there've never been any huge problems. Every now and then a leaf clunks to the floor, and I apparently had mealybugs on it once, though I no longer remember that happening. (It's mentioned in this post.) That's about it.

Date: November 2007.
Pot size: 6" / 15 cm?
It's got a spot near the living room south window, where it doesn't really get much actual sunlight, but it makes do. I water every 2 or 4 weeks, depending on how fast it's dried out -- to the plant's credit, it doesn't seem to be particularly shaken if I make it wait a little longer than it would like. It's only been repotted once, so it's probably pretty rootbound, but I've been hesitant to move it up again because I'm not sure I want to encourage it -- at some point, it's going to be too big to fit inside the house, and I suppose that's when I'm going to have to learn how to air-layer.


Other plants that aren't making me angry at the moment:

Agave americana 'Medio-picta alba'
Agave lophantha 'Quadricolor'
Agave victoriae-reginae
Aglaonema 'Cory'
Aloe NOID which might be 'Blue Elf'
Ananas lucidus
Anthurium NOID (red-violet flower)
Araucaria bidwillii
Asplundia 'Jungle Drum'
Begonia, NOID cane-type
Begonia x erythrophylla
Billbergia nutans
Browningia hertlingiana
Ceropegia woodii, variegated
Chamaedorea metallica
Coffea arabica
Crassula perforata var. falcata
Dracaena deremensis 'Janet Craig Compacta'
Dracaena fragrans 'Sol'
Epipremnum aureum 'N'Joy'
Episcia 'Coco'
Episcia 'Suomi'
Euphorbia ammak
Euphorbia NOID (the one I refer to as "E. kokopelli")
Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks'
Euphorbia trigona
Ficus benjamina 'Margarita'
Ficus benjamina, NOID variegated

That isn't necessarily an exhaustive list, within the A-G section of the alphabet; those are just the ones I happened to have taken pictures of and that I've been finding generally pleasing lately.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

I'm not planning to bring back the Saturday pet pictures as a weekly thing -- it winds up being a lot more work than you'd think -- but it's been a long time, so.

Nina's been fine. Or at least she's been fine as far as I know: sometimes it's hard to tell.

Post-replanting, some plants have done well, and others haven't. The Episcia 'Coco' has been happy, as you can see, though the crickets do nibble at it (hence the hole in the leaf in the bottom left of the picture).

The Murraya paniculata is in decent shape, too; the crickets leave it alone, and it's produced a little bit of new growth. I'm a little concerned that the terrarium may not get enough light to keep the Murraya happy, though.

The Begonia 'Tiger Kitten' has had a more mixed response: the stuff on one side (labeled 1 and 2 in the photo at the above link) has been growing well, and is producing a lot of new growth; the stuff on the other side (6 and 7) has died. One of those (I think #6) was basically completely devoured by the crickets, who prefer Begonia to Episcia. I'm not sure what happened to the other one.

The Ctenanthe burle-marxii (3) that I was sure would do fine was the first plant to die, and I'm not sure what happened to it. I might try to replant it, since I do have others, but I also might take this as a sign and leave it open, or try a different plant. I may have Aglaonema 'Peacock' cane segments rooted in a little while; that's probably the leading candidate if I decide not to replace the Ctenanthe.

Sheba, meanwhile, has been having another round of allergies, worse than those in the spring. We did have the vet look at her (we were there anyway for the annual Bordetella shot), and he said he thought it was just allergies, and that we should get her 25 mg of Benadryl twice a day if this continued, and that would probably take care of everything. Which was fine, but then we didn't immediately run out and buy the Benadryl, because this had gone away on its own previously without any intervention. So Sheba's gotten noticeably more uncomfortable (as of Tuesday, when I'm writing this), but we're working on it. A large part of the issue might be that it's ragweed season, and I've just found out that the husband has been walking her near weedy areas. I mean, not that the pollen doesn't get everywhere, but we might be able to limit her exposure a little bit.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

They said it would never happen. Some even said it couldn't be done. But I've done it: I cleaned and replanted Nina's terrarium.

She got part of a strawberry as a house re-warming gift, though as far as I could tell she didn't actually eat any of it.
Gone is the Pellionia pulchra. It grew well, it handled drought like a champ, but it choked out everything else, and eventually started choking out itself, even. So behold the next crew:



1: Murraya paniculata (seedling)
2, 4, 6, and 7: Begonia 'Tiger Kitten' cutting (4) and rooted leaves (2, 6, 7)
3: Ctenanthe burle-marxii
5: Episcia 'Coco'

The Ctenanthe has lived with Nina before, and did awesomely; I'm less sure about the other plants. They should all be fine in a terrarium, but I don't know if they'll be fine with the transplanting (which was kind of rough on the Begonias in particular) or the inevitable cricket-nibbling. There's also some danger that the Episcia and Ctenanthe may grow fast enough to crowd out the other plants. It's not even a particularly hypothetical danger, since that's basically what the Ctenanthe did the last time it was in the terrarium.

But we'll worry about all that other stuff later: right now all I care about is that I actually got it cleaned up, after many months of procrastinating, and consequently should be able to enjoy several guilt-free months before I have to do it again. It's surprising how much of a load off my mind that is.

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

Hey, remember last Saturday, when I was complaining about how cold and dry it'd been so far this winter? Well, on Saturday and Sunday, we were having an actual blizzard, officially, with the National Weather Service issuing Blizzard Warnings and making increasingly overwrought pronouncements about the inadvisability of trying to go anywhere: slick roads (there was rain for a few hours before the snow started), strong winds (20-30 mph / 32-48 kph sustained, with gusts to 50 mph / 80 kph), heavy snow coming down and then blowing around creating "near-whiteout conditions" and life-threatening wind chills (to -20F / -29C) and so forth.

But: not only did most of the actual snowfall happen at night when I wasn't awake to watch it, but we hardly got any snow at all, maybe two inches (5 cm) at most. (They had been predicting 3-4 in / 8-10 cm.) And, now it's that much colder, so I didn't get a warm-up or a snowfall, thanks a lot, Mr. Blizzard.

So I'm shunning winter until it decides to straighten up and be more reasonable. At least for today, it's summer on PATSP. We've got sunflowers, crotons, cannas, corn, all kinds of summery stuff.

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

Helianthus annuus. Not much of a photo, but the leaves aren't the photogenic part of the plant.

Platycerium sp., perhaps P. bifurcatum. Mine isn't doing so hot lately: possibly this is not a good indoor plant. Or maybe it's a great indoor plant and I'm just growing it badly.

Phytolacca americana. I was really impressed with pokeweed last summer this summer right now, in the summer, summer being the season it is presently. Weedy, sure, but also impressively ornamental -- I saw at least one eight-foot (2.7 m) specimen that was either deliberately grown or deliberately not cut-down, and it looked good. Hot-pink stems, multi-colored berries, birds like it: we could do worse, for weeds, is all I'm saying.

Ledebouria socialis. Yeah, this one's just kinda ugly.

Zea mays. There's something kind of Op Art about Zea mays photos: all those parallel lines that aren't parallel. I like it.

Synadenium grantii. Yes, you've seen this plant's leaves before, but so what? I like it.

Codiaeum variegatum NOID (most likely 'Petra'). This reminds me of photos of the Sun's surface: all yellow and orange with a few dark spots.

Ficus elastica 'Tineke,' or similar cv. I'm not sure what to say about this one either.

Ctenanthe lubbersiana. I passed up buying this plant at Lowe's this summer, repeatedly, because 1) it was very large and I didn't have room for it and 2) I wasn't sure I could keep it happy even if I found a way to make room for it. Lowe's is still the only place I've ever seen one, and I wonder occasionally whether I made the right call.

Canna 'Tropicanna.' Holy crap. It's a little over the top, I'll grant you, but this is my favorite. None of the others are even close.

The Quad City Botanical Center, Part 1 of However Many

As I mentioned a while ago, there's a Botanical Center in the Quad Cities, the "Quad City Botanical Center." (Whimsical!) Somehow I'd never heard of it before the husband told me about it this past summer. And I know you would expect me to be bouncing off the walls until we were able to visit, but I actually forgot about it for several months, and only remembered I knew about the place when the husband raised the subject a couple weeks ago.

Botanical gardens are strange mixes of things I like and things I don't. On the one hand: plants. Plants are good. But then there's the part where you don't get to take home the ones you like. Even if you offer to pay for them. It took an enormous amount of focus and self-control, for example, not to leave the QCBC with a couple of Begonia leaves. Also, I'm fairly convinced that I will die, or at least become gravely ill, if I do not very soon get a variegated Callisia fragrans like the ones they have there.

Variegated Callisia fragrans.
Botanical centers are also weird places for me because I have so many plants, and have seen so many others, that my perspective is very warped about what counts as a cool plant. A gigantic, healthy Monstera deliciosa like this one --

Monstera deliciosa, split-leaf philodendron.
leaves me kind of cold. You know, big whoop, I have three of those at home. (Not as big or as nice. Not by a long shot. But a plant I'm very familiar with, even so.) I'm not saying this is desirable. It's just, you know, over time, it takes weirder and rarer things to get me excited.

So I don't know whether my opinion on the place can, or even ought to, matter to anybody, but having said that, I was pleasantly surprised by the QCBC. Part of the good thing about botanical centers, as opposed to retail, is that retail is fairly homogenized. No matter where you go, you find more or less the same set of plants over and over, and ordering is constrained by what's available and what will sell (jade plants, peace lilies, Dracaena marginata, pothos, lucky bamboo) than what the person doing the ordering finds interesting. On the other hand, botanical gardens, like home gardens, can cater a little more specifically to an individual's tastes and whims, which I suggest is a Good Thing, even if you aren't the individual being catered to.

So my guess is that someone at the QCBC has a special fondness for shrimp plants (Pachystachys, Justicia), plants in the Maranta family (Calathea, Ctenanthe), and . . . well, I'm not sure what you'd call the third category. We'll get to it.

I saw at least three shrimp plants, but only two were identified.

Pachystachys lutea, lollipop plant.
I was familiar with P. lutea from the garden center where I used to work. We never had any that were that big, though, and I was never that impressed with them. I get the appeal more now.

The second shrimp plant was one I hadn't heard of before.

Pachystachys coccinea.
Pachystachys coccinea inflorescence, close-up.

It might impress you more if it had been blooming as heavily as the P. lutea, but you get the idea from the close-up, I'm sure.

The picture of the third shrimp didn't turn out well; I was having to fight screwy afternoon light, shaky hands, and a lens that kept trying to fog up. So maybe next time on that one.

The Marantaceae plants were mostly Calatheas, with just one Ctenanthe I remember --

Ctenanthe lubbersiana.
-- but they made up for it by including two Calatheas I'd never seen or heard of. The QCBC gets big, big points for C. majestica:

Calathea majestica.

though they lose some points for making me look up the ID. (ID signs were sort of inconsistently placed, and often covered by the plants they were supposed to identify, which I suppose is the sort of problem botanical-garden-type places would have a lot.) There was also a large, sort of plain NOID, which didn't photograph well:

Calathea NOID.
And another one I had to look up, which I think is Calathea 'Wilson['s?] Princep.'

Calathea 'Wilson['s?] Princep.'
Unfortunately, there weren't any very large specimens of 'Wilson Princep,' and the ones that did exist were in weird, hard-to-photograph locations underneath lots of other plants, so I'll have to try again on this photo, maybe.

The final group of plants I want to cover for this post are all commercial plants, things I mainly knew from ingredient lists. The QCBC had several of them. They weren't nearly as pretty as the shrimps and the Calatheas, but I at least have mental images for some of these plants that I didn't have before.

First up, annatto (Bixa orellana). I realized while there that I knew the word, but had no idea what annatto actually is, or is used for. (Probably you know already, but if you're like I was: it's both a spice and a yellow to orange food coloring, particularly common in cheese, says Wikipedia.) The plant itself wasn't terribly impressive, though with a lot of these plants, I have no idea whether the specimen at the QCBC was particularly large or healthy.

Bixa orellana, annatto.
They also had vanilla (Vanilla planifolia), coffee (Coffea arabica), and sapodilla (Manilara zapota, which used to produce the base for chewing gum: gum is now, wikiposedly, mostly produced from artificial polymers), which I didn't take pictures of: I have a Coffea, the Vanilla wasn't that impressive and anyway I've seen them before, and for some reason it didn't occur to me to take a picture of the Manilara, though I remember thinking about it. Supposedly they had allspice (Pimenta dioica), cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) and bay (Laurus nobilis) too, though I don't remember seeing any of them.

I did get a picture of cacao (chocolate; Theobroma cacao), though I was a little let down; I expected more:

Theobroma cacao, cacao (chocolate) tree.
And the papaya (Carica papaya) was respectable, I guess. Only one I've ever seen in person, anyway.

Carica papaya, papaya.
Finally, they had a couple smallish ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata) plants. Fairly nondescript,

Canana odorata, ylang-ylang.
though there was one flower. (I think it may have dropped off the stem already, and just happened to catch in part of the plant, but if it was a dead flower, it still looked pretty. I couldn't detect a smell, which supports the dead-flower theory.)

Cananga odorata flower.
In the next couple posts, I'll take a look at the really big plants they had, some oddities which pleased me, and a few really impressive specimens of plants I already knew about. I'm tentatively planning Part 2 for 7 December, though that depends on me being able to write and sort pictures and etc. a bit more quickly than usual, so try not to be too disappointed with me if I make you wait a few days longer than that.