Random plant events: Hatiora and Schlumbergera

Oh hi. Apologies for the three-day gap in posting.

Imidacloprid II: The Imidaclopridatening¹ has finally ended, so all that's left to do is sit around with my fingers crossed until I find out whether or not it's worked. I'm finding scale less often now, which might be a good sign. It also might just be a sign that all the really badly-infested plants were thrown away, and the ones left are only slightly infested. Time will tell.

In other news, Sheba and I are both extremely itchy lately. Losing-sleep kind of itchy. Biting-bald-spots-into-the-whole-inside-of-your-leg itchy.² I have no idea why: there are no bumps or rashes or anything, we haven't changed laundry detergents, etc. The main environmental change is probably the addition of all the imidacloprid, but that really should be staying confined to the pots, and in any case I'm not pouring it down my legs, which is where I'm having the worst problems.

Besides imidacloprid, the other theories include: mold, weather, the house heating system, karma and/or divine retribution, allergies, excessive washing, inadequate washing, witches, and bunnies.³ This has always been going on to some degree or another -- I first blogged about Sheba getting hot spots a year and a half ago, and I first noticed that I was feeling itchy frequently last July. But it's so much worse right now, for both of us, that I'm thinking surely this can't be a coincidence.

Of course, thinking about it also sometimes sets it off, so I should move on to another topic quickly. Maybe plants?

The plants are still doing things, and I'm still taking pictures, though it's been hard to get very good pictures lately -- too cold and/or rainy to go outside for good light, too dark to get good pictures inside. So I apologize for the quality, but:

My NOID orange (but sometimes not-orange) "Easter cactus" has bloomed again. This isn't supposed to happen when it's not Easter, as far as I know, but perhaps it's been confused by the temperature in the plant room -- we were late setting up the heater, so it's been cold in there. Some plants like this more than others. Historically speaking, the flowers are red when they first open, then gradually turn more orange. Not sure what happened this year that we're starting out with orange at the beginning. Maybe that's temperature-related?

In any case, the buds were initially kind of a light pink, then magenta --

-- and opened up orange, with no red stage this year at all. I guess Hatiora likes to keep a person guessing. Or at least this Hatiora likes to keep this person guessing. Perhaps the appropriate "person" for Hatiora's eventual plant profile should be M. Night Shyamalan.⁴

The plant is approximately the same size now as it was in February. Maybe a little bigger. It's not that it hasn't grown quite a bit in that stretch of time; it just drops pieces whenever I'm not watering perfectly, and sometimes when I am watering perfectly, so the net growth is basically zero. There remains a strong argument for Patsy Cline as the profile "person."

Meanwhile, and more predictably, the Schlumbergeras are in full swing at the moment as well. 'Caribbean Dancer' (above) is the main bloomer, but that's to be expected, since it's the largest and oldest of my plants. I also have a salmon/peach variety, which is just barely visible in this photo (slightly to the right of center, under a couple layers of 'Caribbean Dancer' blooms), which is having its biggest year to date, a magenta one (not pictured) that's got some buds but no actual flowers yet, and a white one (also not pictured) with plenty of buds that are only just now beginning to open. The previously-reported bud on seedling number 25 aborted shortly after I took that picture, I guess because I wasn't feeling bad enough about the plant collection. If I can figure out a way to move the seedlings into the plant room by February or so, I might start seeing buds on the seedlings that actually open. And boy will that be a crazy day.

Just to end on a bit of a tease, other random plant events coming up this week:⁵ Phragmipedium, Anthurium, Leuchtenbergia, Billbergia, Strelitzia, and some unidentified trees in downtown Iowa City.

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¹ (1. dumping imidacloprid into the pot of every plant in the house. 2. Well it's a word now. Deal with it.)
² (more Sheba than me on the bald spots. Though if I could reach . . . . In any case, I'm pretty sure we're both having trouble getting to sleep, and then waking up early, because of itching.)
³ Some of those are jokes. Which ones are jokes is left as an exercise for the reader.
⁴ Pro tip: you do not want to get me started about M. Night Shyamalan.
⁵ (where "this week" = a vaguely-defined period of time which includes not only this week but also the following week, a solid chunk of December, and never, and where "random plant events" means random plant events, stupid plant tricks, and possibly graffiti)

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.

Ten(-ish) Things I Have Mistaken for Scale

So we're in the fifth week of checking all the plants in the basement weekly (on the east and south sides) or every second week (on the west). I'm not finding many actual pests anymore, for two reasons:

The first reason is that there's just not that much to find anymore, since any plants with obvious, easy to see infestations were already thrown in the trash.¹ The second is that I'm not looking as hard, because it's extremely time-consuming and tedious to do, and I'm tired of it.

As a result, almost every scale insect I've seen lately has been a false positive of one kind or another. And there are many kinds. So here is a list of ten things I have managed to mistake for scale in the last five weeks:

1. Scars -- on everything. Oh my god. You've never imagined how many little tan corky spots there are on the leaves, petioles, and stems of your plants until you've had to check each one individually to see whether it rubs off. And of course there's no way to actually remove them, because they're part of the plant, so I wind up checking the same scars over and over, week after week. This is far and away the largest and most irritating category of false positives.

Multiple scars on Epipremnum aureum 'Neon.'
Leaf scar on Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips.'
Not actually sure what this thing on a NOID Cryptanthus is, but I think it's either edema, a scar, or edema that became a scar.
Multiple irregular scars on the back of a Begonia x 'Erythrophylla' leaf.
Scars from thrips (?) on one of the Anthurium seedlings.

2. Dots of dried sap -- they're generally the wrong color to be scale, but the size and shape are close, so they have to get checked out anyway. Arguably a subcategory of scars, though distinct because dried sap rubs off. (Usually.)

Dried sap on Euphorbia trigona.
And on Hoya something. (Sold as H. kentiana, probably actually H. wayetii.)

3. Marginal burn, tip burn -- It doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes when a leaf is burnt in just the right way, the dead spot looks like a scale insect hanging right on the edge or tip of the leaf. Since the actual insects tend to congregate around the spot where the petiole attaches to the leaf, on and along the midrib and other major veins, this isn't terribly confusing, but it happens.

The margin spots on this variegated Yucca guatemalensis didn't make it through the recoloring / cropping process in very good shape, but they're there, along with a more obvious scar in the center of the leaf.

4. Aerial roots -- the shape is often not quite right, but when they're first developing, some aerial roots are small, oval, and tan. Best distinguished from scale by the facts that they don't wipe off and that they're pointy.

Aerial roots on a somewhat unhappy Selenicereus anthonyanus.²
Roots forming on a Stapelia gigantea stem.

5. Dirt -- dirt gets splashed all over when I water, so some of it ends up on the leaves and stems. Because there's no wind in the basement to blow it off, it stays attached. The irregular shape usually gives it away, but some pieces of bark are rounded enough to be momentarily alarming, and vermiculite is about the right color, so this is occasionally a problem.

A tiny fleck of potting mix on an Aglaonema 'Peacock' leaf.
A couple bits of dirt on an Anthurium seedling.

6. The natural coloration of the plant -- some plants just naturally have lots of little bumps or brown spots or whatever. In most of these cases, I've either given up on checking altogether because it's impossible, or the plant got scale a long time ago and has been thrown out. Aerial roots is technically a subdivision of natural coloration, now that I think about it, but it's so common and specific it probably deserves a separate entry anyway.

Close-up of a Ficus microcarpus stem, showing peeling bark, aerial roots, and a bunch of other random stuff.
Some of this Schefflera actinophylla's brown spots, if not all of them, are capable of becoming aerial roots if the air is sufficiently humid, but usually they just expand to form bark.

7. Edema -- again, bumps due to edema are usually irregularly shaped, so I don't have to resort to the squish test, but this has still happened plenty of times.

Surprisingly bad edema on a Billbergia nutans leaf, probably because I moved it into a bigger pot and then set it in front of a cold window.

8. Spiders -- only once, but still.


9. Mineral deposits -- parts of the plants that are in contact with the soil will sometimes get a tan, crusty mineral buildup which can resemble a big infestation of closely-spaced scale. Hatiora salicornioides seems to be especially prone to this, but I also see it on Anthurium quite a lot.

Mineral crust on Hatiora salicornioides.

10. Hallucinations -- and occasionally I just straight-up see things that aren't there. Which is usually a sign that I should take a break.

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¹ The last few scale insects I've found also appeared to be dead already. Or at least they were really, really tired, being flat and dried out and crunchy. One hopes that this has something to do with the imidacloprid.
Although thrips aren't really the focus of the post, for readers who are curious: the thrips are still around, here and there, and when I see them they're generally alive. I'm only finding them in a particular fairly narrow section of the basement shelves, though, and I didn't find any last week, so this is maybe progress. I also got my first thrips photos -- none are very good, but they're an improvement over no photos at all:
The thrips in question was photographed on notebook paper (hence the blue line in the top image), through a tiny magnifying glass lens, if this gives you any sense of the size.
² I have two Selenicereus anthonyanus plants, one in the basement and one in the plant room, and neither one has ever seemed very happy to be here. Mostly they just don't grow very fast, and the new growth is thin. Likely a light issue, but I don't have any better spots available.
It's weird, because Selenicereus chrysocardium is fine in very similar spots. I don't know what's wrong.

Random plant event: Hatiora NOID

So one of the buds from the orange-flowering Hatiora NOID has finally opened.

I guess I can't call it the orange-flowering Hatiora NOID anymore.

This is slightly disappointing. I would have been happier with orange; I bought it in the first place because the flowers were orange. On the other hand, it's hard to be too upset, considering that I had pretty much decided I never expected to see any flowers at all. It's a nice enough red, as reds go.

Unfinished business: various

Occasionally, when I'm trying to find an old blog post, I run into other things along the way that aren't what I was looking for but make me think oh, I should say something about how that turned out. But then I don't do that, because the idea only occurs when I'm in the middle of writing something else. But today is the day, because I don't have any great ideas at the moment for writing anything else. So, here are some follow-ups on the posts from February, January, and December:


Random plant event: Hatiora NOID (15 February 2013):

The buds are still there, though they're not growing very fast, there aren't any new ones, and the ones there are haven't opened yet.


Random plant event: Anthurium #58 ("Betty Larceny") (7 February 2013):

Betty was just messing with me. I am not 100% certain, but it looks like the pink thing I thought was maybe a flower was actually just a cataphyll that was more strongly colored than the plant normally produces. Oh well. It kinda did seem too good to be true.


Random plant event: Spathiphyllum (20 January 2013):

The Spathiphyllum seedlings are beginning to look like Spathiphyllums, a bit. Slightly bigger leaves, and more leaves. Even getting some of the sunken primary veins going.

Of the 18 pots, 16 survive. (The other two got too dry. My bad.)

As with children, it turns out that Spathiphyllums are a lot more interesting, likeable, and adorable when you've made them yourself. I'm checking up on them all the time, I get excited when I see that they're growing, I'm trying to cross the parents so I can have even more, etc.


Unfinished business: Coffea arabica (28 December 2012):

It's been eight weeks since I took the Coffea seeds out of their fruits and soaked them in water, so I have planted the eighteen seeds from that batch in vermiculite and am trying to germinate them in the basement, as of Monday night. A second set of nine seeds soaked in water for one day, dried for five days, and then soaked in water for one day again. I'm just checking to see if drying time really makes that much difference.

Nothing so far, but I wasn't really expecting anything to happen yet anyway. I'm not sure I should be expecting anything to happen ever, since I'm not sure I'm doing any of this correctly.


Random plant event: Gasteria bicolor (18 December 2012):

The Gasteria seedlings haven't rotted out yet, which is exciting all on its own. They're also up to two or three leaves apiece.


There is one item of good/bad/good/bad/good news, however: the Gasteria seedlings are still alive, and have grown more leaves, which is good. But the container is overrun by springtails (visible in the image as gray specks on the surface of the leaves), which is bad. Though the Gasterias have not already been devoured by the springtails, which is probably a good sign that they won't be. Then again, this is more springtails in one place than I've ever seen in my life, so: bad. But it's at least let me get the very largest and clearest picture to date of a springtail, which is somewhat good.



List: Missing From Retail, Part 4 of 5 (14 December 2012):

The Osmanthus fragrans got moved to a cool, bright location (in the plant room), but it was too little too late, apparently, since it completely defoliated. And then the stems dried up and became brittle enough to snap off. And then the trunk went too. It seemed pretty dead, so I threw it out.

What with the spider mites (when just after it first arrived), the lack of new flowers (all last summer), and not having a suitable place to overwinter it, I'm thinking Osmanthus is just not something I'm able to grow at the moment.


List: Missing From Retail, Part 3 of 5 (8 December 2012):

Haemanthus albiflos, on the other hand, has been doing okay for me. It dropped some leaves when it first arrived, which concerned me, but it's apparently settled in well enough, because it's produced one new leaf for me (furthest right in the photo).


It's not amazing or anything, but it's a bit of a relief. I'd been a little worried about it. It wasn't the most auspicious time of year to be shipped.


Coming eventually: September to November!

Random plant event: Hatiora NOID

In May 2011, I, not knowing any better, bought an orange-blooming "Easter cactus" (Hatiora cv.¹) at a garden center in Iowa City. And it looked like this.

Pot: 4" / 10 cm.
It's grown much bigger since then, and although it loses segments from time to time, it's held together much better than the magenta-flowering one that I got in the mail a week after.²

Pot: 6" / 15 cm.
I haven't been worrying about getting flowers, because I figured just keeping it alive was good enough for now. But about six weeks ago, I moved it into a larger pot, because it kept drying out and tipping over before it was in line to be watered again. And now, suddenly --

Three whole flower buds!³

Granted, they will probably drop off before they open, because that's how things seem to be going lately. But still -- it's almost enough to know that blooming is possible. Dare I even hope for actual flowers? It almost feels greedy.

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¹ (Formerly Rhipsalidopsis, and still better known as Rhipsalidopsis, but my understanding is that Rhipsalidopsis has been moved into Hatiora now.)
² The magenta one shattered badly once, after which I divided it into four pots. Of those four, none have grown much. One disintegrated completely. Another did okay for a while, but is in the process of disintegrating now. I'm not sure why there's been such a large difference between the two varieties; they got basically the same care to begin with.
³ The three other things that look like flower buds are just very young stem segments; they begin red and then age to green.

List: Houseplants That Have Red Flowers

The usual disclaimers apply, but let's run through them again just to make sure we're all on the same page:

1) This is not an exhaustive list of red-flowering houseplants; I'm not sure it's even possible to come up with an exhaustive list of red-flowering houseplants. And if it were possible, it probably wouldn't be desirable. This is plenty long as it is.

2) Also, many of the plants on the list are available in multiple cultivars, not all of which necessarily bloom red.

3) I'm approaching these lists from an interior-decorating standpoint, not a botanical one. If the plant has showy red bracts with tiny yellow true flowers, I'm counting it as a red-bloomer, because that's how most people would think of it.

4) As there are no sharp dividing lines between "red," "orange," "pink," and "purple," you may disagree with me about the redness of some of the flowers mentioned here. Which if it's all the same to you, I'm going to see that as more your problem than it is mine.

5) In some cases, I'm going wholly or partly by the results from Google image search for the plants in question. Since people sometimes post misidentified pictures, there is a small chance that some of the plants listed, especially more obscure plants, may be included in error.

Aeschynanthus lobbianus.

Clerodendrum x speciosum. (C. splendens x C. thomsoniae)

Cyclamen persicum NOID.

Episcia 'Silver Skies.'

Hatiora (formerly Rhipsalidopsis) NOID.

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis.

Kalanchoe blossfeldiana NOID.

Neoregelia 'Maria.'

Parodia microsperma. Some other Parodias have red flowers as well, though yellow is more typical.

Tillandsia ionantha. Some other Tillandsias have either red flowers (T. funckiana, T. latifolia) or red bracts (T. juncea, T. abdita, T. vinalesensis, T. boliviensis, T. tenuifolia, T. brachycaulos, T. queroensis, T. leonamiana).
This is a tough list to do recommends / anti-recommends for: for all of these, I either have 1) no experience, 2) exclusively bad experiences, or 3) very mixed experiences. If forced to come up with something, though, I would reluctantly recommend Aeschynanthus, Episcia, and Neoregelia.

My personal experience with Aeschynanthus lobbianus was mostly negative, but I don't think it was the plant's fault: I should have kept up better with the watering. Other Aeschynanthus species have done well for me, enough so that I'd feel comfortable recommending them to other people. The main obstacles to cultivation are light (they need at least bright indirect light, and I'd highly recommend at least some direct sun) and temperature (always above 60F/16C).

I enjoy Episcias, but varieties either tend to do really well for me ('Coco,' 'Suomi,' several NOIDs, 'Faded Jade,' 'Raspberry Parade') or really poorly ('Pink Acajou,' 'Kempenfest,' 'Burning Embers'), without much of a middle ground. 'Silver Skies' is one of the good ones, though it's a bit slower than the others, and stays smaller. Main obstacles to cultivation: temperature (always at least 60F/16C), water (don't let them dry out to the point of wilting) and humidity (higher is better).

I was a huge fan of Neoregelia at one point a few years back; I've cooled off on them somewhat since then, for various reasons, but they're perfectly fine plants if you have the space for them and don't mind getting caught on their sharp marginal spines occasionally. Biggest obstacle: light (at least bright indirect, with some direct sun strongly recommended).

For the anti-recommend, I guess I'll go with Hibiscus, though Cyclamen and Kalanchoe were really close. They all can be grown indoors successfully, but none are particularly well-suited to it. Cyclamen goes in and out of dormancy at erratic intervals and is easily overwatered as a result; Kalanchoe virtually always goes downhill once purchased, because it needs extremely bright light.

Hibiscus has both problems: it defoliates in the winter, to a greater or lesser degree depending on how it's treated, and it's very difficult to rebloom in the house if you don't have a lot of light. (Though it's easier than Kalanchoe.) Hibiscus has one problem that the other two don't, though, which is that they're incredibly appealing to pests. At work, we were always wrestling with spider mites, whitefly, and aphids; I've also had spider mites on plants at home. Hibiscus are gorgeous, obviously, but it's just not worth the hassle to bring them inside for the winter. People with huge windows or small plant collections might find Hibiscus more rewarding than I do.


Not pictured:

• Some Abutilon cvv.
• Acalypha reptans. (pinkish-red)
• Acalypha wilkesiana. (not particularly ornamental; pink-red; small)
• Some Adenium cvv.
• Some Aechmea spp./cvv. (bracts)
• Ananas comosus. (bracts; pink-red; true flowers are blue-purple)
• Some Anthurium hybrids are true red.
• Ascocenda Sweet Pea 'Ruby.' (pinkish red)
• Austrocylindropuntia subulata. (variable, ranges from orange-red to pink; usually closer to pink)
• Some Begonia cvv. (usually more pink or pink-red, though Reigers, wax, and tuberous begonias can all have true red flowers)
• Some Billbergia spp./cvv. have flower stalks with red bracts, though pink is more common. The true flowers are generally some combination of blue, green, and white.
• Some Bougainvillea cvv.
• Bryophyllum daigremontianum.
• Bryophyllum tubiflorum. (orange-red)
• Calliandra emarginata. (pink-red; possibly not actually a houseplant)
• A few orchids in the Cattleya alliance produce flowers that are red to some degree or another; two of the more striking examples are Laeliocattleya Rojo x Cattleya aurantiaca (picture) and Lyonara cv. (Schomburgkia undulata x Sophrolaeliocattleya Rojo) (picture)
• Clerodendrum thomsoniae. (white bracts / red flowers)
• Some Columnea cvv./spp. might qualify, though usually they're more orange or orange-red than red.
• Crassula falcata.
• Dischidia pectinoides. (true red to pink-red; small)
• Echeveria coccinea (red or orange-red; see post) and some other Echeveria cvv. (They're usually pink or orange-pink with a yellow rim/tip, though.)
• Epidendrum Max Valley (orange-red) and some other Epidendrum cvv.
• Some Epiphyllum cvv.
• Some Euphorbia milii cvv.
• Some Euphorbia pulcherrima cvv., though I would never recommend that anybody get a Euphorbia pulcherrima.
• Some Ferocactus spp./cvv.
• Graptopetalum bellum. (pink-red; I don't know if this is cultivated often enough to count for the list)
• Graptopetalum pentandrum var. superbum. (also sometimes called G. superbum; brick red at petal tips)
• Several Guzmania cvv. have red, purple-red, or orange-red bracts.
• Some Heliconia spp./cvv., though I'm not sure Heliconia should qualify as houseplants.
• The spathe of Homalomena 'Perma Press' is red (link). It's arguably not a houseplant either (too big), even though I'm growing it as one.
• Hoya DS-70. (variable: dark red, orange-red, pink, pink-red)
• Hoya polyneura. (dark red / pink-red / purple-red, with white)
• Hoya pubicalyx. (dark red)
• Several Huernia species have red flowers to some degree or another, usually very dark maroon or burgundy. These include: Huernia aspera (dark red), Huernia confusa (dark red), Huernia guttata (dark red), Huernia insigniflora (large red annulus¹ on peach petals), Huernia keniensis (flowers are white or pale yellow with a very dark red interior), Huernia leachii (dark red stripes on pale yellow), Huernia oculata (very, very dark red petals around a central bright white circle; I didn't know about it before this post, but now I want one really badly), Huernia piercii (dark red spots on white), Huernia plowesii (dark red annulus with dark red spots elsewhere), Huernia procumbens (dark red), Huernia schneideriana (dark red), Huernia transvaalensis (dark red annulus), Huernia zebrina (usually dark red annulus, plus dark red stripes on yellow petals, but color varies).
• Justicia carnea (true red) and Justicia spicigera (orange-red). Some Justicia species are grown as houseplants, though I don't know whether J. carnea or J. spicigera are among them to a meaningful degree.
• Kalanchoe tomentosa flowers are hard to describe. See the pictures at this link.
• Some (most?) Kohleria cvv.
• Loropetalum chinensis? (pink-red; uncertain about its suitability as a houseplant)
• Some Mammillaria spp. have pink-red flowers, though they're typically much closer to pink than to red.
• Some Mandevilla cvv. (link)
• Masdevallia schlimii (color varies in photos: brick red, dark orange-red, dark purple-red)
• Maxillaria tenuifolia maybe barely qualifies as red. (dark red-brown)
• Some Miltoniopsis cvv., arguably. (tend to be more pink-red or purple-red than true red)
• Some Musa spp. have some red in their inflorescences, though it isn't usually the main color. Ensete ventricosum has an inflorescence which is primarily dark red.
• The central leaves of several Neoregelias will flush red at the center when blooming, though the actual flowers are usually lavender or blue-purple.
• Some Nerium oleander cvv. (pink-red; suitability as a houseplant is questionable)
• Some orchids in the Oncidium alliance, though there doesn't seem to be a lot of true red: most lean toward either brown or pink. Some of the closer ones: Burrageara Nelly Isler (link; pinkish), Miltassia Charles M. Fitch x Odontocidium Black Beauty link; very dark red), Vuylstekeara Aloha Sparks 'Ruby Eyes' (link; washed-out and orange-red), Wilsonara Lisa Devos (link; brick red and pink), Oncidium Sharry Baby (link; dark red), Miltonidium Bartley Schwartz 'Highlander' (link; dark pink-red)
• A few Opuntia spp./cvv. flowers are red or orange-red, including O. aciculata and O. bergeriana. O. 'Claude Arno' is a dark violet-red.
• Pachira aquatica is not likely to bloom indoors, but the flower has yellow reflexed petals with lots of long, white, red-tipped stamens. You wouldn't look at it and say "now there's a red flower," but there's definitely quite a bit of red involved.
• At least one Pachyphytum sp. or cv. has flowers with dark red interiors, though I don't know which one and it doesn't appear to be typical for the genus.
• Pachypodium baronii has solid-colored, true red flowers; P. namaquanum has yellow flowers with petals that don't open very wide and are red-brown at the tips. All other Pachypodium spp., including the most commonly-grown ones, have white, yellow, or pink flowers.
• A few Pachyveria hybrids have flowers that look reddish in pictures, though pink, yellow, and green are more common.
• Phragmipedium orchids get close to true red once in a while. Closest two I've personally run into were Phragmipedium Sargent Eric 'Timberlane' (pretty true red; a bit orangey) and Phragmipedium Fox Valley 'Fireball' (pretty close to true red, a little pinkish).
• Pedilanthus tithymaloides. (unlikely to bloom indoors)
• Some Pelargonium x hortorum cvv. are true red or dark red.
• Pereskia bleo are either orange-red or red, according to photos; Pereskia flowers are more typically pink/lavender. I don't know P. bleo's suitability for indoor culture, though at least one Pereskia (P. aculeata) does well indoors.
• A few Phalaenopsis orchids tend toward something like red, though I have yet to see any true red phals.
• A handful of Philodendrons produce inflorescences with solid red spathes; the most commonly sold is P. 'Moonlight,' but the species P. eichleri also does. The spathes of P. martianum (aka P. cannifolium) are white with a dark red base.
• A few Pinguicula spp. have true-red flowers, most prominently P. laueana. Maybe also P. caryophyllacea?
• Some Rhododendron cvv. are brilliant true red, though I would argue that they're not houseplants.
• Some Saintpaulia cvv. are dark red or pink-red; I have yet to see true red.
• Salvia elegans.
• Schefflera actinophylla. (dark red, very unlikely indoors)
• Several Schlumbergera cvv. are vivdly red.
• Sedum burrito. (rare; variously pink, coral, or pink-red)
• Sedum morganianum. (rare; photographs show true red, red-orange, dull red, dark red)
• Sempervivum cvv./spp. flowers are typically (but not always) dull red or pink-red.
• Some Sinningia cvv./spp.
• Most Stapelia flowers involve dark red or dark purple-red somewhere, though it's never a particularly vibrant red, and not very many of the flowers give an overall impression of red. Most notable exceptions: Stapelia cedrimontana is black-red with red and yellow stripes near the center; Stapelia hirsuta has very dark red stripes on a peach background, giving the overall impression of dark red; Stapelia leendertziae -- which I also covet -- is solid dark red or dark purple.
• Stenorrhynchos speciosum.
• Stenosarcos Vanguard 'Fireball.' (pink-red)
• Some Streptocarpus cvv. (pink-red)
• Stromanthe sanguinea cvv. (red or pink-red; unlikely to happen indoors)
• Synadenium grantii. (dull dark red, small, unlikely indoors)
• Many Vriesea hybrids, and some of the species (notably V. splendens) produce inflorescences with red bracts.

As usual, I am totally open to it if readers want to make additional suggestions in the comments.

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¹ The annulus is the raised ring around the center of some stapeliad flowers. One is sort of visible in the first picture on this post.

Pretty picture: Epicattleya Rene Marques x Epidendrum pseudoepidendrum

Enough time has passed now that I no longer remember why I didn't get a close-up picture too. (The picture is from March.) I must not have been able to; I'm pretty sure that I would have if it were possible.

These are pretty close in appearance to those in the previous Epicattleya picture. Not surprising, since it was a picture of Epic. Rene Marques, one of the parents of this cross.

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Scalepocalypse 2012 update:

In other news, I've discovered scale on a few more plants on Saturday: 3 Hatiora salicornioides, an Asparagus macowanii, and a seedling Murraya paniculata. The Hatioras and Murraya got the basement infestation, and the Asparagus from the Alpinia.

It's also possible that the Asparagus was the original source of the scale that got the Alpinia, since I'm pretty sure it was the newest plant on the shelf in question, and the infestation was fairly advanced by the time I saw it.

In the cases of the Hatiora and Asparagus, I was lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that neither plant has broad leaves and stems: it didn't seem like a scale insect would be able to make a go of it, with so little access to the sap. Plus they're both difficult plants to check, since both naturally have bumps of the same color in places, and since both have lots of bushy, narrow stems, you're pretty much bound to miss some.

The Asparagus fronds most affected were cut off and thrown away, and the plant was sprayed with neem, but I haven't thrown it out because if all else fails I can always cut it down to the soil line and let it start over. I threw out the three Hatioras that I definitely saw an infestation on, as well as another four that were in close proximity to the infested ones. I kept another ten that were on the same flat but not visibly infested, and neemed them. The Murraya was likewise neemed, because its infestation seemed relatively mild.

The Very Slow and Occasionally Sticky Inferno

So here's what's been going on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So then I started sinking into despondency.

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

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

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

The Aeschynanthus radicans all gave up due to underwatering.

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

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

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

And so on.

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

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

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

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