Walkaways Part 17

A few interesting plants from the ex-job:

Calliandra emarginata.
They were selling Calliandra emarginata as a bonsai (or at least a bonsish; I don't think they've ever had actual bonsai bonsai), which guarantees that I will never buy it, but it's an interesting plant. No clue what they're like to grow indoors; I don't even have any idea what they're like to grow outdoors.

Kalanchoe 'Fantastic.'
I've had mostly-bad experiences with the Kalanchoe genus in general, and consistently bad experiences with Kalanchoe luciae specifically, in the past, so this wasn't particularly tempting, but it was new (to me), and I can't argue that it's not a cool-looking plant.


I don't know whether this is K. luciae or K. thyrsiflora, and it appears no one else does either: Google results are split about 50/50. The tag, for the record, said K. thyrsiflora, not that that means much.

Loropetalum chinensis.
Loropetalum chinensis is another bons-ish; I include it here mostly because I'd never heard of it before and it's kind of pretty.

Polypodium formosanum var. cristatum.
I intend to try this plant someday. I've had some ups and downs lately with footed ferns (two of my three Davallias have taken a recent hard turn for the worse, over nothing in particular that I can see; one has died as a result), but Phlebodium aureum is one of my favorite plants, and Polypodium grandiceps seems to be working for me so far, so P. formosanum seems worth a try even so.

It's possible that the correct name is Phlebodium formosanum, not Polypodium formosanum; Glasshouse Works gives both names but appears to favor Phlebodium. If that's the case, then I'm even more interested.

Philodendron 'Pink Princess.'
Finally, Philodendron 'Pink Princess.' For most of the last few years, I haven't seen it for sale anywhere around here (I think I saw them at Wallace's once), and now all of a sudden the ex-job has gotten them on two separate shipments, as 6" (shown) and also as 4". It's an interesting-looking plant, but I'm not terribly interested in 'Pink Princess' because it's super expensive, and everything I've heard about it suggests that it's really slow-growing. The two things are probably related.

I don't remember what the ex-job wanted for the 4-inch plants, but it was definitely over $10, maybe something like $15. They paid a lot to get them in, I understand (don't know how much, but I know how they calculate these things, and the retail prices reflect wholesale), but $10 for a 4-inch tropical plant is never going to seem acceptable to me.

Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 1.53-1.56

Rules and Stuff
1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.
2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.
3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.
4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.
5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.¹
6) All polls will be open for three days.

And now, the results from matches 1.37 to 1.40:

Even with the obvious handicap of having glued-on flowers, Cereus tetragonus² came very close to winning match 1.37. It didn't, losing to Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk' by a handful of votes (55 to 48), but it came really close.
Chlorophytum comosum, despite some protests, pretty easily beat Echinocactus grusonii in match 1.38, 64 to 40.

Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk' faces Chlorophytum comosum in match 2.19, which will begin October 11.

Match 1.39 was pretty close, but Kalanchoe luciae & thyrsiflora managed a win over Peperomia clusiifolia, 56 to 42.
Finally, match 1.40 was very one-sided: Echeveria cvv. stomped Nephrolepis exaltata by 87 to 20.

Kalanchoe luciae/thyrsiflora goes up against Echeveria cvv. on October 11, in match 2.20.

And now, today's new polls:

Match 1.53
Cycas revoluta (sago palm) vs. Espostoa lanata, Oreocereus trollii, & Cephalocereus senilis (old man cactus)

(Top: older Cycas revoluta. Bottom: young C. revoluta.)

(Espostoa lanata CORRECTION 1/13/14: this is actually Oreocereus trollii)





Match 1.54
Tradescantia zebrina (wandering jew) vs. Portulacaria afra (elephant bush)

(All are unidentified cvv. of Tradescantia zebrina.)

Left and center: Portulacaria afra. Right: variegated cv.





Match 1.55
Tillandsia cyanea (pink quill) vs. Kalanchoe blossfeldiana (flaming katy, kalanchoe)

(Tillandsia cyanea.)

(All are NOID Kalanchoe blossfeldiana cvv.)





Match 1.56
Self-heading Philodendrons ('Autumn,' 'Prince of Orange,' 'Moonlight') vs. Davallia and other furry-rhizomed ferns like Polypodium/Phlebodium (rabbit's-foot fern, hare's-foot fern, bear's-paw fern, kangaroo fern)

Clockwise from top left: Philodendron 'Prince of Orange,' 'Moonlight,' 'Autumn,' 'Prince of Orange,' 'Moonlight.'

Clockwise from left: Phlebodium aureum 'Mandianum,' close-up of Davallia rhizomes, Davallia fejeensis 'Major.'





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¹ I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?
² (Or whatever it is: it's identified as at least three different species and I'm not enough of a cactus expert to make a judgment. Calling it C. tetragonus follows the usage of CactiGuide.com.)

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

This week looks like it's going to be busy for me again. I couldn't bring myself to water yesterday or Sunday, it looks like I'm going to be going in to Iowa City again on Wednesday, and if I don't hurry up and get busy putting some of my plants up on Craigslist I'm never going to manage to sell them all. (I'm still selling plants, by the way.) Therefore, transmitted light photos.

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

P. S.: For anyone who was wondering: Sheba appears to be just fine, without any intervention at all. There was a piece of the nail still hanging off when we first discovered the problem, and we'd assumed that we'd have to take her to the vet to get it removed on Monday, but it disappeared on its own on Sunday. She still didn't like us getting near it on Sunday, but as of Monday she wasn't being protective of the foot anymore. So we're assuming that it's resolved itself, though we'll keep an eye on it for a couple more days just in case.

Bergenia 'Rosi Klose.' I'm not particularly familiar with Bergenia, although I probably should be (this picture was taken at the ex-job, and I assume they had them when I worked there).

Polypodium grandiceps. Surprisingly good houseplant for me so far, though if the plant dries out too much, any unfurling, immature fronds turn black and die, and that's happened a few times. It's also a little on the big side, though mine's not as big as the Phlebodium aureum 'Mandianum.' At least not yet.

Tolmiea menziesii.

Callisia repens.

Morus sp. Very happy with the way this one turned out, plain green though it may be.

Codiaeum variegatum NOID. Some part of me still feels like croton pictures are cheating.

Strelitzia reginae. A particularly fun transmitted light subject. S. nicolai has the same basic structure, but the cross veins are a lot less visible, so it looks more like stripes than like a bunch of little rectangles. Or at least I think that's how it works.

Acer sp., autumn.

Peperomia caperata.

Caladium 'Fire Chief.' Caladiums really suck indoors (at least they always have for me), which is a pity. I would love to be able to grow something like this in the house. Unfortunately, it's too cold in here (year round), and probably also not bright enough. I sort of intended to get some to plant in containers outside this year, but didn't get around to it, or couldn't afford it, or something. Perhaps next year.

New Plants

I guess it's been a while since I did one of these posts. I haven't been doing that much plant-buying lately, I thought, but I seem to have a lot of "new" plants anyway. (Some of these have been around for a month and a half, so they're not exactly "new," but they're still new, in that I have not previously mentioned them on the blog.)

Gasteria bicolor var. lilliputiana.
The florist in town also sells some outdoor stuff, mainly (entirely?) annuals, during the early summer, and I got the first three plants of the post from her. Unlike some people, I like Gasterias, though I have a lot less experience with them than their close relatives Haworthia and Aloe.

Pilosocereus pachycladus.
She also had some cacti in 6-inch pots for $15, back in May (there are still a couple left, last I looked), and I'd sort of been looking for a Pilosocereus pachycladus for a while (since seeing one in Cedar Rapids, at Pierson's, several months ago). It was a good price, there were two plants in the pot, and they were reasonably good-sized. I don't know if Pilosocereus is easy or difficult, for a cactus, but so far, so good.

Agave lophantha.
This plant, too, was a $15 6-inch plant from the flower store in town, and I'd also been looking for an Agave lophantha since the same trip to Cedar Rapids when I saw the Pilosocereus. These have since been divided into separate four-inch pots, and appear to be doing well in the basement under lights.

Crassula falcata.
Crassula falcata is a plant I'd asked about in a walkaways post, and then went back to get after being told what it was. Crassulas and I have a very mixed history together, so I don't know that I expect this to work out particularly well in the long run. But it's an interesting plant: I figured I had to at least try.

Aloe haworthioides. (Aloe descoingii x Aloe haworthioides?)
This came from the hardware store that was selling the 'Jenny Craig' Dracaena. Andrew purchased one of these (or something very similar) recently, too, and came up with the ID of Aloe descoingii x Aloe haworthioides for his. Possibly this is a cross, and not a straight A. haworthioides, but that was the first ID I ran across that looked rightish to me, so that's the ID I'm going with until I get a clearer sense of the difference between the two, and/or see some good pictures of the two side-by-side.

Peperomia orba.
Not a lot to say here. This was another plant I previously posted about as a walkaway; it was cheap, I have mixed but mostly positive results with Peperomia (though my P. argyreia is extremely unhappy with me for the last . . . ever), and I'm interested in what this will look like six months from now. So we're trying it.

Didymochlaena truncatula.
Didymochlaena truncatula is also called the "mahogany fern," I'm assuming because of the brownish-red color of the newest fronds. We had a few when I was working in the garden center that got pretty big, and they were pretty nice-looking. Ferns are sort of a gamble, in that a lot of them also need conditions which are cooler or damper than I'm able to provide year-round. So I'm not sure how this will turn out. Googling about the plant turned up a 50-50 mix of sites saying that they're difficult (mainly talking about outdoor care) and sites saying they're easy (primarily talking about indoor care). Which is interesting.

The botanical name drives me crazy, by the way. I first learned the species name as trunculata, and I've also seen it as just plain truncata, but it's actually truncatula, which I try to keep straight with the mnemonic, "the cat you love is in my Didymochlaena." Mixed results so far, with the mnemonic: I still have to check every time I type it.

The genus name is problematic as well, but in a different way: I've never had any trouble remembering how to spell it, because I learned that correctly the first time, but my brain played with the pronunciation. Davesgarden.com says the correct pronunciation is "did-ee-moh-KLAY-ee-nuh," but my brain first pronounced it "DID-ee-MO-ka-LAY-nuh," which, I have discovered, easily corrupts into part of the Los del Río song (and cultural sensation) "Macarena." (DAle a tu CUERPo aleGRIa, MAcarENa / Heeeeeeey, Macarena --> DAle a tu CUERPo ale DID-ee-MO-ka-LAY-nuh / Heeeeeeey, MO-ka-LAY-nuh) Which is, obviously, super-annoying.

Even if I used the davesgarden.com pronunciation, I'm pretty sure "Macarena" would sneak in somehow ("DAle a tu CUERPo ale DID-ee-MO-klay-EE-nuh?"). It's probably hopeless. Perhaps in this one case, I should go against all my principles and call the plant by its common name, not the botanical one.

Polypodium grandiceps.
The Polypodium, like the Peperomia and Didym mahogany fern, came from my ex-job. They have a lot of ferns right now, because the tropical plant situation in Florida is still suffering the effects of last winter's freeze. (Florida: you get freezes every few years. How can this always surprise you? You have to prepare for these things.) Which meant not much of an availability list, and every box of "assorted" anything had ferns filling in for whatever frozen tropicals were missing.

So they now have basically all the ferns: elkhorn (which is our boy P. grandiceps, above), rabbit's-foot (Davallia), bird's-nest (Asplenium), mahogany (Didymochlaena¹), crocodile (Microsorum musifolium 'Crocodyllus'), Boston (Nephrolepis), 'Austral Gem' (an Asplenium cross), button (Pellaea), tiger (variegated Nephrolepis), upside-down (Arachniodes), holly (Cyrtomium), staghorn (Platycerium), bear's-paw (Polypodium), table (Pteris), possum-tail (Scyphularia), tree (Blechnum and Cyathea, among others, though they're not actually ferns) -- basically everything except maidenhair (Adiantum).

Which perhaps makes the fact that I bought a second fern, one I had never particularly cared about or wanted, somewhat more understandable. The odds said I was going to buy some ferns, 'cause that's what they had.

Agave bovicornuta 'Reggae Time.'
The last two plants came from Wallace's, in Bettendorf, IA, last Sunday. We hadn't been there since the orchid show in March, and the weather was such that I could survive outside the house without air conditioning (barely), so it seemed like a golden opportunity to go somewhere. And we did. Oddly, all the purchases from Wallace's had Jamaica-themed cultivar names.

I think I'd seen 'Reggae Time' at Wallace's before, maybe last October, but I asked someone and she thought they'd gotten them in new for this year.² Either way, it's a big plant for the price ($7.99) -- nearly a foot (0.3 m) in diameter now, and the tag says to space them at least three feet (.9 m) apart. (It actually says 36-60 inches, or 0.9-1.5 m.) So it could, theoretically, get very large, though indoors it probably won't. Still, it's a big, scary, angry-looking plant, and I like those.

Dracaena reflexa 'Song of Jamaica.'
Finally, Dracaena reflexa 'Song of Jamaica,' because they had fairly cheap 3-inch plants I could buy and then pot together. It's not a plant I was searching for especially, but my little 'Song of India' has done well enough inside that I've concluded that Dracaena reflexa is not as much trouble as the rumors say, and I wanted a multiple-plant pot because D. reflexas tend not to be that interesting individually. So I made one, when we got home.

There will probably be a post about the walkaways from these trips within the next week or two.

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¹ (Heeeeeeeey Mo-ka-lay-nuh!)
² The ones I remember were definitely not this big, though plants do grow. So these may or may not be the Agaves I remember.

List: Houseplants With Finely-Divided, "Fluffy" Foliage

This list is another request from Joseph Tychonevich at Greensparrow Gardens, and I'm not sure if he was meaning anything fluffy-looking (in which case Soleirolia soleirolii, baby tears, would count) or anything with pinnate/bipinnate/tripinnate foliage, in which case Zamia spp., cardboard palms, would count). So I've tried to restrict myself to stuff that qualifies either way, stuff that both looks fluffy and soft (doesn't mean it actually is soft, by the way) and has finely-divided foliage.

In practice, this seems to mean mostly ferns and palms, but I found a couple other options too. It's a tough category. Additional suggestions are welcome.

Araucaria heterophylla. (Norfolk Island pine)

Asparagus plumosus (shown) and other Asparagus spp. (asparagus fern)

Chamaedorea elegans. (parlor palm)

Davallia tyermanii (shown) and other Davallia spp. (rabbits-foot fern)

Pogonantherum paniceum. (house bamboo)

Polypodium formosanum 'Cristatum.' (ET fern)

Polyscias fruticosa var. elegans. (parsley aralia)

Radermachera sinica. (China doll)

Schefflera (Dizygotheca) elegantissima. (false aralia)

Selaginella kraussiana. (club moss)
I like the look of a lot of these, but have had bad experiences with quite a few of them, too, and even the ones I haven't had bad experiences with tend to be difficult plants for most people. So I can recommend Araucaria heterophylla, which is pretty agreeable if you give it decently bright light and are consistent about watering; Davallia spp., which are a bit more challenging than most plants but are pretty reasonable, as ferns go; and Polyscias fruticosa var. elegans, which, like the regular P. fruticosa, is not quite as fearsome as its reputation would suggest.

I anti-recommend Pogonantherum paniceum, because my own plant needed so much water, so often, that I could only keep it going for four and a half months, and it didn't look so hot by the end of about two. I also discourage people from Chamaedorea elegans whenever I get the chance: I know there are people out there who can grow them and find them easy, but I am not one of those people, nor is WCW. In my experience, C. elegans either get spider mites, then black tips, and die, or they get black tips, then spider mites, then die. Unless they're in a greenhouse. Where they just get spider mites. Finally, I'd suggest the reader not try Selaginella kraussiana without the aid of a terrarium. I haven't tried the plant at all, personally, with or without, but they have pretty extreme moisture needs.

Not pictured:

Adiantum spp. (maidenhair ferns)
Chamaedorea cataractum (cat palm)
Chrysalidocarpus lutescens (butterfly palm)
Didymochlaena trunculata (mahogany fern)
Howea forsteriana (kentia palm)
Nephrolepis exaltata cvv., in particular the cv. 'Fluffy Ruffles' (Boston fern)
Pellaea rotundifolia (button fern)
Philodendron bipinnatifidum (tree philodendron, selloum philodendron) (should this count?)
Polyscias fruticosa (ming aralia)
Schefflera arboricola (umbrella plant, umbrella tree) (should this count?)
Scyphularia pycnocarpa (black caterpillar fern, Davallia pentaphylla)
Selaginella erythropus (red club moss)

Random plant event: Polypodium formosanum 'Cristatum'

This isn't really so much a random plant event as just a random plant, but whatever. In the post about the shoplifter, I mentioned that there was a weird plant in the latest shipment that was going to get its own post soon: this is that plant.

It's a little unusual from the top:


But the foliage isn't even the part we're interested in. It came in with a batch of "footed" ferns -- rabbit's-foot (Davallia) and bear's-paw (Polypodium?) and that sort of thing. So check out what we saw when we looked at the "feet:"


The picture doesn't quite do it justice, but it was the best I could do. The "feet" are smooth, and sort of a light green -- more than one co-worker spontaneously compared them to Manduca sexta, the tobacco hornworm, though hornworms are thicker. And more mobile.

The supplier helpfully provided tags with the scientific name and the suggested common name of "E.T. fern;" I don't know if I expect that to catch on, but it certainly got my attention. In any case, it looks like a footed fern mutant that doesn't grow "fur" on the "feet." I'd buy one, but we're kind of at the low end of the annual cycle with my rabbit's-foot, where it's just starting to come out of dormancy after spending all winter looking increasingly like crap. Taking on another fern seems like asking for trouble. But maybe eventually.