Unfinished business: Murraya paniculata

I've had a bunch of seedling update posts planned for seedlings that aren't Anthurium or Schlumbergera for five or six weeks now, but between taking pictures of everything and then having to do a bunch of pre-writing on the orchid posts,¹ I haven't had the time, so I've been pushing posts back over and over. However, I've finally finished the orchid post preparations, two weeks after the show, so I can start thinking about other stuff now.

I don't know for sure how old this seedling is, but I think it's somewhere between 4 and 4 1/2 years old. I started a few seeds between November 2011 and February 2012, and they did okay, but in January 2013, I had to throw out all but one of them because of scale. The one that survived, I had planted in the terrarium, and so it didn't get infested with the scale like the other seedlings that were in the basement. And I know the terrarium plant was in the terrarium as of June 2012, from the above link. So.

That seedling looks like this, as of February 2016:

The pot is 6 inches (15 cm) on the diagonal; the plant is 18 inches / 46 cm tall above the soil-line.

It's doing remarkably well, all things considered, and although I'm scared of it contracting scale at some point, the parent plant appears to have actually shaken its scale infestation (through a combination of a few years, a summer outside, imidacloprid, lots of rubbing alcohol sprays, and pruning away of branches that had signs of scale on them). So even if it did catch scale, that might not be the end of the seedling's world.

It could have been getting better light while in the terrarium; the internodes are further apart than I'd like. It's been moved to a spot close to the (south-facing, glass) plant room door, so that will probably improve. It's already started to branch a little bit, from near the base of the trunk, though you probably can't see that in the photo. It hasn't tried to flower yet, but we haven't had a lot of sun lately: as the days get longer and it gets more direct sun, I imagine it will try. The parent plant doesn't bloom inside anymore, partly because it's too big to get anywhere near a window, and partly because, I realized while writing this, it's been in the same potting soil for literally nine years now. (Yikes.) So maybe I should just be impressed that it's still even alive, I guess.

For the most part, I haven't been trying to start new Murraya plants, from seed or cutting, because I'm more concerned about having enough space for the Anthuriums and Schlumbergeras, but I may rethink that this summer and fall if I see any berries forming. They're nice enough plants, and they don't fruit so heavily that I could start a few seedlings without getting completely buried by them. We'll see what the parent plant has to offer after I change its soil. And apologize.

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¹ Looking up names and ancestries, checking to see if I've posted about the same plant (or a similar/related plant) in past years, sorting through the photos and editing them, trying to work out a schedule for all the orchid posts, writing down any details I still remember from the orchid show before I forget them, etc.

Unfinished business: various

As I predicted, the Cryptbergia seeds (or at least "seeds" -- I'm not sure we ever definitively proved seediness) have all failed, due to some combination of fungus and incompetence. Womp-womp.

Not much else is going on here, really, which I guess makes it a good time to look through the back posts and see if I have any updates about them. All these are from September 2012; turns out there were no posts in October or November that require follow-ups.


Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture, with bonus Question for the Hive Mind (1 Sep 2012)

Nothing ever came of the Canna seed. Not really surprised by this, though. More surprising: the Begonia 'Tiger Kitten' has more or less completely taken over the terrarium. I think this is mostly because it's more drought-tolerant than the Episcia 'Coco' was. (I have a tough time knowing when to water the terrarium, because it's less convenient to actually touch the soil, and every time I open the lid I'm convinced that Nina is going to take that opportunity to jump out and run into the living room, where Sheba will eat her. So I don't open the top very much.) The Peperomia puteolata is still present, as is the Murraya paniculata seedling, but overall, it's kind of a mess. And I sort of wish that the crickets didn't eat the plants so enthusiastically. I mean, I understand: they're crickets. It's what they do. But it's just depressing, with all the dead leaves, holes, ragged edges, and what have you. Perhaps I am not emotionally stable enough to keep anoles in a planted terrarium.



Random plant event: Sansevieria cylindrica (4 Sep 2012)

It's taken a while, but the third leaf is now slightly bigger than the second.

Sansevieria cylindrica.
Come back in late 2016 and I may have a fourth leaf to show you. CAN YOU HANDLE THE EXCITEMENT.¹


Random plant event: Rhipsalis NOID (12 September 2012)

The Rhipsalis seedlings are still alive, and are slightly larger than they used to be. This is neither unusual nor unexpected, but it's a thing that happened. I wound up potting all the surviving seedlings into two pots together, because it seemed like they were likely to give me a really sparse, uninteresting plant if I didn't put several of them together, and also because it wasn't clear how many of them were going to survive. (As far as I can recall, though, all the seedlings that made it out of the vermiculite have survived in soil, and possibly I should have just started them in soil to begin with.)



Random plant event: Zamioculcas zamiifolia 'Zamicro' (19 Sep 2012)

I wasn't expecting this, but so far, 'Zamicro' actually has turned out to be easier for me to grow than the species. I suspect that this is not actually about the cultivar so much, and has more to do with these getting better watering and light (the species plants I've started from leaflets also did well in similar conditions, until they were transplanted), but who can really say.


For now, they seem to be happy in their little 4-pack cells, and I'm inclined to leave them there for as long as that seems to be working out. Whenever I do have to transplant, I'm going to take the advice of Steve Lucas at Exotic Rainforest and make an especially sandy and fast-draining soil for them. I am more or less convinced that this Zamioculcas-growing secret I've been missing.

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¹ NO YOU CANNOT HANDLE THE EXCITEMENT.

Grab Bag

Today, we have a few odds and ends that aren't a big enough deal for their own post, but are nevertheless sort of interesting.

1.

I don't think this is the first peloric Phalaenopsis I've ever seen in person, but it may well be the second. This was at the ex-job.

I can't tell if I like peloric orchids or not. I sort of feel like I ought to, but they make me strangely uncomfortable.


2.

Anthurium seedling # 198 ("Marge Hadron-Coleida") has an unexpected house guest (on the right, in the picture). I didn't plant anything else in there on purpose, and it's too small, so far, to make a definite ID, but my guess is that we're looking at a Murraya paniculata seedling. We'll have a better idea once it starts to grow some real leaves. (These are cotyledons, or "seed leaves.")

I'm not sure what to do about this. The Anthurium seedling is one of the few I've managed to get from my NOID purple-blooming plant, and as such is more valuable to me than the average Anthurium; at the same time, both the other Murrayas I've managed to propagate so far were lost in the Great Purge,¹ so a chance to start over with a new Murraya seedling would be nice.

It's possible that both plants would be just fine if I separated them, but I'm nervous enough about it that I'm at least going to wait until I'm sure what the mystery seedling is before I attempt it. And I might not attempt it then, either. And odds are they'll both get scale and have to be thrown out before either one gets big enough to transplant anyway, so probably I'm getting myself nervous over nothing.


3.

I don't talk about Homalomena 'Perma Press' very often on the blog. Mine doesn't look great, though not through any fault of the plant's -- the problem is that it's bigger than the space I can give it, so the leaves aren't able to grow up properly, but instead grow up until they hit the shelf above them, and then sort of randomly snake along in whatever direction looks good. It hasn't helped, either, that 'Perma Press' got tangled up in the Monstera deliciosa one shelf over, so I occasionally ripped leaves when taking it out to water.

That being said, though, it's been surprisingly accepting of its situation so far, and looks better than it has any right to.² And now that it's started a third growing tip, it might wind up filling in enough to be presentable in the future. Homalomenas have never done that much for me, but if this sort of thing keeps up, I may yet find myself respecting them.


4.

Some kind of miscommunication in the Petal Pigmentation Department, obviously. (Things haven't been the same since Sherri retired.)


5.

I don't know the name of this plant; it wasn't identified. It had a certain Seduminess to it, though, so that's my guess. (If you have reason to think otherwise, leave a comment.) The flowers are obviously not gorgeous or anything, but I kinda like 'em. And they coordinate well with the blog colors at the moment.

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¹ Technically untrue: there is a third, that went in the terrarium when I redid the terrarium planting. It's survived, but not really thrived, and is in the process of being overrun by Begonias, so I don't know that I expect it to last much longer.
² As of last September:

I don't have an older picture to compare this to, because, I think, I was never certain that the plant was going to last long enough to be worth photographing. But I've had it since April 2009. At the time, it fit into a 4-inch / 10 cm pot; now it's in an 8-inch / 20 cm pot.

Walkaways: Citrus edition

Okay. So there's this disease, called citrus greening or (in Chinese) huanglongbing. It's caused by a bacterium, and spreads between plants via insects (the Asian citrus psyllid or the African citrus psyllid). And it is a big deal.

Plants affected by huanglongbing produce stunted, inedible fruit, and a lot less fruit than usual, so the disease makes plants economically worthless. Then it kills them. Affected plants typically die within 3-5 years after infection. Infected plants can also spread the disease to other plants before they die (if the psyllids are present to transmit the infection between plants), and don't always show symptoms immediately. Huanglongbing is also, at the moment, incurable. So this has some obvious bad implications for the U.S. citrus crop.

I tried pretty hard, but was unable to figure out from the USDA site exactly what products are being quarantined, where cases of citrus greening have actually been reported, or how long the quarantines have been going on. It looks like the first U.S. cases of the disease were in Miami-Dade County, Florida, in 2005, and the disease then spread to basically the entire state by 2008. Citrus fruit itself is not considered able to transmit citrus greening, so the fruit can still be shipped around the U.S., so long as it's been carefully inspected for leaves and stems that could conceivably spread the disease.

Currently, the only thing anybody's really able to do is try to prevent the disease from spreading, by quarantining states in which the disease has been found. There's also increased pesticide use, as people try to pre-emptively wipe out any populations of the psyllid before they manage to spread the disease. Neither of those are great long-term solutions, though.

As for a cure, well, we don't have one yet. They're experimenting with antibacterials like penicillin, so we should have penicillin-resistant huanglongbing bacteria any day now. I don't get the impression that that's been working out terribly well so far. Adding systemic pesticides to affected plants doesn't work so well either.¹ There's a more promising-looking plan to genetically engineer citrus plants with genes from other species (spinach was the one mentioned on the one page I saw), which would render them resistant to the disease and make the whole problem commerically irrelevant.² There have been some promising results from growing guavas in the same fields as the citrus; the theory is that the guavas may produce compounds that confuse the psyllids and leave them unable to locate new citrus plants to infect. There is also a parasitic wasp, which has been introduced in some citrus-growing areas and seems to be potentially useful for keeping psyllids in check. So one way or another, we should have this problem solved eventually. And maybe guavas will suddenly be abundant in the stores as a side benefit.

However, this has caused a few troubles in the tropical plant industry as well. Our supplier, at the garden center where I used to work, is based in Florida. So when the quarantine went up in January 2008, we lost the ability to bring in pretty much anything from the whole citrus family (Rutaceae). So no Citrus, no Fortunella, no Murraya, and that was still the case when I quit working there. Customers didn't like that at all, so the garden center scrambled to find replacements. They got a few citrus plants from California, through the outdoor shrub and perennial suppliers, but not very often, and the ones they did manage to get were often more expensive than the Florida ones had been.

I've also seen citrus a few times at Lowe's, though I assumed that those were probably also from California or Texas.

But the point is, I had more or less given up on seeing anything citrusy in the garden centers up here, and especially anywhere that I knew got most of their plants from Florida. And yet, a month or two ago --

Citrus x meyeri, Meyer lemon.
I'm left scratching my head over what this might mean, though. I'm pretty certain the quarantine on Florida citrus plants hasn't actually ended; the text of the regulations (or what I think must be the relevant text, anyway) is pretty opaque to me. It appears that there are new exceptions made for certain facilities if they're inspected often enough and found to be pest-free on each inspection. And possibly the ultimate destination for the plants is also relevant.

Citrus aurantifolia (lime)? It was identified as a lime, but there turn out to be a lot of different species called limes, and I don't know which one this is.
It's hard to see how citrus greening could get much of a foothold in Iowa, for example, even if somebody screwed up and sent infected Floridian plants here. There aren't that many susceptible plants in the first place, the plants we do have don't generally stay close enough to one another to transmit diseases, and the odds of transporting the psyllid and an infected plant at the same time, and having them wind up in the same place, seems like a long shot. On the other hand, people do move south from Iowa, all the time. So I just hope the USDA knows what they're doing.

Citrus x meyeri (mis-saved as C. aurantifolia; ignore the file name)
In any case, it's nice to have them around again. I don't have any particular desire to own one, and couldn't afford the money or space for one even if I did, but considering that I never expected to see them for sale again at the ex-job, this was a pleasant surprise all the same. And it's also nice to have a chance to smell the blossoms again -- Murraya paniculata is similar, but it's not the same.

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¹ Not for the reason you might think. Remember, if a plant has huanglongbing, it's not going to be producing usable fruit in the first place, so nobody's going to be eating the fruits that are full of insecticide. The depressing truth is that the imidacloprid doesn't work fast enough to kill the psyllids before they jump to another tree, so it doesn't actually stop the problem.
² Though if you've got a citrus tree growing in your backyard, you'd still be totally boned. I imagine regular citizens aren't going to be able to get the transgenic trees.

List: Houseplants That Can be Propagated Within the Home From Seed or Spores

I couldn't think of a better way to phrase the title. This list is for plants that are either 1) self-pollinating, or 2) easy for an amateur to cross-pollinate. In the first case, you only need a single specimen; in the second, you need two (which will probably have to be of different varieties).

For the main list, I'm restricting myself to plants I have personally gotten actual seeds from, instead of anything that's potentially self-fertile. (At the end, there will be supplemental lists for plants I've not personally been successful with and plants I've not attempted.)

The amount of trouble it takes to get seedlings varies. With some of these, seedlings will just start growing in the pot (or sometimes in a neighboring pot) without any effort on your part. With others, you may have to get lucky on the timing, or perform precise actions at precise times in order to get fruit. When possible, I've linked to other PATSP posts that describe the process in more detail.

Abutilon cvv. (flowering maple)
(shown: 'Bella Pink')
I don't know if Abutilon cvv. will pollinate themselves or not; I never tried to find out. That said, crossing two different varieties within the 'Bella Mix' group worked pretty reliably for me, back when I still had them,¹ and there's no reason to think other combinations wouldn't work too.²

A single seed pod has maybe 20-30 seeds in it, if I remember right.

Seedlings are old enough to bloom in about a year, indoors; outdoors they might progress faster.

• Collecting seeds
• Germination speed and percentage
• First flower buds
• First open flower
• Multiple flowers


Aglaonema cvv. (Chinese evergreen)
(shown: 'Maria')
I've definitely gotten fruit from an Aglaonema cross once, and the seedlings have been doing fine in the basement for a while now.³ I don't know the parentage; it might have been 'Maria' x self, but I had other Aglaonemas flowering at around the same time, so it could have been 'Maria' x something else.

It wasn't easy to do; you have to have flowers that are shedding pollen and flowers that are receptive to pollen happening at the same time, and most of the crosses I've attempted have failed.

Often, the flowers emerge, but the spathe remains so tightly wrapped around the spadix that it's not possible to remove or introduce pollen without destroying the flower. This has especially been a problem with 'Brilliant,' which sucks because I would very much like to propagate it. ('Maria' is different in that its spathes tend to open wider and stand away from the spadix.) It's possible that this would be less of a problem if I had higher humidity in the house.

Each fruit contains a single large seed. I have no idea how long it takes to grow a seedling to blooming size, but I'd guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-7 years.

• Developing fruit
• Ripe fruit
• Removal of seed from fruit
• Germination


Anthurium, flowering hybrids (flamingo flower, peter on a platter, oilcloth flower, tail flower)
(shown: 'Sensa')
I don't think these are self-fertile, though I haven't actually tested that. I have about ten different varieties here, so whenever an inflorescence is shedding pollen, I run around dusting all the other inflorescences just in case, which means I never know who the male parent was for any of the crosses.

Some varieties are easier to cross than others.⁴ The main obstacle with Anthurium is that the flowers are very long-lived, but have very short periods of pollen shedding, and somewhat brief windows for accepting pollen, so it's hard to get the timing right. (This is why when there's pollen to work with, I just try to cross everything: if I waited until the timing worked out to make a particular cross, I'd never have any seedlings at all.)

I've never bothered to try to count how many seeds you can get from a single inflorescence, but working solely from memory, I think the fewest I've gotten is like 3, and the most might be around 25-30.

Starting seeds once they've formed isn't difficult, but it is more complicated than just opening up the fruit and dumping seeds on some soil.

Plants reach blooming size in three to five years.

• Cross-pollinating
• How to start seeds from the berries (also how to start Schlumbergera)


Ardisia elliptica (shoebutton tree)
Ardisia elliptica is self-fertile, and requires no special meddling on the growers' part to produce berries. My plant was a few years old before it produced flowers, and then only about five (three of which produced seeds); however, the species is capable of blooming earlier than that, or more flowers than that, in good conditions. The progression from flower to seeds was pretty slow for me (several months), but germination is very fast (a few days). Each flower only produces one seed.

• Flowers (not from my personal plant)
• Unripe berries (not from my personal plant)
• Ripe berries (not from my personal plant)
• Removing seeds from berries and how to start them
• Just-germinated seedlings
• Very young seedlings


Chlorophytum 'Fire Flash' (fire flash, green orange, mandarin plant, Sierra Leone lily, fire glory)
My 'Fire Flashes' bloomed two Januarys in a row when I first got them, and haven't bloomed since. This suggests that blooming is related to day length; during the first two years, they were getting only natural light, and since then have been getting natural light supplemented with artificial. Individual flowers only last a day or two, but they don't all open at once, so a flower spike maybe lasts 7-10 days. (It's been a while; I don't remember exactly.)

'Fire Flash' is self-fertile; you only need one plant. Each flower will become a triangular pod containing three rows of seeds, with an average somewhere around 300 seeds per flower spike.

Seed germination requires patience, but not really any special skills. I've gotten the most seedlings by giving up on the seeds and dumping them into potting soil that I used to pot up other plants: seedlings kept coming up for months after that, and they're pretty easy to pull out and pot up separately.

• Flowers
• Flower and developing seed pods
• Seedlings coming up after I gave up on them

Columnea orientandina (no common name?)
I have not yet figured out how to make it happen, but Columnea orientandina will self-pollinate and form purple fruits occasionally. The fruits contain several tan or brown seeds, which can be removed from the flesh of the fruit, dried overnight on a paper towel, and then sown in vermiculite. Germination is high (about 55 seeds per fruit, the one time I've tried this so far), though I've had trouble keeping seedlings going after transplant. Only about 25% of the seeds I started are still growing; the main cause of death has been getting washed out of the pot, or washed under the soil, during watering. I'm not sure if this is going to be a viable propagation method for me.

• Flowers, berries, seedlings, overall process


Hypoestes phyllostachya cvv. (polka dot plant, freckle face)
If allowed to grow unchecked, Hypoestes will eventually produce leggy stems with smaller and smaller leaves. These stems aren't particularly attractive, which is why people generally keep the plant pruned back, but if you let them grow, they will produce tiny, self-fertile lavender flowers. I've yet to actually see the seeds, but I know they're there, because seedlings occasionally pop up in neighboring plants' pots.

I do not know: 1) how to collect the seeds before they wind up in a neighboring plant's pot, 2) how many seeds each flower produces (I'd guess one.), or 3) whether plant color comes true from seed. I have seen a white-spotted plant come from white-spotted parents once, and if memory serves, we used to get pink-spotted strays at work, where most of the plants were pink.

• The Hypoestes phyllostachya profile contains pictures of the flowers and seedlings.


Justicia scheidweileri (also Porphyrocoma pohliana, purple shrimp plant, rose pine, South African acanthus)
Flowers are self-fertile, and expel seeds hard enough that they can wind up far from the plant. (I've found seedlings in pots that were 6-7 feet / 1.8-2.1 m away from the parent before.) Seedlings generally transplant successfully, though they often go through a scary wilted period before recovering. I've collected plenty of seeds from the plant's shelf, with a dustpan: they're heart-shaped, rough in texture, and brown. Each actual flower only produces one seed, but a single flower spike can produce about 40 flowers.

Plants from seedlings can be large enough to bloom within a year.

• Spontaneous seedlings, seeds
• Seed propulsion (also Hypoestes phyllostachya)


Murraya paniculata (orange jasmine, orange jessamine, mock orange⁵)
Murraya paniculata is self-fertile, though only a tiny percentage of flowers end up producing fruits, and not all fruits have viable seeds. I've experimented with using a paintbrush to transfer pollen from flower to flower, but it doesn't seem to affect how often pollination succeeds, so I'm kind of stumped.

Each fruit contains a single seed, though two is not unheard of, and zero happens occasionally too, for some reason.

Seeds usually germinate in a month or two for me, if they're going to; I have no idea how typical that is. I start them in soil and water as if there were a plant in the pot: vermiculite hasn't worked.

Cuttings rooted from Murraya paniculata will bloom pretty much right away (in fact, if they were blooming when you take the cutting, they'll try to bloom while they root, too); I'm not sure if I've seen blooming on plants grown from seed or not.

• Fruits, seedling
• Newly-germinated seedling (item 5 in the post)

Rhipsalis NOID (maybe R. rhombea? No common names.)
The tiny white flowers self-pollinate and become small white oval fruits; fruits are ripe when they become partly translucent. Separate the seeds and let them dry overnight, then sow on vermiculite. They'll all germinate. Each fruit produces maybe 20 seeds, I'd estimate.

I haven't transplanted any yet, so I don't know how that goes.

• Flowers
• Seedlings


Schlumbergera cvv. (Christmas cactus, holiday cactus, Thanksgiving cactus)
You'll need more than one variety of Schlumbergera in order to get crosses, for reasons which are addressed in the profile. Once cross-pollination has been achieved, though, the rest is pretty easy, if slow. Fruits usually take 6-12 months to develop, though if you really want to, you can leave them on the plant a lot longer than that. Fruits usually turn pinkish-purple when ripe, though varieties with pale flowers may only turn light pink. Extracting the seeds is the same as for the Columnea and Rhipsalis -- cut or squeeze the fruit, remove the seeds, let them sit out overnight, then start them in vermiculite. I was pleasantly surprised at how well my seedlings handled their transplanting.

The number of seeds per fruit varies, but the last batch of seeds I started, I actually took a picture of them all on a plate and then painstakingly counted from the picture. I got about 550 seeds from 4 fruits, which averages to 138 seeds each.

It takes about three or four years for a seedling to get old enough to bloom.

• Developing fruit with spent flower
• Ripe fruit
• How to start them (also Anthurium)
• Newly-germinated seedling


As for the recommend / anti-recommend, that sort of depends on your goals, I suppose. If you want to make something new, stick to the plants that require cross-pollination, like Abutilon, Anthurium, and Schlumbergera. If you just want as many baby plants as possible and don't really care if they're exactly the same as what you've already seen, I'd recommend Abutilon, Chlorophytum, Justicia, Rhipsalis, or Schlumbergera.

My personal three favorites from this group: Anthurium cvv., Schlumbergera cvv., Murraya paniculata. Least favorite: Hypoestes phyllostachya.


Supplemental list #1:

I have reason to believe that these would belong on the above list, if only one of the following conditions were true: 1) I still owned one, 2) existing fruits would hurry up and develop, 3) my plant(s) would flower, 4) something hadn't happened to the developing seedlings.

Alternanthera cvv. (joy weed, calico plant, calico weed, Joseph's coat) -- we got some A. dentata 'Purple Knight' self-seeding at the ex-job, in the greenhouse, though I never saw flowers or seeds when I had Alternantheras in the house.
Ardisia crenata (coral berry, coralberry tree) -- my plant is too young to flower still, but presumably would self-pollinate like A. elliptica.
Chlorophytum 'Charlotte' (no common name) -- I've gotten seeds and seedlings before. The seedlings looked like they were going to be solid green, instead of variegated like the parent, but they all died because I let the soil dry out. Only one time, too. So I never found out whether they were going to be variegated or not.
Clivia miniata cvv. (clivia) -- the 'Aztec Gold' I wrote about a while back now appears to be developing seeds, though my understanding is that this is a slow process, and it's not clear how successful it will be.
Coffea arabica (coffee plant, coffee tree) -- I have fruit currently developing on my plant (flower buds, flowers), but I have no idea how long it will take to develop, how many will develop, or whether I'll get usable seeds out of any of them. We'll have to see.
Cyrtomium falcatum (holly fern) -- I've managed to get tiny protoplants from spores my plant produced, but they fell prey to a fungus (and/or springtails) before I could pot them up on their own, and I haven't seen any new spores since. So this is theoretically possible, but I haven't actually achieved it yet.
Pseudorhipsalis ramulosa (no common name?) -- these self-pollinated at the ex-job, just like the Rhipsalis above, and we got seeds from the fruits in the same way. (flowers, fruits, seed preparation, seedlings, fruits) My plant at home has never managed to bloom.
Spathiphyllum cvv. (peace lily) -- drunk on my Anthurium successes, I tried crossing two Spathiphyllums this summer, when I had one shedding pollen and another that looked like it might be receptive. The jury is still out on whether or not this will be successful. One spadix does have some spots that appear to be growing larger, and it's not dried up like the inflorescences normally would have by now (though the spathe is⁶), so there are indications that something may have actually happened; there's just a long ways to go before I can say I've successfully crossed any. Even if I have, I can't think of any good reason why I would want to have more peace lilies, so the whole thing feels pretty pointless.


Supplemental list #2:

Other people claim to have crossed these at home, but this hasn't happened for me, because 1) I don't have multiple varieties to cross, 2) my plants have never bloomed, 3) germination of seed is difficult to do, 4) I'm not crossing them correctly, 5) I don't own any, or 6) some combination of the above.

Adenium obesum & spp. (desert rose) -- I'm not sure I've seen anybody who wasn't a professional grower / breeder claim to have crossed Adeniums successfully, but I have seen amateurs raise Adeniums from seed. So it might be possible, I guess.
Begonia cvv. (angel wing begonia, rhizomatous begonia, rex begonia) -- surely someone must do this, or else we wouldn't have so many. No idea how easy this might be; I haven't actually seen any amateur growers talking about it.
Citrus spp./cvv. and Fortunella spp. (orange, lemon, lime, kumquat, citron, grapefruit, etc.) -- at least in theory, if you can get fruits, then you should be able to get seeds as well. And citrus seeds aren't supposed to be that hard to germinate. I know people do get fruit produced on their plants indoors occasionally, so it would logically follow that they could also start new plants from the seeds. I just don't think I've run into anybody who claims to have done that.
Episcia cvv. (flame violet) -- I've seen a number of people claiming to have crossed Episcia in their home. I've tried to do it myself, but absolutely nothing has come of it. It's possible I might try again at some point, if I can determine how I've been screwing it up, but it's not a high priority for me.
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis cvv. (tropical hibiscus) -- I've seen a number of people claiming responsibility for new hybrids on-line, but I couldn't tell whether the claims were coming from amateurs or professionals. I attempted it myself a couple years ago, when I had two varieties blooming at once, but nothing happened. I no longer have the plants to experiment with.
Hippeastrum cvv. (amaryllis⁷) -- amateurs do experiment with these pretty regularly, and in fact the one Hippeastrum I have is the result of someone else's experiment, but I've never done it myself. I've never even had one flower, actually.
Orchids -- amateurs cross orchids all the time;⁸ the problem is that once seeds have formed, most people don't have the ability to germinate them.⁹ Some amateurs send their seed pods to flasking services, who place them in sterile flasks and grow them for however long it takes to get viable baby plants, then they mail the flask back. You can read some about this at Plantgasm, if you're interested.
Passiflora caerulea and maybe other Passiflora spp. (passion flower) -- I have a houseplant book that mentions new plants can be produced from seed, though they're not specific about where the seed is supposed to come from. I don't know whether it's plausible for an amateur to produce their own seeds or not, nor do I know whether different Passiflora species will hybridize with one another.
Pelargonium cvv. (geranium¹⁰) -- I assume someone must be doing it, because there are so many varieties, and I recall seeing some seed pods on the Pelargoniums we overwintered at the ex-job, so I know it's possible to get seeds. I have no idea whether anybody is actually deliberately collecting and starting the seeds, or what the success rate would be, but in theory this might happen.
Punica granatum (pomegranate, dwarf pomegranate) -- again with the houseplant book making claims. I suppose it's plausible, but I don't know whether a given Punica could be self-fertile or how readily they'll set fruit.
Saintpaulia cvv. (African violet) -- as for Episcia, except that I no longer have any plants here to try with and probably never will.¹¹

If the reader knows of any plants I've left off the list (and I'm sure there must be lots of plants I've left off the list), I welcome suggestions for others in the comments. If you do leave a comment to suggest another plant for the list, please indicate how confirmed it is. (I.e., let me know if you've actually done it yourself, if you're in the process of doing it but don't actually have new plants yet, if you know someone else who does it but haven't tried it yourself, if you heard about somebody doing it once somewhere but don't remember where, etc.)

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¹ I no longer have them. They need a lot of water and light, and it eventually reached the point where I could no longer provide them those things here.
² I considered trying to cross the 'Bella's with the common Iowa weed Abutilon theophrasti ("velvetleaf"), just to see if anything interesting would result, but it's probably just as well that that never happened.
³ The most recent picture of them, from 11 September 2012:

The one in the front there is not looking so great, but the plants in the other two pots appear to be doing well.
⁴ 'Gemini' and 'White Gemini' are much better at accepting pollen than they are at shedding it. ('Gemini' is easily the most productive of the varieties I've got: 54% of my seedling Anthuriums have 'Gemini' as the mother, and another 27% are from 'White Gemini.')
'Pandola' and 'Pacora' are fairly good at shedding pollen.
A NOID reddish-purple variety consistently accepts pollen and begins to form fruit, but then aborts the whole inflorescence before the fruit is ripe. This might be a watering issue, instead of a hybridization issue. Similar things seem to happen a lot with a pink NOID.
'Red Hot' and a NOID purple variety will only rarely form flowers in the first place, much less permit them to be pollinated, which is annoying.
I might have a lot of berries developing right now from 'Florida,' which has large, heart-shaped, orange spathes. I would be very excited if those turned out to be viable.
Etc.
⁵ If you're mostly an outdoor gardener, you probably think of one of the Philadelphus spp. when you hear the name "mock orange." They're totally different.
⁶ The stalk seems to have gotten bent at some point, possibly when I let the plant get too dry. I don't know whether the spadix will survive without the spathe, or whether one dying means they're both doomed. Here's what the inflorescence looked like as of last Saturday:

⁷ There is a genus with the botanical name Amaryllis as well, but usually when people talk about an amaryllis in an indoor-growing context, they mean Hippeastrum, in the same way that "pothos" never means Pothos and "nephthytis" never means Nephthytis.
⁸ Indeed, there seems to be a certain amount of sniffiness among the established, serious orchid breeders about how amateurs don't know what they're doing, and screw things up for everybody by flooding the world with their inferior crosses or whatever. One shudders to think of what might happen were an amateur orchid breeder to enjoy him- or herself without first getting the permission of his/r betters.
⁹ There are two main problems. The first is that orchid seeds and seedlings are very susceptible to fungus, so they require a sterile medium for germination, which most of us can't achieve in our homes very easily. The second is that the seeds are extremely small, and consequently difficult to work with. Flasking provides a sterile growing medium for the seedlings, and they can use syringes and other equipment to make sure that the seeds are distributed evenly on the surface. It's not that you couldn't do this at home if you really wanted to, but it'd be a lot of extra work. Lincoln Orchid Society has a page of instructions for home orchid flasking, if you want a sense of how much extra work.
¹⁰ As with Hippeastrum / "amaryllis," when people talk about "geraniums" indoors, they usually mean Pelargonium.
¹¹ I'm a little bitter about the African violets, in fact. This is completely unjustified: I don't water enough, and I seem not to have sufficient light either, even though they're not supposed to be that picky about that, so of course they don't do well for me. But I still feel entitled to them, since the rest of the world seems to be able to grow them just fine, therefore bitterness and resentment.

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.

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.

Somewhat last-minute grab bag

Okay, so I spent the first half of yesterday trying to work on yet another post about dyed orchids, because I saw something new about them and had All! These! Ideas! about what that signified. The further I got into writing about it, the more interesting it got, until: I realized that I'd been misreading something, and the whole case I was trying to build fell apart. Some of the post is probably still salvageable, but it may be a while before I can work on it again.

Which means I need something to write about, so here's a grab bag of recent random plant events, new plants that aren't actually new anymore, and unfinished business:


1. Philodendron bipinnatifidum sucker


I'm not sure this signifies anything particularly good; the parent plant (which started out as my mother-in-law's, and she gave it to him twelve years ago) dropped three out of four leaves at about the same time this side shoot began to grow. I worried that this meant it was giving up, but it's since produced a new leaf, so apparently it's going to stick with us a while longer. (The leaf shedding was possibly a response to being cold; it sits on the floor of the plant room.)

This doesn't mean a lot -- I don't intend to try to root the sucker separately or anything -- but it's an event.


2. Tacca chantrieri flower, close-up


Also not hugely significant, but this is the first time I've gotten the chance to take a photo of the flowers when fully open and not yet dying. (Previous attempts.) So that's what they look like.

Yep, still weird.


3. New plant: Euphorbia milii 'Candyland'


This is really stretching the definition of "new plant," since I got it last November. But I hadn't written anything about it yet, and have meant to, so here it is. This is a distinctly different kind of variegation from the other variegated E. milii I've encountered; that one was speckled, and this one has white margins. The flowers -- which I've not yet seen on my own plant -- are red. It's been a little pouty, not growing much since this photo was taken. I suspect it may be unhappy with the amount of light it's getting.


4. Springtails on a dead Cyclamen


The Cyclamen experiment is over. This is also fairly old news; it was pronounced dead on 7 January 2012. The cause of death was probably overwatering during dormancy.

I don't think I'm inclined to try Cyclamen again. It was fun getting it to rebloom the one time, and I do still think they're gorgeous plants, foliage and flowers both. It's just difficult to keep track of when I'm supposed to be watering and when I'm not. Plants with pronounced dormancies are untrustworthy. (The reader may, at this point, wish to pause for a moment to say a short prayer on behalf of my new-as-of-last-fall Amorphophallus konjac bulb.)

Also, this is the best picture I've gotten yet of springtails, which I've run across before, once when they were killing my Anthurium seedlings and baby ferns, and then again when they kept coming out of the drainage hole of our Dracaena sanderiana: I thought I'd posted pictures of the latter but apparently I never considered the photos I got good enough to post. (Also, if you're wondering: the D. sanderiana was originally the husband's, though I've been taking care of it for the past few years. I don't especially like it, and the husband actually has given me permission to throw it out, but it's one of those things: I don't feel like I can get rid of it unless it dies on its own, and it won't die on its own.)


Springtails aren't ordinarily a huge problem for indoor plants. I mean, I don't think there are any situations where they're beneficial, but they eat decaying organic matter, which is basically what potting soil is, so they generally won't do anything much to plants. The Anthurium seedlings and baby ferns suffered only because they were planted in vermiculite, and there was really no organic matter available for the springtails to eat except for the baby plants.


5. Murraya paniculata seed sprouts


Not a shock. We've seen this before, fairly recently, but in this particular case, I labeled the pot when I started the plant, so I know that germination took 28 days to reach this point. (This photo was taken 27 March 2012.)


6. Unfinished business: Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta' offsets


Among the plants that have responded strongly to being fertilized regularly are the Furcraeas. These two are both offsets from my parent plant, which I got in June 2009. Whichever one is oldest got started in May 2010, and hadn't really done much as of March 2011. The second one was potted up in July 2011, a year behind the other, which makes it odd that they're both so nearly the same size.


7. Question for the Hive Mind: the new Ficus benjamina


I've noticed that one of the shoots on the new Ficus benjamina has an unusual variegation to it, which none of the rest of the plant seems to have. It's sort of the reverse of the E. milii 'Candyland' situation, in that I've previously only seen marginal variegation on Ficus, not speckling, whereas with the Euphorbia I'd seen speckling, but not marginal.

I'm wondering whether this is a virus. There are, I know, some plant viruses that cause this kind of speckling in their hosts, though I couldn't find any photos of Ficus benjaminas that resembled this. The shoot in question has four leaves, all spotted more or less the same way, and it seems improbable that a virus in one tiny branch of a multi-plant pot would hurt anything much, so I'm inclined to leave it alone (or, possibly, try to propagate it, if it seems robust enough to cut back), but I'm wondering what everybody else thinks about this. Is it a virus? Might it be a virus? If it is a virus, how much should I care? And if it isn't a virus, then what the hell is it?

Random plant event: Murraya paniculata

I've gotten a few fruits on the Murraya paniculata over the time I've had it. Generally they hang around for a few weeks and then drop off, and we find them on the floor somewhere and pick them up and throw them away.¹ I've tried, in the past, to take out the seed and plant it, but after a few months of waiting for something to happen, I conclude that the seed was obviously no good, and throw it out, 'cause that's usually a safe assumption when you have a stemless, leafless plant that hasn't done anything for months.

What a Murraya paniculata fruit looks like.
But! I forgot about one of them. It was in a flat of fairly overgrown other things (Ledebouria socialis, Hoya carnosa), and got covered by leaves such that I didn't realize that there was a pot still there. So on Monday I caught a glimpse of something amid all the leaves, and investigated, and found this:


Which I know doesn't look much like a Murraya just yet, but I'm about 95% certain that's what it is. I didn't write down when I started the seed, and I sort of wish now that I had, because I'm curious about how long it actually took.

Things this signifies:

1. Murraya paniculata really is self-fertile (something I've been wondering about for ages).
2. My Murraya-propagating capacity is significantly larger than I had been assuming it was. (Cuttings have worked, but: so far I've had one definite success, one definite failure, and one that is still pending. Also I can only take so many cuttings before the parent plant starts to object, which is limiting.) This is exciting, since we basically can't get them in Iowa anymore.²

So anyway. I have a feeling I'm going to be starting more seeds very soon. My main plant has at least a couple fruits right now, and there were others forming last time I checked.³ My plant only seems to produce significant numbers of fruit a couple times a year, even though it blooms every few weeks like clockwork. It's been like that the whole five years it's lived here.

This time around, when I start the seeds, I'll make a note of the date.

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¹ Though now with Sheba here, we're trying to be a bit more alert about that. I don't know if the fruits are toxic to dogs, but they are apparently not to humans.
² The main supply of Murraya in the U.S. is in Florida, and is currently quarantined so as to avoid spreading citrus greening disease to other states. Although Murraya isn't a citrus, it's in the same family (Rutaceae) and can also carry the disease, so its transport is restricted too. Presumably California Murrayas would still be okay to ship, but California seems not to have much of a tropical plant industry even though it seems like they ought to. (Lack of water, maybe?)
³ Sometimes they appear to start developing, but then change their mind before getting very big. I'm not sure if this means I'm misinterpreting their intentions or if I'm doing something to discourage them.