Another sale/trade preview post

I'd hoped to get this year's sell/trade post up a couple weeks earlier than I did last year (25 April), but it's looking like I'll be lucky to post it at the same time. Deciding which things to offer took a very long time on its own, and then everything had to be photographed, and I spent a day trying to make sense of the USPS's shipping charges from last year, in hopes of coming up with a better approximation for this year, so on and on it goes.

But! I do at least have a few early pictures, which I may as well share, since I don't have much else going on anyway. Prices are still being determined, and obviously I'm selling more than four kinds of plants (about 80, with another 10 that aren't ready yet but will be by the end of the summer -- or at least I hope they will be), and I may as well admit now that these are some of the better-looking plants I have to offer, and they don't all look like this. But as a taste:

Episcia NOID.

Gasteraloe x beguinii.

Hatiora salicornioides.

Nautilocalyx forgetii.

Peperomia pereskiifolia.

Pereskia aculeata var. godseffiana.

Random plant event: Nautilocalyx forgetii

I mentioned a while back that the Nautilocalyx forgetii was beginning to produce something that looked like branches, coming out of the leaf axils, and there was some speculation that they might have been flower buds instead of branches. It's taken a couple months to find out, but it turns out I had both -- branches down low, around the base of the plant, and flower buds up higher.

I tried in multiple lighting conditions and on multiple occasions, but wasn't happy with any of the photos I got, so you may have to use your imagination a bit.


The flowers aren't especially ornamental, and are actually pretty difficult to see at all, because they form underneath the leaves. The color is a light, buttery yellow that I sort of feel doesn't look quite right with the dark green, glossy leaves. The texture is decidedly unbuttery --


-- and doesn't really look right with glossy leaves either.

Individual flowers don't seem to last very long, but the plant's been producing new ones continuously since at least late December, maybe mid-December. (I'm not sure precisely when blooming started.)

The plant had been drying out too quickly, so I repotted it in November; it's now in a 6-inch (15 cm) pot. That made it too big to fit into its spot in my office, so it got moved to the basement. I don't know whether the move or repotting have anything to do with the timing of the flowers.


Shortly afterward, the new leaves started coming in with dead patches or distorted shapes. I don't know what caused that, either, though my best guess is that the new location was too close to a shop light, and the leaves were getting burned as they developed. I relocated the plant, to a shelf with a bit more clearance, but it's too soon to tell whether that's going to stop the leaf problems.

I intend to try to propagate some of these eventually, though I'm not sure whether I'll have any ready by spring/summer. If you're in the U.S. and think you might be interested, let me know, so I'll know whether and how many to attempt to start. Aside from the leaf issues, I've found it to be a very easy houseplant (under fluorescent lights, temp above 65F/18C at all times, moderate humidity, water when slightly wilted, feed lightly year-round); however, it's not widely grown, and other Nautilocalyx species are apparently fairly difficult outside of terrariums. So I can't promise that it'll be equally easy for anyone else.

They Grow Up So Fast: Nautilocalyx forgetii

I got a lot of new plants this summer and fall, mostly through trades, and I have to say, I think Nautilocalyx forgetii was the best. It's a competitive field -- good arguments could also be made for Chirita 'Deco,' Pereskia aculeata 'Godseffiana,' Episcia 'Pink Acajou,' Billbergia 'Foster's Striate,' and Huernia zebrina -- but in the end, I lean toward Nautilocalyx because it's grown rapidly while still remaining a very handsome-looking plant. I mean, there may be all sorts of terrible things about to happen this winter, but for right now, I'm quite smitten.

May 2011. 3" (7.5 cm) pot.

Jul 2011. 3" (7.5 cm) pot.

October 2011. 4" (10 cm) pot.
When I watered it yesterday, I saw what look like branches, sticking out of the leaf axils. Don't know what this is going to do to the overall shape of the plant, but if it does branch, then I can start trying to propagate, which ought to be fun.

I can't figure out why N. forgetii aren't sold more often. I mean, they're shiny, which people like, and there's contrasting color. I can't imagine they're particularly tough to ship; I've certainly seen more fragile plants in stores. They seem to propagate easily, and they grow fast enough that it seems like they'd be cost-effective to mass-produce. I haven't had bug problems yet. I treat it pretty much like I treat everything else, and it's thrived, so it doesn't seem like fussiness is the problem. So I'm stumped. Hopefully I'll be able to say the same in six months.

Random plant event: Aeschynanthus radicans

It takes a while, granted, but one can propagate Aeschynanthus from individual leaves. My A. speciosus was originally from individual leaves we propagated long ago at work, and I have at least one A. radicans leaf that's rooted and producing new growth now too, so I'm thinking maybe it's a general characteristic of the genus. This particular leaf didn't even take that long (about 3 1/2 months), though as you can see, the others in this pot are taking longer, and there's another pot of leaves where nothing's happened yet, so it's just one leaf out of I think eight. But still.

If you go looking for information about how to propagate Aeschynanthus, almost nobody says anything about this: virtually everyone says stem tip cuttings, and nothing more. (A few sites also suggest seeds or layering.) While it's probably true that stem cuttings will start faster and produce a fuller looking plant sooner than leaves, it's still neat that leaves are an option.

I ran into the website of the North Star African Violet Council Twin Cities (surely "Twin Cities' African Violet Council" wasn't taken already?) while looking around the internet for more on this, and they say that Streptocarpus, Chirita, Saintpaulia, and Petrocosmeas are typically propagated from single leaves. Nautilocalyx are also supposed to be easy to root from leaves, which I'll have to try at some point with my N. forgetii.

Nautilocalyx forgetii.
The genera of gesneriads that don't propagate well from leaves include Episcia (though I've done it, last summer), Columnea, Nematanthus, some Sinningias, and Codonanthe, according to Jon Dixon, the source being quoted by the NSAVCTC. (I'm condensing the list, so if you're interested, head over to the site and read their post.)

Weirdly, I've had better luck at home with Aeschynanthus and Episcia leaf propagation than I've had with Saintpaulia, even though African violets are supposed to be much easier. I don't have any trouble getting African violet leaves to root, but they stop there -- they don't go on to grow new leaves. When we tried doing this at the ex-job, on the other hand, they propagated fine. Sometimes they even propagated when we didn't intend them to. So obviously I'm missing something.

This leaf, for example, fell under a table and rooted in the soil all on its own.
But anyway. There isn't necessarily a lot of practical application for this method, but now you know it can happen.

Newish plants

This last month or so is apparently the dawning of the Age of Gesneriads, as far as my personal collection goes. I've gotten a lot of them in trades recently, including my first Columneas, Nautilocalyxes, Codonanthes, Kohlerias, and Chirita. Mostly Episcias, though, because I feel safest with Episcias.

This isn't going to be an exhaustive list of everything I've gotten, because 1) there are too many of them to do that, and 2) some of them literally died before I could get a picture taken.¹ These are just the ones I find most interesting.

First up, since I teased you about the gesneriads, let's begin with the gesneriad I'm most excited about. This is Columnea orientandina:

Columnea orientandina.
Why am I so excited about it? I don't know. It just seems cool. All the leaves have that red spot on the tip of the underside, the flowers are smallish but a nice clear yellow --


-- and it just seems, you know, likeable. Possibly the main reason I'm interested in it is because I'd never heard of anything like it before.

Dyckia 'La Rioja.'
This is one of the ones that died, which was tragic and not-tragic simultaneously. The tragic part is that it was a weird color, plus a bromeliad genus that's new to me, and I think Dyckias have a really cool shape to them. It's not tragic in that the hooks on the leaf margins are wicked sharp, and it would have been all but impossible to handle this plant without hurting myself. A lot.

Hatiora NOID.
The Hatiora (better known as Easter cactus, or Rhipsalidopsis²) is one I actually bought. I've wanted an Easter cactus for some time now, but I've never seen one for sale around here until a few weeks ago. They only had two, and both were more or less bloomed-out, but this was such a nice color (the photo doesn't do it justice; it's sort of peach/orange/coral), and I get so few opportunities to buy them, that I went for it anyway. Paid $10 or $11 at Earl May, which is excessive for a plant this small, especially one that's already mostly bloomed-out, but at least now I have it. So far, contrary to the rumors about Easter cacti, it's held together and not disintegrated into a pile of unconnected segments.

Hatiora NOID.
This, on the other hand, is an Easter cactus I got via trade, so essentially for free, from a reader. You'll notice that it's way bigger and nicer. It will have magenta flowers, assuming that I can get it to flower next spring.

Kohleria 'Peridots Kitlope.' Or maybe 'Peridot's Kitlope.' Not sure about the apostrophe.
I forget what it was (possibly a post at Andrew's?), but at some point not that long ago, I decided that I needed to have a Kohleria, so I started trying to get one. I now have three, of which this is the largest. The person who sent it to me was not enthusiastic about the genus, for reasons which were either forgotten or unspecified, but I think I have pretty nearly ideal conditions for it in the basement, so we will see what I think of it after a decent interval of time has elapsed.

Close-up of Kohleria 'Peridot[']s Kitlope' flower.

Nautilocalyx forgetii.
I know next to nothing about Nautilocalyx. So far, one unrooted cutting of N. pemphidius died almost immediately, and this unrooted cutting of N. forgetii seems to be doing okay. Even if it does well for me, it's not likely to be fascinating -- the flowers are smallish and white -- but it's novel. And maybe it'll do well for me. That always makes me like plants better.

Chirita 'Deco.'
Since this picture was taken, the plant seems to be preparing a flower bud, which I'll have to get a picture of so I can show you, I guess.

Billbergia 'Foster's Striate.'
Easily one of the biggest plants I've ever received by trade (that's a 6-inch / 15 cm pot it's in), and if I can ever get flowers, that should be pretty awesome. It might be awesome even without flowers, actually. There are some concerns that I might not have a bright enough spot for it, but so far it seems to be hanging in there.

Episcia 'Pink Acajou.'
One of the more interesting Episcias.

Episcia 'Silver Skies.'
And another.

Episcia 'Faded Jade.'
There were seriously a ton of Episcias.

Episcia 'Kempenfest.'
The USPS basically backed a truck up to the house and I went in the back of the truck with a shovel and just shoveled Episcias out for an hour or two.

Finally, for the pièce de résistance --

Pereskia godseffiana.
I knew of Pereskias before this, from pictures, but had never been that interested. So it's a cactus with leaves,³ big deal. The reality in person is much stranger. First of all, I was not prepared for the color. Pereskias are usually green, but this is hot pink and brownish yellow. It looked more like a badly-wilted pink poinsettia than a cactus. Second, even though there are leaves, there are also thorns/spines/whatever, which are seriously sharp, and hide at the base of the leaves, which wouldn't be that big of a problem except that I had to try to bend the leaves upward in order to keep from planting them along with the stem, and they don't really want to bend, so I was stabbing myself repeatedly while trying to pot the cutting up.

I'm a little worried about it: they're supposed to be incredibly easy to root, but nothing seems to have happened so far, and the leaves are a little floppier now than they were, which is possibly a bad sign. Granted, it's only been here a week, and I should give it time.

If it does work out like it's supposed to, then I will have a fast-growing, hot pink and brownish yellow plant on my hands that longs to be a thirty-foot vine that bristles with thorns.

-

¹ Not really my fault or the sender's fault. First of all, they weren't a trade so much as a gift, and there were time constraints on it such that they had to be shipped during a cold spell in late April. They're still in the process of sorting themselves out, as far as who's going to live and who's going to die, but at the moment about 2/3 of that group are still technically alive. How many of them will stay that way, on the other hand, I have no idea.
² But Plant List will back me up on Rhipsalidopsis being a botanically obsolete name.
³ If memory serves, Pereskias are thought to be the living group of cacti most similar to the ancestral cactus from which all the others descended. Hence, they still have actual leaves, and need a fair amount of water, and so on.