Random plant event: Agave americana

This doesn't, I think, mean much of anything, but I hadn't seen it before. One of my variegated Agave americanas grew a couple leaves that got fused together halfway down.

The new leaves on the Big Damn Screw Pine occasionally fail to separate from the leaves that precede or follow them, I think because the midrib spines get caught on the other leaves. If it were growing outdoors, where the wind and rain would move the plant around as it grew, this wouldn't be a problem, but indoors I occasionally have to unstick them from one another. So, I thought maybe the Agave situation was something like that, and tried to pull the leaves apart.

But I shouldn't have. Oh, well. The plant hasn't rotted or turned yellow or started to glow or anything, so it appears that I didn't actually hurt it.

List: Missing From Retail, Part 4 of 5

The explanation and background for this post can be found here, at part 1. (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 5)

Medinilla cv. My photo.
WCW said she'd tried Medinilla cvv. (rose grape, medinilla) indoors before, and it hadn't done that well for her, but I don't remember any details beyond that. I also know that they tend not to do that great in the ex-job's greenhouse in the long term,¹ though that hasn't stopped them from ordering them more than once.

When I googled Medinilla, I found a lot of photos of them indoors in containers, usually in pristinely clean and expensive-looking surroundings, accompanied by breathless, over-caffeinated ad copy about what wonderful, wonderful houseplants they are. So it's possible that we'll be seeing a lot more of them in the future. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Nandina domestica. Photo by KENPEI, via Wikimedia Commons.
I can't say I've ever had any strong urge to try growing Nandina domestica (heavenly bamboo, sacred bamboo), so I haven't been terribly bothered by not being able to find one. It's my understanding that they're not particularly beloved outdoor plants, though most of the objections raised at davesgarden.com have to do with their rapid spread and drought tolerance, both of which would be a positive indoors. ("Tacky-looking / cliched," "I think I'm allergic," "ecologically disastrous," and "poisonous" are also represented.)

Although Nandina is an FLEPPC Class I (has produced documented ecological damage) invasive plant, it's not illegal to produce it or sell it in Florida. Since there's no legal barrier, I expect that they're unavailable in the north due to a lack of demand.

Neomarica caerulea. Photo by Denis Conrado, via Wikimedia Commons.
Neomarica spp. (walking iris, apostle plant) are apparently mostly passalong plants, so there's no money in producing them commercially. I don't know what they're like to grow indoors, and I haven't personally seen anybody growing one, but by most accounts they're pretty easy. (I'm somewhat interested in getting a Neomarica, eventually, someday.)

Osmanthus fragrans. My photo.
When my Osmanthus fragrans (sweet olive, tea olive) first arrived, I had it in the house, hoping for ongoing blooming so we'd get to smell the flowers all the time,² but it didn't bloom. And then it got spider mites. So it spent the summer outside. It seemed to like that well enough, though it didn't grow very much, and it didn't rebloom out there either.

Then, after it came inside, it dropped a lot of the new leaves it had just grown. So we don't seem to be getting along, is kind of the upshot. Some googling brought up this page from the Missouri Botanical Garden, in which it is said "In St. Louis, grow in containers which must be overwintered indoors in bright cool locations."

Which probably explains it, 'cause mine's in a warm dim location. So I'll try to fix that and then get back to you.

None of this explains why I never see them for sale. (I'd think they would sell really well, given the fragrance.) This Garden Web thread suggests that Osmanthus might be another plant that would rather have an unheated sunporch than central heating.


Pandanus utilis. My photo, from the Quad Cities Botanical Center.
I feel like I pretty well covered the reasons why Pandanus spp. (screw pines) might not be more available in their profile, but in case you don't want to read it all: both Pandanus utilis and P. veitchii can get huge; both have sharp, unpleasant spines along the leaf margins and on the underside of the leaves along the midrib; P. veitchii is so easily propagated that it's probably a passalong. These all seem like perfectly good reasons why they might not be found in retail very often.³

I'm still trying to get a P. utilis of my own, though. Someday.

Phoenix roebelenii. Photo by Forest & Kim Starr, via Wikimedia Commons.
I've seen Phoenix roebelinii (pygmy date palm, miniature date palm) at the ex-job once, I think, when I first started working there, and I've run into them at Lowe's occasionally since then, but they're not easy to find around here. Something that isn't always obvious from their photos in the books is, they're full of extremely sharp, long (to at least 3.5 inches / 9 cm!) thorns, especially near the base of the fronds. Worse, when I started working there, the ex-job's Phoenix was displayed underneath a huge Ficus benjamina, which dropped leaves into it all the time. Much blood was shed before I learned that there was just no safe way to get the Ficus leaves out of the Phoenix pot, and decided to move the Phoenix instead.

The thorns are bad enough that I'd never actually want to own one myself, but even if I did, Phoenix also gets too large for me, "pygmy" date palm notwithstanding. It probably also needs more sun than I have. Those might also be factors for other people.

Pilea microphylla. My photo.
Nobody seems to grow Pilea microphylla (artillery plant) on purpose anymore, and I've only seen it deliberately sold once (and that was a strangely-colored variety). On the other hand, I still run into it in stores on a pretty regular basis: they're weedy, and hitchhike in the pots of more desirable plants.

I've grown it once; I pulled it out of some other plant's pot and gave it its own. That worked fine for several months, and then it suddenly collapsed. I have no idea why. (The timing and location were such that scale might have been a factor. I don't know.) I wasn't that crazy about it in the first place, so I haven't tried to replace it.

Pittosporum tobira. Photo by Piotrus, via Wikimedia Commons.
I don't find Pittosporum spp. (pittosporum, Japanese mock-orange) very interesting. Apparently the flowers smell nice, but the look of the plants, even the variegated ones, do nothing for me. But hey, some people juggle geese.

I gather Pittosporum also prefers cool temperatures during the winter, and is therefore probably another victim of changing home construction, though I'm not 100% sure on that. According to Monrovia, they're only cold-hardy to USDA zone 8, so you wouldn't think they'd want a lot of cold in the winter. I don't know.

Portea petropolitana. Photo by BotBln, via Wikimedia Commons.
Portea spp. (no common name)⁴ aren't particularly common in the houseplant books, granted, but the Powell book lists a whole bunch of bromeliads I've never seen for sale, and this is one of them, so Portea is kind of standing in for all those (which also include Bromelia, Catopsis, Nidularium, and Quesnelia). The photo above was the best one I found for showing the leaves and inflorescence at the same time, but doesn't do a particularly good job selling the plant overall: it might be clearer why Portea would be desirable from some of the photos of inflorescences. (P. alatisepala, P. kermesina, P. leptantha, P. petropolitana. Don't skip that last one; the colors are particularly interesting.)

The leaf margins are heavily spined, which might explain some of the problem with Porteas (though it doesn't look any worse than some of the Aechmeas or Neoregelias I've seen for sale). Beyond that, there's no obvious problem. Poking around with Google turned up some evidence that they may need a lot of sun, and some of them do get large. They are sold here and there on-line as outdoor plants for people in tropical climates, so it stands to reason that they could be put on trucks and shipped north as easily as anything else could. I'd be interested in a Portea someday, too.

Punica granatum. My (terrible) photo.
I've personally met a couple people who grew Punica granatum (pomegranate) indoors, and the ex-job was selling them the last time I was there, so Punica isn't missing from retail as much as just exceedingly rare. (That's the only time I can recall seeing them in retail.) Not sure why that is; by one of those people's accounts, it wasn't particularly difficult, though I don't know how long he'd had it.

The Missouri Botanical Garden suggests that the species is probably not that easy to keep indoors, but the variety P. granatum 'Nana' is better suited to use as a houseplant. The comments at davesgarden.com were all uniformly positive on 'Nana' as well, though it's not clear where they were all buying their plants.


I'm desperate to get a Pandanus utilis someday, even knowing that I don't have room for it. I could sort of understand why someone might want to own any of the others, too, but I'm only really interested in Pandanus, Neomarica, and Portea.


Not pictured:

• Miltoniopsis spp./cvv. (pansy orchid): have seen very occasionally, in orchid-specialist contexts.
• Myrtus communis (myrtle, true myrtle): have never seen.
• Nerine bowdenii (spider lily): have never seen. (Wikipedia suggests some of the reason could be because they respond badly to being moved.)
• Nicotiana (flowering tobacco): some cultivars seasonally available as annuals or as seeds, but I've never known anybody who was growing them year-round indoors.
• Nidularium (bromeliad): never seen.
• Olea europaea (olive): rarely seen, and super-expensive when they are seen.
• Pentas (pentas, star flower): seasonally available as annuals.
• Petrea volubilis (queen's wreath, sandpaper vine): never seen. (Images from Google show a huge, vining plant that I imagine doesn't stay contained for very long.)
• Philodendron hastatum (silver philodendron): have seen occasionally at the ex-job.
• Pleione formosana (Himalayan crocus, windowsill orchid): have never seen, though it's possible I've seen hybrids for sale at some point.
• Plumbago spp. (plumbago, leadwort): as outdoor perennials; never as houseplant.
• Primula (primrose, auricula, cowslip, oxlip): seasonally as temporary indoor plants.
• Quesnelia (bromeliad): never seen.

As with the other posts in this series, readers are encouraged to leave comments about their experiences with seeing, buying, or growing any of the above, or speculating on why I don't see them for sale (especially if your speculation conflicts with mine).

-

¹ From what I've seen, mostly what happens is that the leaves get burnt tips or margins, and then get torn. So maybe a humidity problem, or drought stress from underwatering?
² (previous Osmanthus post here)
³ There's also the matter of customers not buying them even when given the opportunity. Oh how I tried, but customers are not that into four-foot-wide (1.2 m) plants where every leaf has three rows of hooked spines pointing in different directions, no matter how easy you tell them the plant is to grow.
⁴ And no, this is not a misspelling of the better-known plant Protea.

List: Houseplants Native to the Southern Pacific Ocean

One of the things I did in October / November that led me to the point of burnout by November / December was, I spent a lot of time trying to track down the native ranges for a bunch of different houseplants. This was a lot more complicated than it might sound, because there doesn't seem to be any central authority for these sorts of questions, so I had to refer to multiple sources of information, and different sources occasionally contradict one another, and on occasion it's tough to find any source that will hazard a guess at all, so the whole thing wound up taking a good chunk out of my November and I'm not even confident that the information I gathered is correct. I mean, it should be mostly correct, but there will be occasional errors. So I probably won't be any more error-prone than any other sources, but it may be important to keep in mind that this list, and the others like it, may contain errors, so you shouldn't use it for any work where getting a plant's native range wrong might result in someone's death. For example.

The main source of information, incidentally, was GRIN, which is awkward to use and woefully deficient about certain genera of plants, but which at least tries to provide range information for most of the plants it does cover. I'm mostly using their method of dividing up the globe, as well. GRIN has differing categories for the Southwest Pacific (#45 on the map below) and the South Central Pacific (#44) --

Image credit: GRIN.
-- which I'm combining because I only found two houseplants from the South Central Pacific, so I can't make a South Central post, so I may as well combine Southwest and South Central. What that means is, we're talking about the mess of little islands to the southeast of Papua New Guinea and northeast of Australia, places like Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Samoa and American Samoa, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and all those other little places I'd heard of before but never really bothered to locate on a map.¹

But now I have! Map from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, by way of Voice of America.
This is not a particularly good part of the planet to hunt for possible houseplants; out of a 622-plant list, only 23 (3.7%) come from this part of the globe, and only a handful are exclusive: most were also found in India, China, Indo-China, Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, or some combination thereof.

Other sources of the information consulted for this list and the ones to follow, in descending order of trustworthiness: Plant List, biodiversityexplorer.org (not linked because I've been unable to connect to it and am unsure if it still exists), general Google searches, Wikipedia, Tropicos,² and possibly a few other places I can't remember and didn't write down. I've tried to select plants for the photos section that I'm most confident are native to the South Pacific, leaving the ones I'm less certain about for the end of the post.

The whole native-ranges project should be good for another twenty or so posts like this, though obviously the whole globe won't be represented. Very few houseplants come from Siberia, for example.³

Here we go.

Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island pine) is found exclusively on Norfolk Island,⁴ which is located a bit to the south of most of the other plants on this list. GRIN considers Norfolk Island to be part of Australia, not part of the Southwest Pacific, but Norfolk Island surely has more in common with New Caledonia than it does with Australia, so I'm saying it belongs here.

Breynia disticha (snowbush), green revert of the variegated cv. 'Roseo-Picta.' This one is from New Caledonia and Vanuatu, and nowhere else.

Codiaeum variegatum (croton), variety 'Petra.' Crotons have a broader distribution than Breynia, but it's still centered on the right general area: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, northeastern Australia (specifically Queensland), plus the Southwest Pacific islands of Fiji and Vanuatu.

Epipremnum aureum (pothos), officially belongs to the South Central Pacific, according to GRIN, because it's native to French Polynesia, which is to the east of most of the other plants under discussion. Close enough, though.

Murraya paniculata (orange jasmine) has a fairly broad range, extending as far west as India, north to China and Taiwan, south through Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia, and east to the Northern Marianas islands in the Northwest Pacific. Also the islands of New Caledonia and Vanuatu, in the Southwest Pacific.

Pandanus veitchii (probably a synonym for P. tectorius? Common name is screw pine). Nobody seems to have a terribly good idea where P. veitchii came from, but GRIN says Indonesia and the Philippines, south through Papua New Guinea into eastern Queensland (NE Australia), then throughout the Pacific Ocean as far north and east as Hawaii. The germane islands for this list are New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, French Polynesia, and Vanuatu.

Phaius tankervillae (nun orchid) can be found in Fiji and New Caledonia, but also north to China, west to India and Sri Lanka, and south to Australia. The photo isn't of P. tankervillae (it's P. Microburst Octoberfest), and I was unable to locate the parentage information for P. Microburst Octoberfest, but P. tankervillae is the most widely cultivated Phaius, so PMO probably includes tankervillae genes, and as near as I could determine, tankervillae also has one of the larger native ranges, so the odds are that the picture's fairly representative of the species even if it's not actually the species. Especially since it's not a particularly good picture anyway. (It was all I had showing both blooms and foliage.)

Polyscias fruticosa. (ming aralia) Mostly a Southeast Asia species: it's found in Indo-China (Cambodia, Vietnam), northward to China, west to India, and south to Indonesia. Fiji, in the Southwest Pacific, is at the southern tip of its range.

Dizygotheca (now Schefflera) elegantissima (false aralia). Finally another one that's definitely on this list: S. elegantissima is exclusively native to New Caledonia.

Scyphularia pycnocarpa (possum-tail fern) is only found on Fiji.
Now for the recommendations.

I would enthusiastically recommend Pandanus veitchii, because once established they're incredibly easy to grow. (I have lost a couple offsets to unknown causes before, but they're usually easy to establish, too.) Screw pines are too big and prickly to be suitable for everybody, but if you don't mind big and prickly then you should track one down. They don't seem to be bothered by dry air, as far as I can tell they're pretty flexible about watering, I have yet to see any bugs attack them,⁵ and they'll stay alive in a wide range of light conditions, though some sun is helpful.

Epipremnum aureum and I have had some missteps in the past: specifically, I've lost plants after repotting, more than once, and I'm not sure why. They do well for almost everybody else, though, and I've been doing better with mine for the last couple years. Pothos is likewise fairly flexible about water, light, and humidity, and not overly bothered by any pests.

After those two, it becomes more or less impossible to choose. I adore Auraucaria heterophylla, Breynia disticha, and Murraya paniculata, for differing reasons: Araucaria has been remarkably easy for me, and is one of the plants I've had the longest, though spider mites can occasionally be a problem, and it will do best in a cool, humid, and bright spot without direct sun. Breynia disticha is likewise slightly prone to spider mites, and will drop leaves if allowed to dry out too much, but it's flexible about light, temperature, and humidity, and grows gratifyingly fast. Murraya paniculata will produce lots of small white flowers with a heavy fragrance resembling orange blossoms, which can self-pollinate to form small inedible red fruits. It has no particular pest problems and is very tolerant of indoor conditions, but needs bright light, lots of water, and abundant fertilizer to grow well.

⁶

The anti-recommend is Codiaeum variegatum, because the anti-recommend is always Codiaeum variegatum. If you get a nice specimen, in a suitable (very bright, warm) spot, that doesn't have spider mites to begin with, and you don't bring home any other plants that might have mites: then you have a shot, but if you bring in other plants very often or buy your plant from a place that has spider mites anywhere on the premises, I can pretty much guarantee that your plant is eventually going to get covered in mites, defoliate, and die. I don't even consider buying Codiaeums anymore, and haven't for years.

Not pictured:

• Carmona species (fukien tea) are sometimes sold as bonsai specimens. They're native from Northern Australia, northward through Indonesia and Indo-China, up as far as China and Japan. They go as far west as India and Sri Lanka, and as far east as the Solomon Islands. I've never tried growing one (bonsai, even the fakey mass-produced plants sold as bonsai, are always out of my price range), and suspect them of being difficult besides,⁷ but the foliage has a strange/wonderful astringent smell to it.
• Castanospermum australe (lucky bean plant) is one of those plants I have yet to see in person, though I keep hearing about them from elsewhere. Their native range is small: just Queensland (NE Australia), New Caledonia, and Vanuatu. I have no idea what they're like as houseplants.
• I've never grown a Cocos nucifera (coconut palm); we tried sprouting one from a coconut at work once, but nothing happened, and I think we brought one in to sell once as well, but it sold too quickly for me to get much of a feel for how it worked. I understand they're supposed to be fairly difficult, requiring a lot of light, water, and warmth. Their native range is from Indonesia, south and east through Papua New Guinea and the Philippines, Australia, and Vanuatu, though they've been introduced to basically every tropical habitat in the world.
• Ficus benjamina (ficus tree) can be found on the Solomon Islands, though it has a range extending north as far as China and Taiwan, west as far as India, and south as far as Australia. Like Polyscias fruticosa, they can alarm the unprepared, but are pretty good houseplants for anyone who can give them consistent care.
• Ficus microcarpa (Chinese banyan). Pretty much the same range as F. benjamina, though its range extends a bit further to the west and north. The significant part of the range for this list are New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands. They're a little less prone to panic defoliation than F. benjamina, though I've had waaaaaaay more trouble with spider mites on my F. microcarpas than I ever dreamed of with my F. benjaminas, so I suppose it's a tradeoff.
• Several somewhat obscure Hoya species are from the South Pacific as well, according to hoyor.net; the relevant species are H. affinis, attenuata, australis, barrackii, betchei, bicarnata, chlorantha, cominsii, crassior, diptera, dodecatheiflora, filiformis, guppyi, inconspicua, intermedia, limoniaca, marginata, megalantha, naumanii, neocaledonica, neoebudica, pilosa, pubescens, pycnophylla, schneei, trukensis, and vitiensis. I don't know what any of them are like to grow indoors.
• Polyscias crispata (also P. cumingiana) also comes from the whole Indonesia / Malaysia / Papua New Guinea / Philippines area, plus New Caledonia. I assume its care is similar to that for P. fruticosa, though I've never grown one.
• Solenostemon scutellarioides (more correctly Plectranthus scutellarioides; less correctly Coleus blumei -- most people just call it coleus) has a wide range from China to India in the north, to the northern coast of Australia in the south, including basically everything in between, as well as the Solomon Islands. It's not difficult indoors exactly, but it wants to be huge, grows really fast, can't dry out for long, and needs a completely unreasonable amount of light. Hard to keep up with; I prefer to treat mine as outdoor plants that just have to come inside occasionally for six-month stretches.
• Spathoglottis species (ground orchids) are from diverse habitats within the India / China / Australia / South Pacific rectangle that I'm getting tired of typing out. S. plicata can be found in New Caledonia, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and Tonga. I don't know whether they make good houseplants.

Borderline cases:

• GRIN basically punted on the question of where Acalypha wilkesiana (beefsteak plant, copperleaf) is from. They think "Oceania," which is the general area we're considering, but it's so widely cultivated that the actual origin is unclear. I've never grown Acalypha wilkesiana, since it looks to me like another fast-growing, sun-needing plant like coleus, and I have enough trouble with coleus.
• I wasn't sure whether to include Didymochlaena truncatula (mahogany fern) on the list or not, because GRIN says that it's basically from everywhere. All of tropical Africa, including South Africa and Madagascar, the whole India / Indo-China / Indonesia / Philippines area we've been talking about with everything else in this post (including, relevantly, Fiji), Southern Mexico, and most of South and Central America. This seemed . . . implausible. I mean, it's a fern, for fuck's sakes, how is it going to get from South Africa to Fiji? But other sites backed GRIN up on the claim, so I guess it could be true. My personal experience is that it makes a lousy houseplant: it's way too touchy about missed waterings for this particular house, and consequently mine pretty much always looks like crap. I do enjoy saying Didymochlaena, though.
• Medinilla cvv. is another questionable inclusion; not only do I suspect most Medinillas being grown indoors are probably man-made hybrids, I suspect that almost no Medinillas are being grown indoors. Not for very long, in any case. (They don't even do terribly well in the ex-job's greenhouse.) They seem to be pretty common in Indonesia and the Philippines, and GRIN lists at least one species as being from Fiji.
• Musa spp. (banana) is another weird case: the genus is generally within the India / China / Australia / South Pacific rectangle, but they're also widely cultivated and naturalized, so they're pretty certain that some Musa species are from the South Pacific, but I didn't care enough to want to sort through the tangle of species and ranges to figure out which. There's also been some hybridizing going on, too, so the question may be moot for some ornamental types. I have mixed feelings about them as houseplants: mine's been less trouble than I was expecting when I bought it, and has done much much better in the last year than it did when it first arrived, but they're still not a plant I'd recommend to people.
• The natural range of Paphiopedilums (slipper orchids) stretches from northeast India, east and south through Indo-China (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc.), Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Southwestern Pacific, though I don't know specifically which islands. (GRIN was unhelpful on this one.) Virtually all commercially-available paphs are man-made hybrids, though, so this may not be relevant. As for what they're like as houseplants, well, they like to tease me:⁸ I don't know how they act for other people.
• Spathiphyllum species (peace lilies) are primarily from Southern Mexico, southward through Central and South America,⁹ but GRIN swears that there are a few Asian species, and that at least one can be found in the Solomon Islands. This may not be relevant, since I'm pretty sure any peace lilies you can pick up in a store are going to be man-made hybrids anyway, but I suppose it meets the minimum criteria for inclusion, so hey, here it is. They make fine, if generally uninspiring, houseplants.

-

¹ Sorry, Pacific Islanders. It's not personal, it's just that there are so many little islands. If it makes you feel any better, I could probably locate some of them correctly now, after doing this post.
² Tropicos is tricky, because the locations they name are not necessarily locations where the specimens were actually collected, and it took me a while to figure this out. It's frequently unclear whether the location given is the location where the description was published, where the plant was collected, where a cultivated specimen has been grown, etc. Consequently, I tried to use Tropicos only in cases where there was nothing to be found anywhere else. It's possible that this is just me being stupid, and that there's a perfectly clear reference somewhere on Tropicos that will give me exactly the information I want, but it's the least user-friendly of any of the plant reference sources I consulted.
³ I don't think any of the zones on the map actually came up as having zero houseplant species in them, but that's largely because a few genera are ridiculously widespread: for example, Origanum (oregano), Goodyera (a genus of orchids, containing a few tropical species which are sometimes given the common name jewel orchids), and Drosera (sundews) all came up as being present in Siberia. Which no doubt there are species representing all three in Siberia, but these are almost certainly not the species people try to grow indoors.
⁴ (But it's not a pine.)
⁵ Though when I had one outside a couple summers ago, something did cut circular bites out of a couple leaves. None of the usual indoor pests seem terribly fond of Pandanus, though.
⁶ I'd also like to say that I think the difficulty of Polyscias fruticosa is often overstated on-line. Much like Ficus benjamina, it drops leaves when conditions change in ways it doesn't like. People often see this and panic, thinking that the plant is desperately unhappy, so they try to fix it with more water (because watering is the only thing most people know to do with plants), which leads to other problems. But once in a suitable location (normal indoor temperatures, filtered sun or bright indirect light) and given consistent care, they're really not nearly as scary as people think. One caveat: they are somewhat attractive to spider mites. I've never had that problem with my personal plant, but the plants at work sometimes had trouble.
⁷ They had a tendency to defoliate on us at work; I never figured out what that was about, but they almost always did it before they sold, so then we had a bunch of naked pretend bonsai sitting around.
⁸ "Look, look, I have roots! Whoops, now I don't! Hey, now I have roots again! Oh, never mind! Hooray, roots! Ha: tricked you!" The most frustrating thing about my paph is not that it's unhappy with me, it's that it won't just fucking die already. I know it wants to; I'd like to see it happen myself, yet it refuses to just give up and do it. If it survives to spring (it probably will), I'm going to mail it off to some nice PATSP reader via contest or something, 'cause this is getting ridiculous.
⁹ SPOILER: basically everything is from Central and South America. I expected most houseplants would be from Southeast Asia, but no: if it's succulent, it's from South Africa or Northern Mexico, and if it's not, then it's from Central or South America, particularly Brazil. Nobody would even bother growing houseplants, if we lived in a South-America-less alternate universe. That's how big of a deal South America is.

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

A lot of things aren't working properly for me at the moment (oddities with loading certain websites, a literal headache, a bureaucratic thing which prompted an unscheduled trip to Iowa City yesterday -- and no, Mercury is not in retrograde), so tasks like e-mail and plant-watering are piling up, necessitating a transmitted light post.

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

Pilea cadierei. Quite a bit duller than you'd expect from seeing the leaves by reflected light, but sort of quietly interesting. To me, anyway.

Curcurbita sp. (C. pepo?), petals. Many of these photos are very old: I've been taking pictures faster than I've been using them. I think this is from fall 2009.

Pandanus veitchii.

Polyscias balfouriana. This isn't the greatest picture, but P. balfouriana tends to have veins that are particularly good for photographing.

Quercus sp., autumn. I can't decide whether the tears and brown spots improve transmitted light photos of deciduous trees like Quercus (oak) and Acer (maple) or ruin them.

Iresine herbstii 'Blazin' Rose.'

Weigela sp. I really like this kind of leaf. Not particularly taken with the plant (one came with the house: it isn't causing any problems, and it's impressively large, but it doesn't do much for me either. Considering how difficult it is to get enough light in the house, I'd really sort of prefer that we not have anything tall in or near the house at all. But it's probably staying anyway.

Hypoestes phyllostachya, white cv.

Dieffenbachia NOID. I keep seeing this variety over and over, but I have no idea what it's called. My best guess is 'Golden Sunset,' but given how many varieties there are, and how variable the leaves may be, a lot of them sort of shade into one another, and it's hard to be very sure.

Musa 'Zebrina Rojo.' (possibly Ensete 'Zebrina Rojo.') Sort of the obvious favorite from the set.

Obituary

(NOTE FROM MR. S.: Sorry this is late. I didn't realize that I'd mis-set the date until six hours after it was supposed to post.)


Pandanus amaryllifolius passed away on July 23, 2011, at her home in Plant Room Heights, following a brief illness.

P. amaryllifolius is survived by a sibling, Pandanus veitchii.

P. amaryllifolius moved to the Plant Room Heights area last August. She was an accomplished baker and grew up in Florida.

In lieu of genitalia, the family requests that memorials be sent to the Root Rot Awareness Foundation of North America.

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My theory now is that P. amaryllifolius isn't grown indoors as much as P. veitchii because it's a less robust plant. I suppose it's unfair to make that judgment from a single experience, but as expensive as it was, I don't see me having a second go at it, so a single experience is probably all I'm going to get.

I'm not sure what happened to the plant. It had been doing fine, as far as I knew, for a long time, and then I repotted it in June or maybe early July.

Then on July 15, I took the plant outside to get the above photo, and when I brought it back in and was getting ready to put it back on its shelf, I noticed that it had a few spider mites on one side. So I mixed up a batch of neem oil, sprayed the plant, let it dry, and put it on the shelf. The next time I checked it, I noticed that the stilt roots and stem seemed to be dying from the ground up, and the stem was already rotted through. So I tried cutting the suckers off the plant and potting them up separately, but they'd all yellowed and wilted within a few days, and they looked bad enough that I figured they probably weren't going to come back. So on the 23rd, I gave up.

This sort of thing -- sudden decline of a plant which had previously seemed healthy -- seems to be happening a lot lately. I won't go into the full list, but you've heard about at least one of them recently. I don't think the deaths are all related to one another -- I lose plants year-round, always have -- but it feels like the number of plants that die before I even know something's wrong with them has taken a huge jump in the last few months. Maybe this means I used to pay more attention. I don't know.

In this particular case, the circumstantial evidence points to the repotting as the likely cause, though I still don't know how the one thing led to the other thing. And I'm pretty sure that under the same circumstances, P. veitchii would have let me repot it. Which brings me back around to the theory that P. amaryllifolius might just be a weaker species.

The Quad City Botanical Center, Part 2 of However Many

This is the second post about our visit to the Quad City Botanical Center (henceforth QCBC) a few weeks ago. (Part 1)

The QCBC building. Photo by Ctjf83 at Wikipedia.
The tropical plants area of the QCBC is divided up in a way that makes it feel relatively small, but the pamphlet the husband picked up says it's 6444 square feet (599 square meters), and 70 feet (21.3 m) tall at its tallest point. So there's room, and somehow they've managed to get some very big plants in there, even though their website says they've only been around since 1998. (Presumably some of the plants were of pretty good size before they were planted.)

My favorite, naturally, was the Pandanus utilis.

Pandanus utilis.
I tried to take a picture that would show the spiral arrangement of leaves, to explain the common name "screw pine," but the sun was behind the plant, and there was only so much I could do. This was the best one I got:


Seeing this one at the QCBC made me even more determined to get a Pandanus utilis of my own someday, though. Not that I needed the push.

Odds are that more visitors are impressed by the coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, than the Pandanus. It was certainly much taller, if nothing else:

Cocos nucifera.
And it did, I admit, educate me a little as to how the coconuts are attached to the plant: I always thought they were held closer to the foliage than that. (You may have to open the picture in a separate window to see the coconuts.)

Not all the big, impressive plants were unfamiliar: the QCBC also has the largest Murraya paniculata I've ever seen. I can't imagine how overpowering the smell, when it's in full bloom. The people who clean the room must hate this plant. (My own makes a mess of the husband's office on a regular basis, and it's a tiny fraction of the size of this one.)

Murraya paniculata.
They also had a big, healthy Philodendron erubescens that was trying very hard to pull down the building:

Philodendron erubescens (?).
I suspect there is a law that all botanical-garden-type places have to have at least one gigantic Alocasia or Colocasia somewhere.

Alocasia sp.? Colocasia sp.? I'm not really getting any better at telling the two apart. . . .
I was surprised to find a Duranta at all (it's not a plant I think about a lot, or expect to see anywhere), but finding a really big, chartreuse one was a pleasant surprise:

Duranta erecta 'Golden Edge.'
No flowers on the Duranta, which is too bad. I want to smell one again sometime and see whether I still think it smells like cookies.

There were pothos plants climbing, literally, the walls (you can see some of them in the background of the pictures from Part 1), but this particular one got to the ceiling by climbing a support column.

Epipremnum aureum.
I also saw a Syngonium podophyllum with mature leaves at the QCBC. I'd seen this before, but it'd been a long time:

Syngonium podophyllum.

The plant that most impressed me, though, of all the plants there, was their Caryota mitis (fishtail palm), which was not only enormous --

Caryota mitis.
-- it was also flowering. Rather a lot.


The flowers aren't pretty, but apparently they don't have to be in order to work.


And this very new flower below looked like an octopus to me, which makes me like the species way, way more. I've never had good luck with C. mitis indoors (in my experience, it's hard to find one that's not buggy), but if they can grow octopi/-puses/-pods, then I think I need to rethink my position.


They also had a few other very large plants that I'm leaving out of the post because they didn't photograph well, including a Chorisa speciosa (silk floss tree) that nearly touched the ceiling and was dropping pink flowers on everything underneath it. I'd heard the name before, but it wasn't a plant I was familiar with at all. In person, it was maybe a little too huge and a little too far away for me to relate to, but still. Always nice to meet new folks.

There were also quite a few gigantic banana plants (Musa sp.), and a very large but badly lit Breynia disticha (snowbush, also sometimes Breynia nivosa). Maybe I'll get pictures of those the next time we go.