List: Missing From Retail, Part 3 of 5

The explanation and background for this post can be found here, at part 1. (Part 2) (Part 4) (Part 5)

Gibasis geniculata. My photo.
Gibasis geniculata (Tahitian bridal veil), honestly, is kind of annoying, and I don't blame any retailer for not stocking it if they don't want to. We had a few hanging baskets of it at the ex-job when I started working there, and they were forever getting tangled in one another, or other plants. The stems broke easily but remained tangled, so unless we put a lot of very careful, nitpicky work into it, they'd always have dead stems running through the mass of foliage, which didn't look good. The flowers were fine, I guess, and it was actually a pretty easy plant to grow, but it was messy, inconvenient, and not nearly pretty enough to make up for the hassle.

Gloriosa rothschildiana. Photo by Jean-Jacques MILAN, originally posted to Wikimedia Commons.
Is the problem with Gloriosa spp. and cvv. (glory lily) that they're super-poisonous? Maybe. They're in a lot of the books, but I've never seen one for sale up here. Perhaps the growth habit is awkward: it's hard to tell from the photos I've seen (which are mostly close-ups of the flower, for obvious reasons). Maybe they don't flower reliably indoors. Maybe the United Nations is using their black helicopters to keep them out of the state of Iowa, because something-something one-world government.

I don't have any idea. It seems like if it had ever been a good idea to grow them in the house, it would probably still be a good idea to grow them in the house. And certainly the flowers are lovely. I'm baffled.

Grevillea robusta. Photo by Forest & Kim Starr, found via Wikipedia.
In each of the lists so far, there's been a Big Mystery plant, a plant that's widely described among houseplant books of a certain age, but has completely disappeared from the houseplant trade (at least in my personal experience). In the first list, it was Aucuba japonica, which turns out to be widely available, just not where I am or for the uses I would put it to. In the second, Geogenanthus poeppigii. My questions about that one were met with utter silence, so I conclude that either no one cares, or no one knows (perhaps because no one cares).

That plant for this list is Grevillea robusta (silk oak). Where did they all go? And why? Were there ever very many in the first place?

I know there are Grevilleas still being sold for outdoor use. Danger Garden grows a few of them (G. juniperina, G. lanigera, G. victoriae, etc.), and I'm pretty sure Far Out Flora has at least mentioned them once or twice as well. So it's not like the genus has suddenly gone extinct.

I've seen some references to G. robusta having skin-irritant properties similar to those of poison ivy, which could something to do with it. (The older books don't mention this, though.) Though that doesn't seem to be stopping anybody from growing them outdoors. Maybe they're another victim of the changing standards in new-home construction? If they can be grown outdoors in the Northwest U.S., that suggests that they probably don't mind cold too much. I don't know.


Haemanthus albiflos. Photo from a PATSP reader; addressed in this post.
Haemanthus albiflos (elephant's tongue, shaving-brush plant) and other Haemanthus spp. are probably not helped by their slow growth rates, but by most accounts H. albiflos is pretty easy to grow,¹ and the flowers may not be gorgeous but they're at least interesting. If there's a market for Philodendron hederaceum, I'd think there would be a market for Haemanthus.

The only guess I can come up with is that maybe it's not sold very often because it's a passalong?² That's how I wound up with mine; maybe that's how everybody gets them.


Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights.' My photo.
I've seen Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights' for sale a couple times at the ex-job, and I assume other Heliconia cvv. (lobster claw, false bird of paradise) are probably available further south. (The main appeal of H. psittacorum is, I think, that it's relatively small for a Heliconia; many of them get big.) Both I and WCW³ have tried them indoors, and neither of us was particularly satisfied. We both got spider mites; my plant also seemed to want more humid air than it was getting, and was either getting underwatered or overwatered but it would never tell me which.

So I wouldn't try this again, but it did do surprisingly well for several months after I first got it, so Heliconia might still work for some people. Even if it isn't a great choice for your average plant-buyer, the inflorescences can last for a long time, so I'd think retailers might still be able to display them profitably. I don't have any guesses as to why they don't.


I could find plenty of copyrighted photos of small container-grown plants, or I could find Creative Commons photos of full-grown adult outdoor plants, but I couldn't find any pictures showing a small containerized plant that I was legally able to reuse.
It is entirely possible that I see Howea forsteriana (kentia palm) for sale all the time and just don't realize it. I can't really distinguish between Chrysalidocarpus lutescens, Howea forsteriana, and Chamaedorea cataractum, in large part because I've never been able to directly compare all three. In fact, I've only actually seen Howea forsteriana tagged as Howea forsteriana once. This is despite several books' claims that they're either the best or second-best palm to have indoors. (Chamaedorea elegans generally being the other one.⁴)

The reason is that they germinate and grow so slowly that it's not really cost-effective for growers to produce them. People will buy the much faster-growing Ravenea rivularis (majesty palm) just as readily, so Ravenea can be sold for less than half the cost of Howea. Raveneas are also, of course, very poorly suited to indoor conditions, but the long-term fate of the plant is irrelevant to the growers (they already have your money either way), so they don't factor it in.

I don't know how to fix this situation. I can recommend that people ask for Howeas specifically, but I don't have first-hand experience that they're any better than Chrysalidocarpus or Chamaedorea, and I don't know how to tell the difference anyway. I could get first-hand experience, and learn how to tell the difference, if any producers ever sent them to the stores for me to look at, buy, and grow, but the producers can't do that because the consumers wouldn't buy them. The consumers might buy them, if only they knew that they wanted them. I could tell the consumers they wanted to buy them, if I were able to distinguish between the three species and had first-hand experience growing them. Wheeee!


Jatropha multifida. My photo, taken at the Quad City Botanical Center.
I've seen Jatropha podagrica (Buddha belly plant) at Wallace's once; we never got any Jatropha spp. at the ex-job, though they were on the availability lists occasionally. Pretty sure I've never seen Jatrophas for sale anywhere else, though the QCBC has J. multifida (coral plant, Guatemalan rhubarb), as you can see in the above photo, so I've at least seen the two most cultivated species.

I've never grown one personally; I understand they probably need more sun than I could offer. Other than that, I really don't have much to go on. As far as I can tell, temperature wouldn't be an issue. Maybe slow growth? Unappealing form?

Lachenalia aloides. Photo by BotBln, from Wikimedia Commons.
Holy crap, some Lachenalia spp./cvv. (no common name?) have some damn beautiful flowers. (There's a red one! And a turquoise-blooming one! And one with four-colored flowers!) And although one of the books which mentions Lachenalia has been in my possession for about a quarter-century, I had somehow never been consciously aware of them before now.

Now that I've noticed them, read up on them, and come to appreciate how pretty some of them are, I will have to forget them all again. Both books that mention Lachenalia agree that they need temperatures much colder than I'd ever be able to provide in the house (60-65F during the day, 40-45F at night). Which is a pretty obvious explanation for why I never see Lachenalia for sale.

Lapageria rosea. Photo credit: KENPEI, at Wikimedia Commons.
Lapageria rosea (Chilean bell flower) is another plant I know only from the Kramer book. Or almost, anyway -- Talking Plants did a post about Lapageria not too long ago as well, though he doesn't mention it being cultivated indoors.

Kramer calls it "a challenge," but doesn't include many specifics about the ways in which it might be challenging, and says it's "difficult to bloom," but also says "can tolerate abuse if necessary and still bloom." So no clues there. It's another climber, which is possibly significant: beyond that I don't even have a guess.

Manettia luteo-rubra. My photo.
I've seen Manettia luteo-rubra (firecracker plant, candy corn plant) for sale here as an outdoor annual, but not very often, and I didn't find them very impressive. I don't know of anyone who's tried to grow it indoors. The two books that mention it don't agree on the care it needs, though neither one makes it sound particularly difficult. Maybe it's just not interesting enough for people to care?


I understand Haemanthus is pretty easy indoors, and although I never did it personally, I'd bet Gibasis is very easy as well. I might be interested in Jatropha, in theory, even if I probably don't have the light it wants. And I would really like to try Howea at some point, if only to see what all the fuss is about, but it looks like the only way that's ever going to happen is if I start them myself from seed.


Not pictured:

• Hedychium gardnerianum (kahili ginger, ginger lily): have never seen.
• Hoya australis / bella (wax plants): I'm pretty sure I've seen H. bella around here occasionally; I don't recall H. australis, though.
• Ixia spp./cvv. (corn lily): have never seen.
• Ixora (West Indian jasmine, jungle geranium): the ex-job has them occasionally, I think. I have trouble distinguishing between Ixora and Pentas, for some reason, but I'm pretty sure they've had both.
• Justicia brandegeana and carnea (shrimp plants): I've seen J. brandegeana once at the ex-job; not sure if I've run into them elsewhere or not.
• Kohleria cvv. (kohleria): have never seen in retail. The ones I've tried to grow haven't done well.
• Limonium (sea lavender, statice): the ex-job had one once, as an outdoor annual (?), but I think that was the only time I've seen any for sale at all, much less as a houseplant.
• Liriope (lilyturf): sometimes available around here as an annual or tender perennial. One from the ex-job survived for me for a while indoors, but it never grew much, and spent its last year or so looking decidedly unhappy.
• Lycaste spp. (lycaste): have never seen.
• Malpighia coccigera (dwarf holly, miniature holly): may have seen as a faux bonsai, but the pictures that come up in Google don't look particularly familiar.
• Malvaviscus arboreus (turk's cap mallow, nodding hibiscus): have never seen.
• Masdevallia spp./cvv. (masdevallia): have seen at Orchids and Moore, the specialty orchid-seller in Iowa City, and possibly at the Quad Cities orchid shows (can't remember if any of those were for sale or not), but that's it.

-

¹ I've only just gotten one myself, so I'll let you know eventually, I suppose.
² (A plant that is so easy to propagate that offsets or cuttings or whatever get distributed from gardener to gardener directly, without ever being part of the commercial trade.)
³ (Remember her? I haven't seen WCW in forever, sadly.)
⁴ Which has not been my experience -- my best palm has been either Chamaedorea metallica or Rhapis excelsa, depending on the criteria you want to use for "best." But that's off-topic.

List: Houseplants Which Have Orange Flowers

Why orange? I don't know. Why not orange? I like orange, in plants anyway. Not so crazy about it for curtains or appliances and so forth. Van Gogh is said to have called orange "the color of insanity" (and he would know); a few little dots of insanity here and there is good. Large, uninterrupted fields of insanity is more problematic, though.

Very few of these plants have flowers which are exclusively orange. In some cases, environmental conditions influence bloom color, though usually not a lot, and in a lot more cases, non-orange varieties, as well as orange varieties, exist. If the flower color is particularly important to you, and apparently it is or else why would you be here, you should buy plants which are already in bloom or get the seller to confirm the bloom color before you buy.

Aeschynanthus speciosus. As far as I know, this species only produces orange flowers, though there are some photos on line that look a lot more red than orange. Also, Aeschynanthus species all look more or less alike until they start to flower, and some of the other species have red or reddish-purple blooms.

Anthurium andraeanum 'Florida' (shown), some other cvv. Anthurium has been heavily hybridized and cultivated, so there are many, many different varieties out there. The most commonly-found are red, white, and pink. Orange, red-violet, and violet flowers can occasionally be found. Yellow, brown, maroon, green, peach, and multicolor (usually red or pink plus green "ears," or white with red or pink streaks) flowers all exist but are quite rare in retail.

Clivia miniata cvv., most cvv. There are yellow, peach, and cream-colored varieties out there, though any random non-blooming plant you buy is most likely to be orange. Photo by Hedwig Storch, at the Wikimedia Commons page for Clivia miniata, because my plant still hasn't flowered yet.


Columnea cvv., possibly 'Early Bird.' Columnea varieties tend to be orange or red-orange, but some red and yellow varieties also exist.

Cuphea ignea. As far as I know, Cuphea ignea flowers are always this red-orange color.

Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights' (shown), and other cvv. Flowers from the Heliconia genus are typically mostly red, sometimes with orange or yellow highlights. H. psittacorum are more consistently orange, though some red, yellowish, or mixed-color flowers can be found.

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, NOID cv. Hibiscus rosa-sinensis are available in a wide range of color: white, yellow, red, orange, pink, peach, coral, brown, blue, lavender (though brown, blue and lavender are uncommon), and probably others. Red, pink and yellow are the most common around here, but it's not difficult to find an orange one if that's what you really want.

Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, NOID cv. There are many, many varieties of Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, with a wide range of bloom colors. Red, yellow, and orange seem to be the most common, but there are also a lot of pink, lavender, and white-bloomers out there.

Nematanthus cv. Nematanthus are most frequently orange, though cultivars with white, yellow, orange-pink, red, and multicolored flowers are also sometimes available.

Strelitzia reginae. Strelitzia reginae are almost always orange and blue, though there is at least one uncommon variety which has yellow and blue flowers. You're also fairly unlikely to get flowers on a plant being grown indoors. Photo by Lauren Chickadel, at the Wikipedia entry for Strelitzia reginae.
For the recommendations, I like Aeschynanthus, Anthurium, and Clivia, with Strelitzia as an honorable mention.

Aeschynanthus is a little bit difficult: mine bloomed in 2008 and 2010 but not in 2009 (probably because of the move), and it's still a little lopsided and gangly looking. This is probably because it started out as a bunch of leaf cuttings, and is still working on filling itself in (even two and a half years after the leaf cuttings were taken). Still, though, the flowers are very bright orange, they last for a pretty long time, and when the plant is happy, there are a lot of them. Plus for a gesneriad, it's not terribly difficult.

Clivia I like even better than Aeschynanthus, though so far that's as a foliage plant, not a bloomer. One of my two Clivias is too young/small still to be blooming, so I don't mind it. The other, which had yellow flowers when purchased, has not bloomed for me, probably because I haven't given it the cold temperatures it wants during the winter. I'm not under the impression that it's particularly hard to get it to bloom, just that I haven't been able to provide the conditions it wants. Maybe this winter. In any case, it's a nice foliage plant, and the flowers are very pretty, even if I haven't seen many in person.

Anthurium's inclusion on the recommend list should surprise no one, since I'm an unabashed fan of the plant, have had all kinds of great experiences with them, and encourage others to buy one on very little provocation.

Lots of good candidates for the anti-recommend, but I'll go with Cuphea ignea. I have very little experience with them, having only bought one a couple months ago, but what experience there has been has been pretty uniformly negative. All the flowers dropped within a couple days, about a third of the foliage followed closely thereafter, and we're only just now getting around to the production of new foliage (but not, so far, new flowers: I will be very surprised if I can convince the plant to flower for me again). I won't give up on the plant unless it gives up on me, but so far it's looking like one of those outdoor plants that needs to stay outdoors. I could pretty much say the same for Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, but at least with Hibiscus you have a chance of seeing some pretty incredible flowers.

Not pictured:
Abutilon cvv. (some)
Achimenes cvv. (a few)
Aloe 'Doran Black' (pink-orange)
Aloe aristata (pink-orange)
Aloe brevifolia (red-orange)
Aloe ferox (depends on specimen but usually some orange)
Aloe maculata/saponaria (pink-orange)
Aloe striata (red-orange)
Aloe variegata (red-orange)
quite a few other Aloe spp.; usually red-orange or pink-orange
Begonia cvv., esp. Riegers, non-stops (some)
Bougainvillea cvv. (a few)
Calathea crocata (uncommon indoors)
Calceolaria cvv. (some cvv.)
Cattleya and Catt. alliance orchids (some)
Chamaedorea elegans (though not particularly pretty, and only orange in strong light)
Chamaedorea metallica (though not particularly pretty, and only orange in strong light)
Chamaedorea seifrizii (though not particularly pretty, and only orange in strong light)
Chlorophytum 'Fire Flash' (though brief)
Columnia cvv. (most?)
Crossandra infundibuliformis (most; there are a few yellow, pink or peach ones around)
Echeveria cvv. (some)
Episcia cvv. (some?; red-orange)
Euphorbia milii? (a few; more peach than orange)
Gasteria cvv. (most/all?)
Gazania cvv. (not particularly good indoors; most are not orange)
Gerbera cvv. (some)
Gloriosa spp. (some)
Guzmania cvv. (some)
Gynura aurantiaca (though not particularly pretty, and definitely smelly; yellow-orange)
Hippeastrum cvv. (a few)
Impatiens hawkeri cvv. (some)
Ixora chinensis and I. coccinea cvv. (some)
Kohleria cvv. (some)
Lantana cvv. (a few; not a particularly good houseplant in my experience)
Masdevallia cvv. (some; yellow-orange)
Medinilla cvv. (some)
Mokara cvv. (a few)
Oncidium alliance orchids (a few)
Parodia microsperma (at least one variety; they're usually yellow and occasionally red)
Pelargonium x hortorum cvv. (a few; red-orange)
Schlumbergera truncata cvv. (some; pale orange / peach)
Senecio jacobsenii (though not particularly pretty)
Stapelia spp. (some spp.; orange-brown or peach or both)
Thunbergia alata (also white, yellow)
Tillandsia spp. (a few; tend to be more peach than orange)
Vriesea cvv. (uncommon; more red-orange)

Anybody have any suggestions for plants I left off the list?

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

Some very nice stuff from this round. I think you'll be pleased.

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

Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights.' It's not grown for the colorful leaves, obviously.


Breynia discticha 'Roseo-Picta.' Difficult to photograph, because the leaves are very small (about an inch, inch and a half long and wide -- roughly 2.5-4 cm). Not as uninteresting as it might have been, I suppose.


Alocasia 'Frydek.' I think the message here is "Left Turn Only."


Philodendron 'Congo Rojo.' There seem to be only so many ways to vein a Philodendron; almost all of them look like this to some degree or another, at the vein level. The spots are most likely areas where the developing leaf was damaged before it hit maturity; such spots are permanent, kinda unsightly, and occasionally lead customers to completely lose their shit. But it's nearly impossible to prevent spots from happening, especially if you're producing them on a wholesale kind of scale.


Tradescantia zebrina. Well, the color is nice, even if it's not otherwise terribly interesting.


Syngonium podophyllum, didn't catch the entire cultivar name but it involved the word 'Gold.' There's a 'Gold Allusion' out there, but the pictures I found for it were not particularly golden, nor did they look much like the plant in question.

Codiaeum variegatum NOID. Should it surprise me that, as much as I like taking pictures of croton leaves, I never ever ever have even a moment of wanting to own one again? I mean, it's like, never. I don't care about having one. But I guess I want others to have them, so I can take pictures. This seems weird.


Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar.' This reminds me of something non-plant-related, but I can't think of what. I want to say either fabric or ice cream, but I'm not a big noticer of fabric, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen ice cream that looked like this, so I have not idea where that feeling is coming from.


Codiaeum variegatum NOID. This picture is kind of interesting as a negative: it winds up looking a bit like white "clouds" on a blue "sky."


Maranta leuconeura erythroneura. Just . . . perfect, if I do say so myself.

Pretty picture: Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights' flowers

Bought this plant in August, and so far so good, I guess. I'm surprised at how long the flowers have lasted: I've gotten a solid two months out of them, and although there are signs that the show is winding down, the bracts remain bright orange and everything, so it's still not over.


I do need to repot the plant: it's in some peat-based garbage that dries into a brick, and dries out too quickly besides. Some real potting mix would no doubt do a world of good. There always seem to be five other things I should do first, though, so I haven't gotten to that yet. Soon, though. Maybe.

New plants!

The husband and I went to my ex-job last Saturday, because they'd gotten in a new shipment of tropicals on Thursday. And I bought some, which was the point of going. However! I was also thinking of you, my readers, and took pictures of various things I did not buy, just because you will find them interesting. (No, seriously: very high probability of interestingness.) However, for this post, we're talking about the slightly more boring, but prettier, stuff that I did buy. These are them:

Fittonia albivenis, apparently.
I don't think this was probably a good decision in the long run, but you never know. I like the look of these, and always have, but as we know, I'm not good with plants that don't bounce back if they get a little dry. But it was small and cheap, and in the event that it looks like it's falling apart, a little bit can always be salvaged (maybe) by rooting a cutting in Nina's terrarium, so we're going to try it.

Also, according to davesgarden.com, the correct name is no longer Fittonia argyroneura nor F. verschaffeltii, but is now F. albivenis. We'll see whether I can manage to remember this. It's not as nice-sounding of a name.

Philodendron 'Golden Emerald.'
Yes, I know what I said, not even that long ago, about not wanting to try this one until I have a better understanding of Philodendrons in general. However, this one was five times less expensive, so I can experiment on it with less risk. Which makes it acceptable.

I saved all my genuinely risky stuff for another plant:

Heliconia psittacorum 'Bright Lights.'
WCW has had one of these before, maybe not 'Bright Lights' but some kind of Heliconia, and had told me about it a long time ago. The only part I remembered was the part where she said that they're really prone to spider mites inside. I asked her about this (she was working on Saturday) and she said that they're not as bad about it as bananas (Musa spp.; Ensete spp.), maybe more along the lines of Strelitzia. Which I've seen mites on Strelitzia before, but not on my plants at home, so I figured success was plausible enough to be worth a try.


Also like Strelitzia are the flowers, kinda, in that they're orange and strange and spiky-angular. Not what I generally think of for "Heliconia." I don't mind, though. If my Strelitzias are never going to flower indoors, and smart money says they won't, I may as well have something kinda sorta similar that does stand a chance of producing flowers. No?

Neoregelia 'Ardie.'
And then there's 'Ardie,' who somehow wound up on my wish list (see sidebar) a while back, and who I never expected to meet in person, but who WCW was so impressed with that she called me at home on Saturday morning to tell me about it. (Some of the other plants got mentions too. But she knows I like Neoregelias.) I'd already been planning to go in, but finding out about this made me really happy about it.


I obviously have all of four days' experience with 'Ardie,' and don't know how it's going to work out between us, but so far, the only Neoregelias that haven't worked well for me are divisions that failed to root. So I think we'll be fine.


He's definitely got a trustworthy-looking face, right?