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

(All prior pictures in the transmitted light series can be found here.)

It's that time again, and I have to say, this is my favorite batch to date.

Hippeastrum NOID. Well okay, this picture isn't so much a favorite.

Syngonium podophyllum. Or this one. Though I must note, as I often do, how happy it makes me when even the boring pictures are in focus.

Scindapsus pictus. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Little bit sparkly, little bit blotchy -- this could be cool, maybe, someday.

Neoregelia NOID 'Nuance.' I know it looks like when somebody on TV wears a striped tie, and the pattern gets all strobey and colors start to appear that aren't in the actual tie and you kind of want to look away from it but you can't. But this isn't a technical glitch: the leaf actually looks like this. Really and truly.

Farfugium japonicum 'Crested Leopard.' The interesting part of this one to me is not the round, lighter-colored spots of variegation, but the pattern of the veins in the bulk of the leaf, away from the main veins or the spots.

Strobilanthes dyerianus. And nobody ever even knows about this, because everybody's always so focused on the tops of the leaves. It's tragic, is what it is.

Cyrtomium falcatum. Ferns just have awesome venation.

Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar.' I aim for symmetrical photos, most of the time, but occasionally asymmetry is a good thing.

Cordyline fruticosa 'Florica.' A little washed-out, but interesting.

Polyscias balfouriana. I wasn't even expecting anything particularly interesting from this picture when I took it. Getting it home and seeing all the (in-focus!) detail pretty much made my day.

Unfinished business: Farfugium japonicum 'Crested Leopard' flowers

Some time ago, I noted that we had a Farfugium japonicum come in, that subsequently developed buds, and that I was excited to see how the flowers were going to look when they finally opened.

To say I am disappointed would be an understatement.


This isn't really the plant's fault, though. Besides the fact that it's a really crappy picture (for which I accept full blame), the buds got all weird and twisted as they opened because of, get this, thrips.

Thrips! The one plant pest I thought I would never have to worry about! The one plant pest I figured was too ineffectual to ever be a real problem for me!

[sigh]

I tried to get pictures of the thrips themselves, but they're very small, and very fast: consequently, they are usually very blurry. One of our blooming plant suppliers (not the tropicals from Florida, though the tropicals often have their own problems) brings them to us, I think.

If you're interested in seeing what the flowers are supposed to look like, check out this post at Tales From the Microbial Laboratory. Much prettier. The flowers do have a smell, by the way. The smell smells more or less like my picture looks: kind of unpleasant and deformed. I would like to be able to blame the thrips for this too, but I suspect that's probably just how they're supposed to smell.

Random plant event: Farfugium japonicum 'Crested Leopard' flower buds

We are periodically offered, from our Florida supplier, boxes of what are called "assorted colorful foliage." This is always our best bet for something weird or cool: we've gotten bizarro Alocasias (including, most recently, 'Frydek'), Calathea ornata, Homalomena 'Selby,' and a number of other things that aren't offered any other way. Which is good. The problem is that these boxes also almost always include plants that we really don't need or want, like Alocasia 'Polly' (I swear, they sit around down in Florida trying to think of new ways to trick us into taking more 'Pollys.'), plants we can't really use (Cordyline australis, which are really only useful in group plantings in the spring -- and they sent us a couple in August), and plants that are not especially colorful or exotic at all (Dieffenbachia 'Camille,' Syngonium podophyllum 'White Butterfly'). So it's very much a gamble, with the assorted colorful foliage: there's usually something worth getting, but you have to take other stuff with it that's not worth getting.

In this last round, we got a Farfugium japonicum 'Crested Leopard.' Or at least that's how it was identified to us; the picture of f. japonicum 'Aureomaculatum' at davesgarden.com looks basically the same as our plant. If this looks familiar to any outdoor perennial gardeners in the audience, that's because this same plant is also called Ligularia tussilaginea, and resembles other Ligularias grown as perennials.


Anyway. WCW and I weren't sure what to do with it. Farfugium isn't a genus normally grown indoors (though I have a houseplant book at home that includes it, so I know it's possible to do), but we also had no idea whether it would come back if we put it outside with the perennials, plus the tropicals are more expensive than the perennials and we'd paid a lot for the plant. So in the end, I kept it in the greenhouse but priced it lowish, in the hopes that someone would snatch it up and get rid of the problem for us.

Hasn't happened. However, the plant's decided to bloom, which means it's going to sell. Probably before I can get a picture of the flowers. And I'm just hoping that nobody asks me how to take care of it, 'cause at this point all I have to go on is what my book at home says, and that makes it sound like the care is basically like for a Podocarpus macrophyllus: bright indirect light, wet, cool temperatures, humid. If the book is wrong about this, of course, that's the perfect recipe for rot. So I'm hoping I don't get asked.


If the plant sticks around long enough that I can get pictures of the flowers, obviously I will do so. But I'm not optimistic.