Random plant event: Rhipsalis baccifera

I did not know that Rhipsalis baccifera berries were purple, until a couple weeks ago when I saw these at the ex-job.

I was surprised, because the berries on my NOID Rhipsalis,¹ as well as the berries on Pseudorhipsalis ramulosa, are both white. (P. ramulosa is apparently less closely related to the genus Rhipsalis than it looks, but I didn't know that until very recently either.) That's not that much to go on, but it seemed reasonable to think that the other Rhipsalis species probably also had white berries. Live and learn. Apparently some of them have black berries, even.

These are the flowers:

Not dramatic and flashy, obviously, but apparently they get the job done.

Here's a wider view, to give you some perspective on the size:

So there's that.

In other news: I may have an announcement of sorts relatively soon, but 1) it's not what you're thinking so don't go getting all excited,² and 2) I didn't want to make any announcements on April Fool's Day, for what I would hope would be obvious reasons. So let's say sometime in the next week.

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¹ An Exotic Angel plant, so the ID is kind of inherently questionable. According to their website, it's Rhipsalis micrantha, but the pictures of R. micrantha that show up in search engines don't look much like my plant. The pictures do look like the photo on the EA website, but that could just mean that EA misidentified it, something they're extremely prone to do, when they bother to identify things at all.
Having said that: it's not like I can come up with any Rhipsalis species that look like what I've got at all. The only photos I could find that looked like my plant were either on the EA website itself, or plants that looked like they were probably EA plants before purchase. So I'm content to just call it a NOID.
² (or somber: it's not that announcement either)

Random plant events: white flowers

Nothing gigantic and incredible going on exactly, but I've got three plants blooming recently that are all notable in some way or another, and as it happens, all three have white flowers, so it seemed reasonable to group them together into one post.

First up is the Coffea arabica, which struggled a bit this winter (dropping the lowest leaves, mostly, which for all I know is normal) but just got super excited and put out a huge flush of flowers.¹

I counted flowers at 38 separate nodes. If each node produces 2.5 berries (previously, either 2 or 3 seemed to be standard), and each berry produces 1.9 seeds (also based on previous experience), that's roughly 150-200 seeds.


The husband pointed out that 150-200 seeds might actually be sufficient to make a cup or two of coffee. I'm a little bit tempted, but I'd be more inclined to plant the seeds and get more plants. Assuming that there are seeds. Also assuming that the seeds will germinate.² (Obviously there's a great deal of premature chicken-counting going on in this paragraph.)


I tried, but was unable to get any smell from the flowers at all. (The husband could, so I'm not sure what my problem is.)

Next up, I've got flowers on my Haworthia limifolia var. limifolia. This isn't the first time that one of the Haworthias has attempted to bloom, but usually the flower spike shoots up into the fluorescent lights and then burns before I notice it, or it starts to grow deep within the leaves and then stalls and dies for some reason. I don't know for sure that this is the first time I've ever had one reach full bloom, but it's the first in a very long time, at least.


There is a chance that H. limifolia var. limifolia may be self-fertile: some Haworthias are and some aren't, from what I hear. I won't be attempting to get seeds from this one, though, because the flowers are so tiny and easily damaged that I doubt I have the necessary visual acuity and fine motor control. (If you've got a flowering Haworthia of your own that you want to try with, you'll want to check this out.)

Finally, I think most of us have seen Cryptanthus flowers before, and I've never found them all that interesting or attractive, but these made me do a double-take:


I think Cryptanthus flowers are always white,³ so the color's not a big deal, but I was struck by the size and shape: ordinarily they're small, flat, triangular things that are easily overlooked. This particular plant (a NOID), though, produces flowers that are a bit larger, and more trumpet-shaped. It's not a huge difference, but it was enough to make me think, oh, those are really pretty, for a Cryptanthus.

I won't be collecting seeds from this either, first because there are no other Cryptanthuses blooming at the moment so I have nothing to cross them with, second because the recent failure with the Cryptbergias has made me doubt I could pull it off, and third because there are much easier ways to get more Cryptanthuses, if more Cryptanthuses is what you want, and I've already got so many baby plants from offsets that I have no idea what to do with them all. But let the record show that I totally thought about it.

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¹ Google says that the bloom season is "mid spring" or March, both of which apply. So I guess everything's normal.
² This might be a good moment to update you on the progress of the Coffea seeds I started on 18 February. It's an easy update: absolutely nothing has happened yet, as far as I can see. This is not surprising; Coffea seeds are slow germinators, and right now, at one month, is the very soonest I could have expected anything to happen. Two months seems to be typical, according to Google; some sources say as long as four. (Nobody claims anything faster than 1 month.)
I'm also wondering if I maybe got some bad information; a lot of the sources I found while googling for germination times also say that seeds that have dried out too much are generally non-viable. The plan I was working from initially said that viability was best with seeds that had been dried for eight weeks, so somebody has to be wrong here. I'm starting to get a little anxious.
³ (I've never seen them in any other color, anyway.)

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.

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.

Random plant event: Rhipsalis NOID

I think these are maybe Rhipsalis rhombea, but I'm not sure. The tag when I bought it said it was Rhipsalis micrantha, but I decided some time ago that the tag was probably wrong.

In any case, I bought it in March 2011, and it flowered for the first time in February 2012. The flowers are self-fertile, and will produce fruit on their own, so I had seeds a short time later. I started the seeds on 15 Jun 2012. This is where they were as of mid-August:

For a sense of scale: the square of vermiculite in the photo is about 2 inches / 5 cm on a side. The vermiculite isn't normal vermiculite color, because I used un-sterilized vermiculite from a previous project, so there's . . . black stuff on it. I don't know what the black stuff is. I suppose it could be something bad, but I have more fruits, and they're fast germinators, so I can always start again.

And by the way: I know it'd probably make more sense to propagate cuttings, if I were going to propagate this plant, but 1) previous attempts to root cuttings have mostly been unsuccessful, and 2) if one of my plants produces seeds, I am unable to resist trying to germinate them.

Assorted Stuff / Hiatus Announcement

SPECIAL NOTE: I try not to go two consecutive days without a post, but a bunch of stuff popped up on Monday that made it impossible for me to get one together for Tuesday. And then Tuesday was complicated as well (malware on a computer -- not mine, but one I use for Sims and Hulu -- plus unprecedented levels of family drama¹ and the usual barely-doable-within-the-time-available watering), and none of those problems have been resolved yet, so we may as well treat this as the beginning of another long hiatus, 'cause that's what it's going to turn into whether I like it or not. (You can't say you weren't warned.)

Orchid pictures will probably continue to go up about every four days, with minimal commentary, since they're already uploaded and scheduled.

Previously-arranged plant sales, blog comments, and e-mail correspondence should all continue to happen, albeit possibly a bit slower.

So here's the last regular post for a while. I was trying to make up for missing Monday and Tuesday by cramming lots of little fragments of posts together into one (Sort of like a blog-post McNugget.), until my Tuesday went to hell and I ran out of time.

1. Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips'
Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips' is the first plant I've bought in two months, and only the third plant I've purchased in the last six months. (The previous two purchases were the Salvia elegans, which I'm now thinking was a bad decision,² and the Ananas lucidus, which is doing quite well.)


Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips.'
I wouldn't have gotten this one either -- it was on the pricey side,³ and is a genus I haven't tried to grow before -- but I've been wanting a Mangave to try for a very long time, and this is the first thing I've seen for sale that was even close to a Mangave. So we're trying it. So far, so good, though it's lucked into one of the outdoor spots, so I really won't have any idea what it's like to grow indoors for another six months.


2. Amorphophallus konjac
I got an Amorphophallus konjac bulb from a reader at the end of last summer, as part of a trade. Stored it in the plant room on a low (cold) shelf, then potted it up this spring, around the end of April. And then there was a lot of waiting for it to do something.

It still has a ways to go, but I should be seeing an actual unfurled leaf fairly soon. Kind of excited.


The one bad thing about Amorphophallus is that plants with pronounced dormancies, that need to be stored dry during the winter, make me really nervous -- I'm always scared that I'll kill the plant accidentally and not find out until I go to start it again. I don't know why this is more scary to me than the plant-killing I do all the time, but it just is.


3. Grocery Store
Saw some unusual houseplant-related items in the produce section of the grocery store last week; Hylocereus fruits --


-- and Aloe vera leaves.


I knew Hylocereus ("dragon fruit") were sold, though I don't think I've ever seen any around here before. Didn't see a price on them. The opposite is true for the Aloe -- I've seen plenty of Aloes, but never expected to see the leaves for sale without the rest of the plant being attached.


4. What Fresh New Hell is This?
From the ex-job:


The plant looks fine -- some kind of NOID Rhipsalis, I'm guessing -- but what the hell is it growing in? Is that all coconut fiber? Can epiphytic cacti live in something like that?


5. Zea mays
One way to know that you live in Iowa next to a corn field is to check your lawn for . . . hmmm. I don't know if there's a term for these or not.⁴ I'm going to call them "cornweed," until I hear a better name.


There's also a few in the garden along the fence, though you can't see them clearly from this photo.
Squirrels drag unharvested corn cobs from last year's crop into the yard, then scatter the seeds around as they eat them. The corn these will produce isn't likely to be anything we'd want to eat (field corn is gross), so it's kind of pointless to leave it, but all the Iowanness in me rebels at the idea of pulling up a cornstalk, so they stay.


6. Gomphrena 'Audrey White'
In other news, Gomphrena now comes in white. Maybe it always did. I wasn't aware of it until this year, though. I don't know how I feel about it.




I guess that's it for now. See you when I see you.

-

¹ I and the husband are personally fine, and don't expect to be directly affected by any of what's going on. Just in case you were worried.
² I had a bunch of cuttings going in the basement, which were doing fine, and then I let them get too dry and lost 4 out of 5 of them. There may have been spider mites as well. This is exactly what happened to the previous batch of S. elegans, as I described back in April, so it's possible that it's just not a plant I can grow anymore.
³ ($14.99 plus tax for a 5-inch pot)
⁴ (There's "volunteer corn," which are the seeds that fell into the soil instead of getting harvested, which come up the following year and are generally removed, but I'm looking for something more specific to the situation of having corn spontaneously appearing in one's lawn.)

Random plant event: Rhipsalis NOID

My NOID Rhipsalis bloomed at the end of January. The flowers weren't particularly interesting -- especially not by comparison with most cactus flowers -- but it was still something I hadn't seen before.

It's tiny.
I don't yet know if they're self-fertile, but it looks like they may be; the flowers (there were two; these pictures are of the first) are no longer open, but the base of the flowers appears to be swelling. I suppose we'll know more in a few months.

The bud of the second flower is visible in the close-up, behind the open flower.
Sorry this isn't much; I'd intended to do a different post today and couldn't figure out how to end it, so I threw this post together at the last minute last night.

List: Houseplants Which Resemble Piles of Sticks

What? Some of them do.

Agave geminiflora.

Bryophyllum tubiflorum.

Cissus quadrangularis.

Codiaeum variegatum 'Picasso's Paintbrush.'

Euphorbia tirucalli.

Gasteria x pseudonigricans?

Hatiora salicornioides.

Peperomia ferreyrae.

Rhipsalis teres var. heteroclada. (ID is tentative; Rhipsalis species are difficult to tell apart.)

Sansevieria cylindrica.
But which ones are pleasant to grow?

Well, I've grown seven of the ten (haven't tried Agave geminiflora, Bryophyllum tubiflorum, or Codiaeum variegatum 'Picasso's Paintbrush'), and don't have too many complaints about most of them, but if I must choose three to recommend:

Euphorbia tirucalli, whatever faults it may have as a poisonous, somewhat shapeless monster that wants to blind people and burn their skin off, is remarkably easy to grow, even under terrible indoor conditions, and mine has certainly proven its mettle. (I'll have had it ten years in October, which sort of doesn't seem like it could possibly be real. And yet.) And however much it might want to wound and disfigure, if you just leave it alone, that's not going to be a problem.

Hatiora salicornioides is another long acquaintance of mine, with whom I've had mostly positive experiences, and it's even safe to have around. Rhipsalis teres is pretty much exactly the same way, though I haven't known it as long.

It's also hard to find much fault with Sansevieria cylindrica, unless you like plants that will grow from time to time. (S. cylindrica does grow, just very slowly, has been my experience. This partly reflects the care it's received, though.)

The anti-recommend is Codiaeum variegatum 'Picasso's Paintbrush.' I may not have grown it specifically, but I've grown crotons before, and don't consider them worth the spider mites they bring with them.

Not pictured (It's impossible to make a comprehensive list, because there's no way to quantify "resemble," "piles," or "of sticks," but here are some others I considered.):

• Agave victoriae-reginae. Pretty much any Agave variety with non-floppy leaves, really.
• Aloe 'Grassy Lassie' in particular, but also a fair number of other Aloes.
• Araucaria bidwillii
• Bowiea volubilis (reader suggestion)
  
• Brassavola spp. (reader suggestion)
• Ceropegia stapeliiformis (reader suggestion)
  
• Chiloschista lunifera and C. parishii (reader suggestion)
• Crassula muscosa, a little bit.
• Cynanchum marnierianum (reader suggestion)
  
• Dracaena marginata, at last in silhouette.
• Euphorbia lactea, particularly large specimens.
• Euphorbia milii cvv., particularly older plants that have lost their lower leaves.
• Euphorbia platyclada (reader suggestion)
  
• Hoya linearis (reader suggestion)
  
• Hoya retusa (reader suggestion)
• Hylocereus sp.
• Leuchtenbergia principis, in the same way as Agaves.
• Pedilanthus tithymaloides, especially older plants that have lost a lot of lower leaves.
• Rhipsalis spp. are basically made for this list, or maybe vice-versa; some of the more commonly-available ones are R. baccifera and R. ewaldiana.
• Rhytidocaulon ciliatum (reader suggestion)
• Sansevieria hargesiana, and several other Sansevierias.
• Stapelia gigantea, slightly.

Newish Plants

I haven't been buying many plants lately; the numbers have been climbing, but mostly that's due to propagation, with a smaller number from declaring older cuttings or seedlings officially plants. But there have been a few purchases, and a lot of walkaways (which may be covered in a post or two later). It's not like I've stopped looking.

Aloe nobilis.
The Aloe nobilis was previously mentioned as a walkaway. I went back for it later.

Sedum burrito.
I got the Sedum mostly because I felt guilty. I asked someone who worked at the store if they sold flats ever, because I was out of flats for 4-inch pots at home (I don't know how that happened either; all the new stuff is in 3-inch pots), and she just went and got me six and gave them to me, no charge. So then I felt like I had to buy something, but they didn't have very much. (They'd started a bunch of new things, but a lot of them weren't established yet.) I don't actually like Sedum burrito, or at least I don't think I do, but I like S. morganianum a lot, so we'll have a burrito. Worst that can happen is that it fails to appeal more with time.

Rhipsalis rhombea? R. micrantha?
The most recent of the three is this weirdo. It didn't have a tag, but the Exotic Angel website says it's Rhipsalis micrantha. I found pictures at cactiguide.com and davesgarden.com that make me think it's probably not micrantha, but I don't know how to determine what it is. I don't know how anybody tells any Rhipsalis species apart, honestly: they don't all look the same, but they all sort of blur into one another.

In any case, though, it's very shiny and green, and I'm excited about it. Apparently, I'm into the epiphytic cacti without intending to be. (At the moment, I count 48 individual plants here, of the genera Epiphyllum, Hatiora, Hylocereus, Pseudorhipsalis, Rhipsalis, Schlumbergera, and Selenicereus. They're sneaky that way.) Epiphytes are the new black, or something.