Unfinished business: Clivia seedlings

The picture is six months out of date, and I've up-potted these since it was taken. The basic information -- that the self-pollinated Clivia 'Aztec Gold' seedlings are still alive -- remains true, though.

The seeds were sown in August 2013, and there was an update on them in April 2014.

My other Clivias -- the parent 'Aztec Gold' and a plain-orange offset from WCW in October 2007 -- are still around. The latter is fighting a scale infestation at the moment, which is upsetting,¹ but 'Aztec Gold' has continued to offset well since it started in January 2014, and the offsets are now large enough to consider potting up separately. Though I'm probably not going to, because it turns out that I like the fuller look one gets with multiple plants in the same pot.

The seedlings will probably not bloom light yellow like their parent did; I assume it's a hybrid. Not really concerned with it either way: I've had Clivias since 2007, and have only seen one bloom in that time. I mean, I'd eventually like to know what the blooms look like, but I'm not necessarily expecting to find out.


P. S.: In the course of trying to locate patent information for Clivia 'Aztec Gold,' I ran across a blog that consisted solely of two blog posts of mine, which had been copied almost completely -- photos, title, captions, and text -- though for some reason not the tags. The internet is infuriating, and full of terrible people.

I've submitted a takedown request to Google,² and I imagine it will be granted, but so much stuff of mine has been duplicated in one place or another (as I discover when I search for information about one of my plants) that it would take me a lifetime just to fill out the requests for getting it all taken down. This is not a good system for preventing content theft, and I am angry.

I'll let you know what happens. (It has probably already happened, by the time you read this: I'm writing on 20 August.)

UPDATE (22 Aug.): Google had taken the posts down by August 22nd. The blog still exists, which is mildly irritating to me, but at least it no longer has any posts.

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¹ This is the first time I've had a pest problem with Clivia, I think. I knew they could get scale and mealybugs, but since it hadn't happened before, I sort of thought that maybe my personal pet scale wasn't compatible with Clivias. So it's been disappointing to learn otherwise.
I removed a couple leaves and dosed it with imidacloprid. Ordinarily, throwing it out would have made more sense, but it's not like Clivias are widely available around here, and besides, this particular one has some sentimental value. So we'll see how far the imidacloprid gets me.
² Which is one reason why I'm not linking to the posts in question -- the links would soon be dead, assuming Google does the right thing and deletes the blog. And I have every reason to think they will. The other reason is that if Google doesn't delete the blog, then I'm loath to give the thief any credibility with search engines by linking to them.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum bellatulum

I really like this flower, but I'm not going to talk about it because there's something else on my mind.

About a week ago, I received this comment on the "Comment Policy" page:¹

Please do not post pictures of my plants unless you ask my permission...owner, Phrag. Sergeant Eric 'Timberlane' AM/AOS CCM/AOS

Which refers to this post from 2012.² This confused me on multiple levels, since the plant's owner was not being disparaged in any way (indeed, the photo contained no text which could have identified him³ as the owner), and since I felt like the term orchid show sort of implies that people might, you know, look at the orchids.⁴ Photography is not discouraged at the show, and it could hardly be a surprise to the orchid's owner that people photographed his plant, since at least a third of the people at the show, every year, are walking around with cameras and sort of obviously taking pictures of things. The way the comment was phrased, it seemed like the objectionable part was the posting of the photo, but the photo -- that specific arrangement of pixels -- belongs to me, legally, and I can do whatever I like with it, regardless of who the subject belongs to, so if that's the problem then somebody's just going to have to deal.⁵

I spent a few days being kind of riled up about this, and then I remembered something. Rarely, I get comments on the orchid picture posts complimenting me on my beautiful orchids or whatever, in the sort of way that implies that the people leaving the comments believe -- in spite of comments to the contrary and tags like "Wallace's Orchid Show 2014" -- that the orchids in the photos belong to me. So perhaps the person leaving the comment believes that I'm misrepresenting the orchid in the photo as being my own plant, rather than his. I don't think that would technically be illegal to do, but obviously it'd be kinda douchey of me if I were.⁶

So. For the record.⁷

• Displaying pretty things in public, at a show, where photography is not only not prohibited but actively encouraged, is likely to result in people taking photos of the pretty things. If this is a problem for you, you should probably stop entering your orchids in shows which are open to the public.
• Photographs legally belong to the photographer who takes them unless / until the rights to the photo are sold or the photos specifically placed in the public domain. I don't have to ask anybody's permission to post my own photos on my own blog, no matter what the photos are of.
• All the PATSP posts tagged with "Wallace's Orchid Show [year]," where "[year]" = 2010 or any year after 2010, do not depict my own plants and were never intended to imply that they did depict my own plants.

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Photo credits: mine, mine, all mine (though the plant is not mine)

¹ Which I published and then accidentally deleted, so you won't see it if you go there. For future reference: there is a "Delete forever? (Cannot be undone)" checkbox on the comment-deletion screen, but whether you check the box or not, there is no way to recover deleted comments. The only difference checking the box makes is that if you check the box, it will be as if the comment never existed in the first place, and if you don't check the box, the comment will be replaced by a line saying "This comment has been removed by a blog administrator."
So if you publish a comment and then have second thoughts about it, your options are between having it publicly readable forever, or having it publicly unreadable forever -- there's no option to take it down temporarily but preserve the option of restoring it later, even if "cannot be undone" implies that there is a way to undo the deletion.
² And this photo, specifically:


³ Pretty sure it's a him, based on blog statistics from the same time, the members of the Illowa Orchid Society named at its home page, and Google. And the sense of entitlement the comment projects.
⁴ I mean, it's not the 2011 Illowa Orchid Society Describe, now, is it?
⁵ In the U.S., at least, people can apparently take a photo of you whenever you're in public and reproduce it however they like, with certain exceptions made for context. Like, you can't use a random photo of some guy to illustrate a newspaper article about alcoholism without getting the model's permission, lest it appear that you're saying they're an alcoholic. But otherwise, there's a general assumption that being in public means you've implicitly given permission to have your picture taken. And that's for people. (Ref.) I imagine there's probably even less of an expectation of privacy when you're a plant. And less still when you're a plant that has been entered in a public orchid show.
⁶ (It's maybe worth pointing out that the original comment doesn't say that. This is just my guess as to what's bothering the guy. A literal reading of the comment implies that he believes that he owns any photos taken of his orchids, and that he should be consulted before anything's done with said photos.)
⁷ As far as I can tell, the guy who left the comment hasn't come back to the blog and will probably never see this defense of mine anyway. I suppose if the situation comes up again, I at least have the defense all written out and linkable now.

Oh HELL no.

From the Hy-Vee (grocery store) in Iowa City:

This was basically my reaction:

[short break while I collect myself]

Perhaps I'm taking this all a little personally. You know I have feelings about Anthuriums. But even trying to look at this objectively, this is not a good idea.

Some people, I'm sure, will be able to grow Anthuriums this way. For months, even. Maybe years. This is because although outdoor climates are sort of generalizable (in terms of, for example, the USDA garden zone map: a plant that will grow in Illinois zone 5a will probably also grow in Iowa zone 5a), indoor climates are not. Everybody keeps their homes at different temperatures. Some homes are pretty air-tight, some homes are drafty. Some people are extremely conscientious about watering, other people forget about their plants for weeks at a time. Some people have thick hedges just outside their windows, other people's windows are unobstructed. Etc. So it's true that there will be somebody who buys a Just Add Ice Anthurium and sees it live, accidentally.

But for most people, in most homes, that tag is not giving good advice.

Let's leave aside that the instructions are self-contradictory. (Don't let the plant get below 55F / 13C, but water it with 32F / 0C water? How does that work?) My personal Anthuriums -- and there are, as regular readers know, many personal Anthuriums here, some of which are pictured below -- don't rebloom without pretty strong light. The ones upstairs get partial sun from an east window; the ones downstairs are situated just below fluorescent lights. So I'm not liking the instructions to keep the JAI Anthuriums out of direct sun. A big, unobstructed south-facing window might be too much, sure. But it's not true that they can't handle any sun.

I also can't get mine to bloom without some pretty heavy fertilizing, and I notice that the instructions from JAI don't mention fertilizer at all. Which is . . . alarming.

Anthurium seedling no. 282 ("Dave Trading")
Back in the days when we were getting all riled up about dye-injected plants, and how misleading it was for companies to sell them without acknowledging somewhere on the tags that they wouldn't rebloom in the same color, one of the excuses provided by company spokespersons was that most of their customers throw the plants out after the blooms are done anyway. Therefore, there was no need to address what was going to happen when they rebloomed, because no customers ever bothered to try. With Phalaenopsis, I could sort of maybe almost see that being a valid argument, even.¹ And there are probably people who would throw out an Anthurium after it's finished blooming, too, I suppose. (Savage, uncivilized, heathen-type people.) But it's a bit different with Anthuriums, in that they're capable of producing blooms continuously, for a very long time.² There's really no excuse for giving people Anthurium-growing directions that will discourage repeat blooming.

One of the excuses from JAI is likely to be that their ice-cube watering suggestion takes some of the guesswork out of watering, saves time, will keep people from overwatering, and is more convenient than trying to judge how much water is coming out of a watering can. And that's true enough, as far as it goes, though I think the harm caused to a plant by repeated cold shocks negates whatever benefit you get from providing the correct amount of water.

As far as the convenience part goes, well look: if you have the time to refill the ice cube tray from the tap, and you have time to stop and crack the tray and bring an ice cube over to the plant, then you have enough time to skip the middleman and bring the plant to the tap. There are many tricky things about watering houseplants, but figuring out how to transport the water from the tap to the plant is a solved problem.³ The instructions JAI provides also make no allowances for the fact that plants use different amounts of water at different times. It may be that in your home, six ice cubes a week is just dandy in October, way too much in February, and not nearly enough in May.

I suppose ice cubes also protect a person from having to stick their fingers into potting soil, which is a problem for some people. More on that in a bit.

Anthurium seedling no. 245 ("Sawyer Ad")
So if you have a Just Add Ice anthurium, here's what you do.

1. While chanting "No ice on tropical plants, no ice on tropical plants" aloud, take the tag off. Rip it up. Burn the pieces. Take the ashes outside and cast them to the four winds.

2. Pick up the plant. Does its container have drainage holes in the bottom for water to run out? If yes, set the plant down on a saucer. If no, transplant the plant into a pot the same size, that does have drainage holes, and then set it on a saucer.

3. Just Add Ice is basically correct about air temperature. Locate a spot that a) is large enough for the plant to sit in, b) gets bright light for most of the day -- brief morning or afternoon sun is okay -- c) is away from cold drafts and doesn't leave the plant touching cold windows, and d) isn't directly in the path of a heater or air conditioner. Then put the saucer and plant there. If you do not have such a spot, do the best you can, I guess, and don't get your hopes up.

4. A couple times a week, use your fingers and touch the soil. Does it feel moist, damp, spongy, or cold? Then it is wet, and you don't need to water it. Does it feel dry and crunchy? Even when you stick your fingers an inch or two deep? Then it is dry, and you should water it. You should be checking the soil on some kind of regular schedule, but don't water on a schedule. Water according to when the soil is dry.
I know it's icky and traumatizing to have to touch potting soil, but there really is no substitute for doing so when you're trying to determine how often to water.⁴ Maybe wash your hands / take a Xanax / see a therapist / call your sister afterward, if it's going to be that big of a problem for you. Or just don't try to grow live plants.

5. When you water, use water which is neither extremely cold nor extremely hot.⁵ Don't tease it with just a little water; run a lot of water through. You want the water to reach the whole rootball. Let the plant drain in a sink or bathtub or whatever for about ten minutes (longer than that is fine), then move the plant back to its saucer. Never make an Anthurium stand in its drainage water.
I wind up watering my Anthuriums every two weeks, on average. You may have to water yours more often or less often, depending on your home's conditions.
You're not watering often enough if: the plant wilts, developing leaves crack or have holes, or leaf edges develop dead patches.⁶
You're watering too much if: the lowest leaves are continually turning bright yellow and then falling off,⁷ or if you're seeing lots of fungus gnats around the plant. This doesn't mean you should stop watering entirely, just that you need to recalibrate your finger to let the plant get a little drier between waterings.

6. Buy a general-purpose houseplant fertilizer containing micronutrients,⁸ and use it according to the label directions. Doesn't matter if it's powder you have to mix up yourself, or sticks you push into the soil, a pre-mixed liquid, organic, whatever. Just do what the directions tell you to do and you'll be fine.⁹

7. It's usually best not to move Anthuriums to containers larger than 6 inches (15 cm) in diameter. Their root systems do require some air, and too much wet soil sitting around the roots cuts off this air and causes the roots to die and rot. If you feel you must use a large pot, at least try to go with one made of a porous material (like clay), and mix some unchopped sphagnum moss in with your regular potting soil. Larger pots will hold water in the center of the rootball a lot longer than smaller pots will, so you should wind up watering a lot less often.

8. Vow to yourself that you will never buy another "just add ice" anything, and that if you ever see another person considering purchasing one, you will (politely!) advise them not to.

That all probably looks pretty complicated (eight steps!), but it's really not that bad. Two of the steps are semi-jokes (1, 8), one will almost never apply (7), and two are decisions you'll only need to make once (2, 3). Anthuriums can be forgiving plants, and can be very rewarding if treated decently. Save your money for a business that respects you enough to give you good care instructions, though.

Anthurium seedling no. 271 ("Wanda Reulthemal")
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Photo credits:
Actual Anthuriums, Just Add Ice tag -- me
"Do not want" macros -- the first page of the Google results for "do not want;" I'm hoping that the original photographers and macro creators are collectively okay with me reusing them like this.

¹ Though it doesn't let them off the hook for not mentioning the color change. If all your customers throw them out and don't care about reblooming, then you won't lose any sales for informing them about the rebloom color, right? And if you know that some of your customers do care about reblooming, then not mentioning the rebloom color or the dye-injection is basically lying to those customers, right? So doesn't it follow that the only reason you'd ever not mention it is because you're hoping to deceive people?
To their (miniscule) credit, the dye-injected phal people did eventually acknowledge this, after an absurd amount of foot-dragging and excuse-making.
² My personal record is two years, with a NOID pink variety, though this isn't something I keep track of ordinarily; it's quite possible that a different plant has since broken that record.
My 'Florida' Anthurium still has the two flowers I blogged about on 1 August 2013, though they've changed colors (from orange to red), and is in the process of producing a new bud as of last week. Two years isn't that impressive if a single flower can last seven months. The smaller-blooming cultivars have shorter-lived blooms, but are quicker to replace them, also, so it all kinda works out.
Phalaenopsis fans will be annoyed that I haven't mentioned yet that Phalaenopsis can also bloom for a long time, with new buds forming on the flower spikes as old flowers drop off. So I'm mentioning it. I do think it's a different thing, though, because once a Phalaenopsis is done, it's really done for a while, and even the best of care is not going to produce another bloom spike for a few months. Both Anthurium and Phalaenopsis have long-lasting flowers, but only Anthurium is really capable of blooming continuously. As long as I'm on a Phalaenopsis tangent, I might as well mention that phals can handle lower temperatures than Anthuriums too, and consequently might be less damaged by being watered with ice. Though I still wouldn't recommend it.
³ Another of the excuses is likely to be Why are you being such a snob about this??!? How do you know it doesn't work if you haven't tried it??!? My answer: pretty much the same way that I know not to water plants with boiling water, liquid nitrogen, Cherry Pepsi, or bleach. A plant might be resilient or lucky enough to survive those treatments, but that doesn't make them good ideas. Wild Anthuriums don't get their water from ice, so domesticated Anthuriums probably shouldn't either.
⁴ (You do not want to get me started on moisture meters.)
⁵ If it's too cold to hold a finger in comfortably for 30 seconds, don't use it on the plant. If it feels any hotter than lukewarm, don't use it on the plant. (I have accidentally watered my plants with hot water before. It takes a long time for adjustments to the water temperature at my watering station to result in adjustments to the water that's actually coming out, and sometimes I overcorrect. A few seconds of hot or cold water doesn't seem to do anything bad to them one way or the other, as long as I run a lot of water of the correct temperature through as soon as I notice.)
⁶ Mechanical damage -- like if something falls on the plant, or there are insects feeding on it, or if it's in a location where it gets bumped a lot by people or animals passing by -- can also cause new leaves to develop rips, holes, or distorted areas. Developing foliage is very sensitive and easy to damage, so if you see this sort of thing, rule out mechanical damage before deciding that your problem is underwatering.
⁷ Some dropping of the lowest leaves is normal, and will happen occasionally even if you're doing everything perfectly. Don't freak out over one or two yellow leaves. It's when you find yourself picking off yellow leaves constantly that you should start to wonder if maybe you're doing something wrong.
⁸ It's not a guarantee, but generally speaking, if the label says that it contains copper, then it's probably got the other micronutrients as well.
Ideally, you're going to buy from an independent local garden center, which has knowledgeable employees who can guide you to the fertilizer you need. (Big box store employees may also be knowledgeable, of course. It's just not as big of a part of their job to know stuff, so taking advice from them is more of a gamble.)
It is cheating to go to the independent store to ask for advice and then going to the big box store to buy the actual product. When I worked at the garden center, this was one of maybe three things that customers could do that got me really angry with them. Don't be one of those people.
⁹ With most houseplants, it's better to use less fertilizer than the package directions indicate, but more often. So if the directions tell you to add 1 tsp. to a gallon of water and feed once every three months, your plants are probably better off if you mix 1/4 tsp. in a gallon of water and use that at every watering. There are exceptions to this general rule, though, and Anthuriums are one of them.
If you are watering thoroughly and giving the soil a good flushing-out when you water, you can give Anthuriums a lot more fertilizer than package directions state. My Anthuriums get fertilizer that's about double strength, and they get it with every watering, but I also run a lot of plain water through before I pour the fertilizer in, so the old fertilizer doesn't build up in the soil, and the new fertilizer is somewhat diluted by the plain water that went in before it.
For your purposes, though, just do what the label tells you to do at first, and you can start experimenting with more fertilizer once you feel like you've gotten the hang of watering, temperature, light, etc.

Six Plants I'm Currently Mad At

This turns out to be a pretty competitive field (wait'll you see the Dishonorable Mentions), but I've narrowed it down to six. By "I'm Currently Mad At," I mean "the idea of throwing the plant away entirely and never attempting it again has crossed my mind," though that's only a serious possibility with three of the six plants on the list.

1. Phalaenopsis NOID
I am so tired of orchids and all their fucking orchid bullshit. I'm not even exaggerating for comic effect. I know I've said this before, but this time I'm telling you -- I'm telling you -- orchids and I are never ever getting back together.¹ Remember how cautiously excited I was two months ago?

Yes, well. I really should have known better. Here it is now:

And here's the end of the spike:

Yep. Just fell right off, the whole top of the spike, including all the flower buds. I have no idea what happened to it -- it's conceivable that the top of the spike got caught in the shelves when I took the plant off to water or something, but I feel like I would have remembered that. It can't really have been chewed off by an animal -- Sheba would have said something. So I'm thinking it just dropped the top of the flower spike as a way of giving me the finger, because it's an orchid, and orchids are fucking assholes.

The Phalaenopsis is being permitted to stay, for the time being, but the very first excuse I have to throw it out, it's going out. (Even if it calls me up and it's like, "I still love you.")


2. Furcraea foetida 'Medio-Picta'
If my fury at the Phalaenopsis is white-hot,² then with Furcraea I'm only a dull red. The plant's done well outside this year, and has grown some really nice, broad leaves, enough that I'm thinking the current pot is probably way too small for it. And for most of the summer, this was making me happy.

But I found a scale insect on it a week or two ago. So far, it's just been the one, and I did give the plant a pretty thorough inspection so that might be the extent of it, but what are the odds that it's really only one scale insect? Is it ever just one?

Et tu, Furcraea?


3. Polyscias balfouriana (variegated)
The Phalaenopsis is being spiteful, the Furcraea is disloyal, and the Polyscias balfouriana is catatonic. It's never been one of my best plants or anything, but when I got it, in July 2010, it looked like this:

And now, after growing for three years, one of the plants in the original pot has died,³ and the other looks like this:

Weak stem (it periodically leans over enough to throw itself off the shelf it lives on), not much foliage (that's actually the most it's had in a very long time, in that picture), regular spider mite infestations, which it passes to other plants -- P. balfouriana is another one that's probably going in the trash as soon as I have any kind of excuse. Considering its history, I should maybe not wait for an excuse.


4. Synadenium grantii
It was bad enough that Synadenium grantii caught the fungus that's been infecting all the Euphorbias.⁴ I moved it outside, in the hope that this would help it shake the fungus, and that actually seems to have worked.⁵ The problem is that it's not happy with being outside, either. Although when I did the research for the Synadenium profile, I found information telling me that they could survive temperatures down to about 20F / -7C, leaf damage apparently begins somewhere in the high 50s F, or about 14C, and takes the form of broad tan patches on exposed leaves:

I suppose this is my own fault, for not figuring out sooner that I was seeing cold damage. (I'd thought it was sunburn.) The plant could maybe have explained itself better, though.


5. Eucharis grandiflora
So I have three pots of Eucharis now. The one that's stayed in the house is doing fine. Not blooming or anything, but it's doing fine. The two that are getting to summer outdoors, on the other hand, started looking really ratty almost as soon as they went out. Well, I thought, that's to be expected -- probably it's a combination of sunburn and getting thrashed around by the wind. The replacement leaves will be better. But the replacement leaves were not better. And then, one day, I lifted up one of the pots for some reason and there was this fat, gray-green caterpillar underneath it. I picked it up and flung it into the yard, hoping the birds would deal with it. Then a few days later, I was watering, and I saw a similar-looking caterpillar, curled up, floating in the water inside the pot. So I picked it up and threw it out onto the driveway (figuring that the birds would be quicker to spot it on concrete than they would on grass). I haven't seen any caterpillars since then, but it almost doesn't matter: the replacement leaves are coming in slowly, and the older leaves are trashed almost beyond recognition. So the Eucharis won't be going outside next year either, even if they beg and plead and claim that that's the only way they'll ever flower.

The plants that got to go outside have, as a group, been very resistant to bugs -- the only other cases of visible insect damage outside have happened on two Agaves, and I think are also caterpillar-related. But the Eucharis have taken a real beating. Makes me unhappy.

The only positive note is that I have finally achieved houseplant pest bingo. (That'll teach me not to hope publicly for caterpillar infestations, even in jest.)


6. Epipremnum aureum 'Neon' and 'Marble Queen'
Lastly: I can grow Epipremnum aureum varieties just fine, beautifully even, so long as I avoid anything that they might interpret as transplanting.

Which is to say, I've had no problems water-rooting cuttings. But when I put the rooted cuttings into soil, I lose about two-thirds of them. Every single time, no exceptions. Soil-rooting cuttings is a little better, but even then, I lose about half. And repotting is a disaster every single time, no exceptions. (You'd think I would learn.)

'Neon' and 'Marble Queen' made the list because I've tried to root cuttings of 'Marble Queen,' and I've tried to repot 'Neon,' and both have been calamitous. Here's what 'Neon' looked like before the repotting:

And after repotting, removal of obviously dead vines, and cutting a few back in hopes that they'd resprout:

What did I do wrong? I have no idea. It certainly seemed like repotting was warranted: the plant was always wilted when its turn for water came around, sometimes badly, and it was dropping leaves as a result. Giving it more soil, to keep it wetter longer, seemed the logical solution. But instead, the plant punishes me by committing suicide. What a dick.

I don't have a photo for the 'Marble Queen' cuttings, but you'll have to just trust me that they look even worse. Everybody else in the entire world can do anything they like to this plant and it's fine, but -- I don't think it's for me.

So . . . yeah.

I'll have a post later, about plants that aren't making me angry, but I feel it's important for houseplant "experts"⁶ to acknowledge that there is no level of horticultural skill that will completely prevent plants from being douchebags.


Dishonorable mentions:

• Aloe variegata: overwatered, root rot. Still around. Unlikely to try again.
• Anthurium crystallinum 'Mehani:' never did very well here, probably due to dryer and cooler air than it would have liked. Was doing even less well this year, which I suspect might have been related to soil breakdown. Discarded. Almost certainly will never try again.
• Araucaria heterophylla (or maybe A. columnaris): root rot and massive branch drop because I overpotted last winter. Discarded. (This one was really painful: I'd had the plant for five and a half years.) I'll probably try it again.
• Begonia 'Puffy Clouds:' too much direct sun and/or too hot? Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Columnea microphylla: sudden decline for no discernable reason. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Cyanotis kewensis: stem dieback, possibly due to underwatering. Still around.
• Episcia 'Pink Smoke:' Never did well. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Episcia "prayer plant:" too wet, too dry, or possibly both at once. Still around. Will probably restart from cuttings.
• Episcia 'Suomi:' slow steady decline that turned into a fast and ever-accelerating decline; reason unknown. (I'm getting pretty fed up with Episcias.) Still around, but only barely. Will probably allow to remain until it dies and then not try it again.
• Euphorbia milii hybrid with large yellow flowers: I cannot make the fungus go away on the small specimen (indoors); the large specimen got blown over repeatedly so the leaves are all creased/torn/punctured/scarred. Still around.
• Euphorbia pseudocactus: one tall stem turned brown and rotted away for no obvious reason very early in the summer. A second big tall new branch started growing after that. It managed to hold itself erect for about a week, then flopped over, and has been growing more or less horizontally ever since. The rest of the plant isn't doing anything and never really has. Still around.
• Euphorbia tirucalli 'Firesticks:' tried to blind me that one time. Still around.
• Euphorbia trigona: I cannot get rid of the fungus on the cuttings in the basement, though the parents, outdoors, are doing okay. Still around.
• Euphorbia trigona 'Red:' I cannot get rid of the fungus, but also the parent plants won't branch and sometimes get root rot. Still around.
• Ficus 'Green Island:' sort of continuously dropping leaves, whether in or outside. Refuses to grow vertically. Still around.
• Gasteraloe 'Green Gold:' definite severe root rot, due to overwatering. Still around, but unlikely to make it back into the house this fall. Unlikely to try again.
• Gasteraloe 'Midnight:' has never liked me very much. Probably some root rot. Almost certainly will never try again.
• Homalomena 'Emerald Gem:' both under- and overwatered, leading to substantial defoliation. And then the bugs (spider mite-like, but I was never sure if they really were spider mites) showed up. Discarded. I'm not desperate to replace it, but I might at some point, if I see one cheap.
• Kohleria 'Queen Victoria:' (chronically?) miswatered. Discarded. Pretty much certain never to try again.
• Neoregelia 'Fireball:' never rebounded from a repotting several years ago; I don't know what its problem was. Discarded. Unlikely to try again.
• Pereskia aculeata var. godseffiana: scale. Discarded. I still have a back-up plant.
• Philodendron erubescens 'Red Emerald:' small, weak growth for about a year, year and a half now. Lots of leaf drop. Still around.
• Schefflera actinophylla: has not performed well outdoors. A tremendous amount of leaf drop, poor color, gets blown over a lot by the wind. Still around. I'll keep growing it, probably, but it's not going outside again next summer.
• Selenicereus anthonyanus: does not appear to understand how to grow the long, weird stems that are the main reason to grow it. I don't know why it won't and S. chrysocardium will. Still around.
• Vriesea splendens: flowered, then started to produce a replacement rosette, but the replacement rosette is really struggling for no obvious reason. Still around, but I suspect its days are numbered. The smaller duplicate plant rotted out and died last March.
• Zamioculcas zamiifolia: another one like Epipremnum aureum, that does beautifully until I try to pot it up, at which point it begins falling apart. A less water-retentive potting mix might help, but I'm more inclined to just let it die and never attempt to grow it again: I don't especially like the look of it in the first place. (The leaflet cuttings of 'Zamicro' are doing fine, but I haven't tried to repot them, either. Maybe I never will.)

-

¹ Unless it's one of the blue-dyed Phalaenopsis, because I have a theory about the identity of the blue dye that I'd like to test. So I might buy one of those, but only so that I could grind up the flowers in a mortar and pestle and perform science experiments on them. Which would actually probably be kind of cathartic.
Also: sorry for the earworm. I couldn't resist.
² Probably more blue-hot, I think. (I feel like most of the energy being given off by my fury is being emitted in the ultraviolet / soft x-ray range.)
³ (I cut it back because it was hitting the lights and scorching, but it didn't resprout. I kept hoping, because the stem was staying firm, even if it wasn't producing a new growing tip, but eventually it went soft and I pulled it out of the pot.)
⁴ Synadenium grantii is officially Euphorbia umbellata, according to Plant List. The name I learned before that was Euphorbia pseudograntii. I'm sticking with the name I learned originally, partly because the taxonomists don't seem to have made up their collective mind yet, and partly because if I do decide to change it, there's a whole lot of blog posts that'll need to be edited too, and I would prefer not to do that.
⁵ It worked better on some species than others. E. lactea and E. tirucalli cleared up pretty quickly but weren't that bad off in the first place; Euphorbia milii and Synadenium grantii had pretty serious problems but improved after a few weeks. E. trigona took most of the summer to get there, but is good at the moment, as far as I can see. Pedilanthus 'Jurassic Park 2' may never shake the fungus.
⁶ (a designation I'm not happy seeing applied to myself, by the way)

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Nina's in there somewhere.

I tried to get a Nina picture this week, but she wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get the camera ready, so the above is all we get. She really is in there somewhere, though.

Meanwhile, I did hear back from Merrifield Garden Center, regarding this post, but it was short: they understand my concern but "don't know anything about this." They did give me the number of their IT person to call, which I might do on Monday, but if I do: is there really anything useful I can tell him? I mean, in theory Merrifield should be able to stop the site from using their name and logo through legal means, but I don't know how that would work, since the site's registered to someone in the Netherlands. Surely there must be a government agency that deals with this sort of thing, right? And that's not really something the IT department would be dealing with anyway. So . . . any suggestions?

Adventures in Spam

I don't normally publish spam comments, but the laziness and ineptness of this one tickled me.

Merrifield garden center¹ said...
Congrats! You have a beautiful blog and I enjoy reading your posts. Your kitty picture is adorable.

This is one of the adorable kitty pictures they were talking about:

So, not having anything better to do this morning,² I tracked down the Merrifield Garden Center on-line and sent them this:

I was wondering if anyone could explain to me why my blog is being spammed on your behalf. It's coming from this site:

http://www.gardencenterguide.us/merrifield-garden-center

and I wouldn't mind so much except that it's pathetic, lazy spamming. I mean, on Saturday, "Merrifield garden center" left a comment telling me that "Your kitty picture is adorable," when it was 1) more than one picture, 2) of balding spots, 3) on a dog.

So if this is something you're paying people for, you should get your money back. Nobody likes to be used (I'm not getting anything in return for inadvertently promoting your business) and disrespected (if you're going to hire someone to advertise on a third party's site, you might at least have them read the posts they're parasitizing). While it's true that I wasn't aware of your business before, and am now, I also have a thoroughly negative opinion of it, which surely can't have been your intention.

As far as I recall, this is the first such spam about MGC I've gotten, but the same gardencenterguide (and the UK version, gardencentreguide) has been leaving comments like this for a while now. So, if you think I'm overreacting, keep in mind that from my perspective, this has been going on for months: you're just the first place I could find contact information for.

Fair warning: your response, if any, is extremely likely to wind up posted to my blog.

I'll let you know if they reply.

-

¹ Link removed, because it wasn't even a link to the Merrifield Garden Center; it was a link to a "gardencenterguide" website, which has been spamming me for some time now, along with the UK version ("gardencentreguide"). And fuck those people.
² Totally not true; I have a completely ridiculous list of things to do today, and will almost certainly not get all of them done. It's been this way for months.

Today in Poorly-Aimed PR Pitching

When you think of PATSP -- and I know you do, all the time -- what sorts of topics do you think of? If you're like my new friends at outdoor marketing company Bernard & Associates, you think of game hunting. Yes, the blog header says that the blog is primarily about indoor plants and retail horticulture,¹ but "cultivating indoor plants" is so close to "killing outdoor animals" that B&A sent me an e-mail anyway.

Doe. (A deer.²)
Aside from the added footnotes and the removal of the client's name, this is the e-mail I received:

Kindest Editor:³

 
This is Jeff Thruston from the Nevada based outdoor marketing company Bernard & Associates and we love your outdoor site!⁴ We have been in the outdoor industry for some thirty years. You may have seen our work with clients like Bass Pro Shops and Sporting Classics Magazine.⁵

We want to reach out to you with a gift from the [redacted], made possible by our friends at [redacted] Club -for you or your website's readers. In addition, we have some important news that affects all of us within the hunting and fishing industry.⁶


We have identified your site as one we wish to partner with.⁷ We would like to invite you to participate in [redacted] Club's Blogger Appreciation Program and receive a complimentary Associate Membership to the [redacted] Club.

⁸

With this complimentary membership, you will receive Fair Chase Magazine⁹ on a quarterly basis along with other member benefits. Please reply with your address so we can mail you your magazine. (*See below for more info on Fair Chase & Associate Membership benefits)

The [redacted] Club is always looking for like-minded Sportsmen and Sportswomen¹⁰ interested in preserving our hunting heritage. We want to get your opinion on upcoming news that will affect us along with some other things we have planned in the near future.¹¹

Benefits of our partnership will include all of the following, beginning now and running through the upcoming months:

· Complimentary [redacted] Club Associate Membership (you are more than welcome to do a contest or giveaway on your site if you are already a member etc.)

· In depth looks at the key issues that affect us as Sportsmen interested in hunting/fishing/conservation and beyond.¹²
· Insider news and photos of big game trophies taken recently across North America as well as trophies entered and accepted into the [redacted] Records.

· Video, photo and editorial content for you to choose from for your site.

 

Please let us know which of the following you prefer:.¹³

1. Keep the membership for yourself (Please forward your mailing address)
2. Host a contest or giveaway on your site for the membership (then send us the winner’s address once you have selected him or her).¹⁴

In addition to selecting your gift (or giveaway for your site) we would love it if you would post this video to your site along with some info on the threat by outside lobbyists¹⁵ in an ATTEMPT TO BAN ALL LEAD IN HUNTING AND FISHING. (See attached .doc on the threats of this lead ban¹⁶)
 

Video direct link
[redacted]

Video embed code

[redacted; also the video was incredibly stupid -- almost no content, but lots of be-very-very-afraid-of-the-evil-environmentalists language]


 

If you have any other questions or comments please let me know. And if there's ever anything in mind in terms of a custom collaboration with your site please let me know and I will see what we can work out.

Looking forward to working with you,¹⁷



Jeff Thruston

Bernard & Associates



--
Find attached images for you to use along with the video above.
Also, we have an important article on the lead ban attached
--
About the [redacted] Club:

[redacted paragraph about the club's founding, history, accomplishments, blah blah blah]

About Fair Chase Magazine and your Associate Membership:

[redacted paragraph about Fair Chase Magazine which pretty much duplicates what was said in the main body of the e-mail about the benefits of subscribing]



 
--
[redacted and redundant bit of names, e-mail addresses, and websites]

The saddest part of this whole thing, I think, is that someone got paid to write it. Someone thought that this would be relevant to PATSP, and e-mailed it to me, and then they got a paycheck for doing so even though there was basically no way it was going to benefit their client whatsoever.

There are PR firms that bother to read the blogs they're soliciting, and learn names, and that sort of thing, and show some basic respect for the other people they're involving. It's not impossible to do, and it would get better results. (There are also PR firms that don't take rejection well. That's a less effective way to go. You should read the link, though, because The Bloggess is way funnier than I am.)

Stay tuned for the lead discussion. It'll be very.

-

Photo credits: Doe by Coolstock, at Wikipedia. Buck/hunter by Matthew.j.obrien at Wikipedia.

¹ I should actually probably re-write that sometime.
² (A female deer.)
³ Strike one. If you can't be bothered to type in my [fake, granted] name in your pitch, then you know how seriously I take you? I've basically already decided no, I don't want whatever you're selling, I don't want to promote your product, I don't care about you at all. Because that's the message you're sending me. It's one freaking line of text. Make the effort.
On the other hand, I am apparently also kinder than all the other editors of the world (the rest of y'all are apparently terrible assholes), and it's nice of Bernard & Assoc. to notice.
⁴ Strike Two. And it's only the first paragraph.
⁵ "Sporting Classics Magazine?" What differentiates "classic" sporting from regular sporting? I'm genuinely curious about this. And is hunting a sport? I mean, I don't have a huge problem with hunting, honestly -- no desire to participate, but whatever rotates your turtle -- and I recognize that there are both physical and competitive elements to it, but "sport?"
I suppose if NASCAR's a sport (and I'm told, repeatedly, that it is, just disguised as driving at high speed in large circles for way longer than any normal person would want to drive at high speed in large circles), anything can be. Maybe I should declare indoor gardening a sport. Lord knows it's way more physical than I'd like, and I suppose it's competitive in some circles: I've seen the posts about the African violet shows.
Mr. Subjunctive, Sportsman. It sounds nice.
⁶ Indeed they do. But just 'cause it's important doesn't mean they're not going to make you wait to hear it, and then only if you download and unzip a .zip file, which contains 40 files, about half of which appear to be references to, or misnamed duplicates of, the other half. It's a curious method for spreading important information.
⁷ For "partner with," read "exploit."
⁸ Not sure what purpose the extra spacing serves here, but it does lend the e-mail a bit of suspense and/or excitement. How many lines will separate the next paragraph?
⁹ I find this name amusing/perplexing. Surely it's only a fair chase if the animals are armed, too. I mean, you could call shooting high-speed, pointy projectiles at defenseless animals from a distance "fair" if you wanted to, but only if you'd consider some guy in camo shooting at a naked, unprotected you "fair" too.

Notice that only the person gets a gun. Fair chase my ass.
Again: I'm not necessarily opposed to hunting, I swear. Particularly when it comes to deer and rabbits. But I do have to call bullshit on the word "fair."
And "Fair Chase" actually just makes it sillier. A fair chase would be something like, the people track the animals for an hour, and then someone blows a whistle and the animals get to track the people for an hour, back and forth until somebody gets killed.
I will concede that hunting is more fair than some of the other methods people have devised for killing animals, because with hunting there's at least the chance that you'll lose track of the animals and they'll get away. Cows at the slaughterhouse aren't as lucky. On the other hand, hunting carries a greater risk of wounding an animal and then losing track of it, so that it dies slowly and in pain, or is permanently crippled, or whatever, which doesn't happen with the cows.
¹⁰ Capitalized for no reason because Sportsmen and Sportswomen are Important! (B & A do get points for explicitly including women, though I'll have to take these points back a few paragraphs later, when they mention Sportsmen without Sportswomen.)
¹¹ Nope, still not telling you about the important news which will affect you.
¹² And by "and beyond," I assume they mean hunting/fishing/conservation IN SPACE.
Don't know what else it could mean.
¹³ This may be my first sighting of the punctuation combo ":."
Actually, period usage is all over the place in this e-mail; one gets the impression that Bernard & Associates doesn't intend to put a lot of work into their blog outreach.
¹⁴ I apologize to any PATSP readers who might have been interested in this, and/or to my brother-in-law, who might be interested if he doesn't already have all those things; I assume they're not going to let me do it now that I've made fun of their pitch. (It's my position that they should write less mockable pitches, and pay attention to which blogs they're pitching. And also proofread: it's not just for sissies anymore.)
¹⁵ As opposed to "inside lobbyists," who are apparently A-OK. But hey, at least we've finally heard something about this VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION.
Also it's disingenuous to pretend like they don't have their own outside lobbyists working on this too. (Along with lobbyists for the lead mining companies, I'm going to assume.)
¹⁶ Because I do not want to reproduce this entire document on the blog, I'm going to summarize it, in my own inimitable fashion, as another post, later this week.
¹⁷ (as long as I don't have to read your blog, learn your name, or in any other way treat you with ordinary courtesy,)

The One About the Native Plants Purist, Part II

(This is Part II. If you haven't read Part I yet, you should do that before reading this. It has "Ghost Whisperer" jokes, carnivorous plants, and a hopeful but tragically misguided plan to solve the invasive species problem by making every species invasive.)

Ficus microcarpa. Native to: South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia, some Pacific islands. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

6. You can't go home again.
Finally, I very badly want to know which past ecosystem my anonymous commenter wants us to return to. They've never been static. I grew up in an Iowa that had ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus torquatus), as did my parents and grandparents, and everybody around here thinks they're native North American birds, but in fact they've only been here since the late 1800s. Should we round them up and send them back to Asia? Honeybees aren't native to North America either, and were only brought over from Europe in the 1600s. It'd be an agricultural disaster for the U.S. if we lost them all, but a true native-species purist would send them back. Hell, human beings -- even so-called "Native Americans" -- are new as of about 10,000 to 14,000 years ago. And on bigger time scales, the continents have been sliding around for millions of years. Where does one draw the line and say, this is the ecosystem we need to preserve?

And even if one picked a time to reset the clock to, and even if all the rats and pheasants and honeybees and Ardisias could be rounded up and disposed of, the fact is that the ecosystems are already irreparably transformed. The ecological niche of "passenger pigeon" (Ectopistes migratorius), whatever it was, can no longer be filled by passenger pigeons. We've wiped them out. So in that sense, you can't turn back time -- the ecosystems cannot be restored exactly as they were. Indeed, were all humans to vanish, and all plants, animals, and other organisms to magically return to their original habitats, it would only cause more extinctions: some native plants and animals actually depend on the actions of non-natives right now. Avocados (Persea americana) are thought to have evolved to be swallowed whole by now-extinct ground sloths, who would then distribute the pits in their droppings. No such animal exists now, so if humans disappeared, we would likely take the avocado down with us.

Of course, we're likely to take a lot more of them with us if we're not magically zapped off the planet, as recent events in the Gulf of Mexico suggest. But still. If we're going to "restore" the ecosystems, then we should acknowledge that there have been several of them in any given location, and decide which one to restore them to.

Murraya paniculata. Native to: South, Southeast, and East Asia, Northern Australia. A Florida Category 2 invasive plant.

7. So in conclusion (You are getting to a conclusion, right?)
So what does it all mean, Mr. Subjunctive?

Oh, fuck if I know. I guess my first point, and the most important, would be that showing up on a stranger's blog to yell at them about their choice of posting topics is really rude and it's not going to do anything but make them defensive and sarcastic. Especially if you're a testerical asshole who gets off on telling people where plants "should" be grown.

But also, look. Invasive species are a real problem, and I think governments should be taking them more seriously. If we're going to eradicate them, though, we should commit the resources to doing so that are necessary.¹ I'd also like to think that eradication is possible, but honestly, I'm not sure I do. In the same way that total elimination of spider mites from a large collection of houseplants is all but hopeless, complete elimination of Ardisia from the Everglades is all but unattainable too. All it takes is one missed pregnant female spider mite, and a distraction. All it takes is one overlooked Ardisia seedling, and complacency. Even with the full backing of local government, community organizations, national environmental groups, President Obama, Wonder Woman, all the angels in Heaven, and Mr. Anonymous shrieking threats at every blogger in creation, I don't see Florida getting rid of its Ardisia problem. I don't think they want it badly enough. (I don't know that they ought to want it that badly, either. There are other things the state could do with that money.) Unless Ardisias can be made valuable enough to be worth digging up, they're Floridians now.²

Which means that I think it's all the more important that people pay attention to the evaluations of organizations like HEAR. If it's impossible to get rid of the invasives we've got, we could try not to bring in any new ones. I'm not optimistic about that, either, because I well know the gardener's longing for novelty, and the logical impairment that goes along with it.³ But perhaps it's worth a try anyway.

In the long run, I'm not sure any of this matters. Mr. Anonymous berated me quite a bit for growing plants that "shouldn't" even be on this continent, but the fact is, "should" is a meaningless word in this context. Plants and animals have always moved around as sea levels rose and fell, as land bridges appeared, as volcanoes created new islands, as birds flew from place to place. I mean, it's not a good thing that so many plants and animals are disappearing: the Everglades are a distinct and interesting ecosystem, and it's a shame to have them changed at all, but that was all done well before I ever wrote a damn thing about Ardisia elliptica. In fact, the first introductions of Ardisia elliptica to Florida were in 1947, when I was in my negative mid-twenties. And, even if all the world's Ardisias were to pop out of existence all at once tomorrow, the Everglades has a dozen or more other invasives in it which are all just as bad or worse.

So perhaps we should be taking the long view. In another 250 million years or so, South America and/or Africa⁴ are going to crash into Florida and ruin the Everglades anyway. Even if Mr. Anonymous is standing there astride the little trickle of water between continents, commanding them not to merge, they still will. But hey, a bright spot: maybe Ardisia elliptica and all its descendant species will begin to die out in the process, and the sentient, plastic-and-oil-eating molluscs who rule the earth at that time will be beside themselves with worry about how to preserve the fragile, precious Ardisias. Stranger things have happened.

Syngonium podophyllum cv. Native to: Central America, Southern Mexico, Caribbean, Northern South America, Brazil. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

8. Questions for discussion.

1. Do you feel, in your heart of hearts, that efforts to eradicate invasive exotic species are worth the time, money, and collateral ecological damage they cause?
2. Particularly since there's a good chance that we'll wind up covering the ecosystem with oil before we get all the invasives out anyway?
3. Have you ever deliberately planted something you knew might escape cultivation and become invasive? If so, why?
4. Isn't Mr. Anonymous an enormous testerical jerky douchebag?
5. "Rape" as ecological metaphor: for it or agin' it?
6. What, specifically, is lost, when a native species is outcompeted and driven extinct by an exotic? Why should anybody care? Why do you think people don't care more? (Or, if you think people care too much: why do you think people care so much?)
7. What do you suppose is up with people being able to mass-produce plants in Florida that are known to wreck Florida ecosystems? Why is this permitted? And why don't they just go pick them up in the wild and throw them in pots to ship north?
8. Am I totally wrong? Is Mr. Anonymous right to criticize me for encouraging production of an ecologically dangerous plant? Does it still matter, sixty-three years after their introduction to Florida, if I tell people Ardisia elliptica makes a good houseplant? Why or why not?

Ardisia crenata. Native to: East and Southeast Asia. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

Additional reading:
The Garden Professors: Are Natives the Answer?

-

Photo credits: all my own.

¹ Though this obviously excludes the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), which is invasive and causing all kinds of problems in Florida and Hawaii, but should nevertheless be allowed to run free and unfettered as long as Felipe is still down in Florida somewhere.
² If I have a plan for getting rid of invasive plants, that's pretty much it. Find something they're good for, and then turn business loose to exploit and despoil. What Florida needs is a George Washington Carver of Ardisias.
³ It would be really interesting to stick a hardcore gardener (like most garden bloggers and PATSP readers, I'm guessing) in an MRI machine and show pictures of unfamiliar plants to him/r. What would happen in the logic center of the brain? Is there a part of the brain devoted to novel plants? What about a taxonomic center, that tries to figure out what the plant is most related to? Does activity shut down in the ethical department, as the gardener plots how to find and take the plants? Does the spatial-relationships area go wild as the gardener tries to figure out where s/he could fit the new plant into his/r garden? I think there are some interesting neurological questions to be answered here.
⁴ Predictions vary. On one map I found, it looked like South America crashes into North America; on a second, North America and South America kind of both slam into Africa at the same time. Either way, the Everglades are in the middle of it all, and presumably go through some changes.

The One About the Native Plants Purist, Part I

Ardisia elliptica. Native to: South Asia, Southeast Asia, Indonesia. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

1. PATSP is attacked!
On December 7, some anonymous person showed up on the Ardisia elliptica profile and dropped a big ol' douchebomb on me for owning one and writing a profile about it. I was called irresponsible, stupid, ridiculous, and silly, because of Ardisia's potential to become invasive and "rape" (his/r word¹) ecosystems. It's so rapey, in fact, that its sale is actually illegal in Florida. I actually spent quite a bit of time on the plant's invasive tendencies in the profile itself, which you'd think would let this person know that, minimally, what s/he² was telling me wasn't news, but you know how people get.

When I pointed out that I live in USDA Zone 5 Iowa, and Ardisia elliptica is not cold-hardy past Zone 9, and that furthermore the plant has been indoors for essentially its entire life, and was therefore not going to be raping anything, much less an entire ecosystem, his response was that it didn't matter, because his stumbling across my blog "proved" that I had South Florida readers,³ and what if one of them were moved to buy the plant because of my profile?

Which, you know, whatever. If its sale is in fact illegal in Florida, then South Florida readers won't be buying it anyway, so I don't quite get how this is a concern. But if you actually read the profile, it's not even especially glowing. I mean, yes, the plant makes a good, possibly even excellent, houseplant. It really does. I'm not going to apologize for saying so. But I think it's clear that I'm not advocating planting it in South Florida, or Hawaii, or anywhere else it might become invasive, and in fact am specifically telling people not to, at some length. So, you know, what the fuck, dude?

Tradescantia spathacea. Native to: Tropical and subtropical North and South America. A Florida Category 2 invasive plant.

2. North American plants.
The conversation went on from there, various rudenesses were fired from both sides, and if you want to see the blow-by-blow you can go to the Ardisia elliptica profile and read the comments for yourself. But the reason I bring it up in the first place, aside from the obvious pleasure it will bring me to see other people join me in calling him a jackass and douchebag,⁴ is because he did say one thing that surprised me a little: I don't understand why you can't just be happy with North American plants.

It hadn't really occurred to me that this was something especially desirable, because, again, it all stays indoors, all the time, and so it's totally irrelevant where any of the plants come from. But okay, fine, let's see.

And it turns out that there are very few North American plants suitable for indoor cultivation. The bulk of those which are tend to be cactus and succulent species from Northern Mexico and the U.S. Desert Southwest;⁵ to get anything at all lush and green, you either have to go south, to the rainforests of South Mexico,⁶ or north, to the U.S.⁷ And anyway, since when do native plant purists consider it good enough merely to get the right continent? Species from North America can and do become invasives when planted in other parts of North America; for example, Syngonium podophyllum is invasive in Florida, but native to Mexico and Central America. So to be really satisfactory, I'd have to limit myself to plants native to the Upper Mississippi Valley, or maybe even the state of Iowa specifically. And you know what? Iowa doesn't have a climate much like the modern American home, so the modern American home isn't a good place to grow plant species native to Iowa. Not saying it couldn't be done, but it wouldn't be very comfortable for the humans involved.

Which Anonymous might counter with, well why do you even need houseplants at all? Can't you just be happy growing stuff outside? Which is such an obviously stupid question that it shouldn't be dignified with a response, so I won't.⁸

Schefflera actinophylla. Native to: Australia, New Guinea. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

3. Invasiveness is predictable.
The thing is, though, this is all idiotic. Most plants aren't invasive. I mean, I think there's been so much of a fuss made about invasives in certain circles that people honestly think that anything introduced is bad.⁹ Also, invasive plants share certain characteristics: rapid growth, ability to self-pollinate, production of a lot of seeds, seeds that spread to new places via bird droppings or via wind, poisonous or inedible foliage, the ability to regenerate from a piece of root or rhizome, that sort of thing. These are measurable and observable qualities of the plants, and it's possible to make pretty solid advance guesses as to how big of a problem a plant is likely to be. Indeed, there are sites on-line where one can see the results of such assessments, like for example hear.org (HEAR = Hawaii Ecosystems at Risk).¹⁰

And most plants, native or not, behave themselves just fine. On-line conversations get heated about natives vs. exotics, and people get defensive about whether or not they should have the right to plant potentially invasive non-natives in their garden -- because of course they are good and responsible and would never let such a plant spread in ecosystem-damaging ways¹¹ -- but whatever benefits there are to native plants, it's still not useful or accurate to be treating all plants like invasives just because they're from elsewhere.

(I've seen one person, who apparently meant it, say in a blog comment that "every plant is invasive somewhere." This is not even a little bit true, alas. It's a shame it isn't, because then we'd have the endangered-plant problem completely solved: all we'd have to do would be to introduce the endangered plants to all the available ecosystems until they found one they liked, and voila, endangered species saved! I mean, of course they'd be saved by becoming invasive and endangering something else, but that's easy enough to fix -- we'll just move the newly endangered plants around until they find something they like. Reshuffle the deck fast enough, and none of the cards will disappear.)

This hypervigilance against exotic species reaches amazing new heights of stupidity and dogmatism when you're talking about an "invasive" that can't freeze, being grown in Iowa, or when you're talking about the invasive potential of a plant that stays inside year-round. Plants that don't go outdoors don't become invasive, even if they might really, really want to. Plants that die from freezing temperatures aren't going to invade anything even if they're thrown on the compost pile. So, you know, chill the fuck out already.

Epipremnum aureum. Native to: South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Northern Australia, Solomon Islands. (I was surprised by this, as I'd always heard that they were native to the Solomon Islands and that's it. But GRIN says otherwise.) A Florida Category 2 invasive plant.

4. Is the Florida Legislature in the pocket of Big Ardisia?
My anonymous persecutor¹² did make one point which is very nearly valid, which was that because the plants I buy are mostly grown in Florida, it doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong about Ardisias being invasive in Iowa.¹³ By buying the plant and encouraging others to do so, I'm creating a demand for a plant which may harm the area in which it is being produced. The reason this is only very nearly valid, and not actually valid, is that I am not responsible for writing and enforcing legislation in the state of Florida. Ardisia elliptica is supposed to be illegal in Florida: you can't plant or even own them, if you're an ordinary Florida citizen.

So how is it that certain companies are permitted to mass-produce Ardisia for sale?¹⁴ Indeed, if Ardisias are that abundant in the wild, to the point where they're wrecking ecosystems and stuff, why not just send people out to pull them up, throw them in pots, and ship them to zone 5, where they will eventually die an ungainly death? You get rid of the plants, you get money back for doing it. Why bother growing them in greenhouses, on purpose, at all?

Or! For my purposes as a consumer, it really doesn't matter to me whether my plants are grown in Florida, Texas, or on the third moon of the planet Zecuponia 7.¹⁵ There's every reason to think that they could be grown right here in Iowa, in fact: my personal plant has bloomed and formed berries, and I'm assuming that the seeds within the berries can be germinated if they ever get around to ripening. There's no reason why someone couldn't start a greenhouse in Iowa to produce Ardisias for other people in cold climates; I imagine the main reason that nobody does is because nobody could compete with Florida prices.¹⁶

If escaped Ardisias really are despoiling the natural Florida ecosystem -- and I'm not saying they aren't -- then I have to wonder why they're still being cultivated there. Is the Ardisia industry bringing in that much money and that many jobs? Do Floridians just not care that much about their ecosystems? Are sinister lobbyists for Big Ardisia convincing Florida legislators that there isn't really a problem, and any government oversight on Ardisia production would ruin Florida's economy forever? Is my anonymous anti-invasive friend perhaps a little overwrought and testerical?¹⁷ I don't know. But in any case, the state of Florida has it in its power to completely remove the apparently grave threat posed by PATSP and other Ardisia advocates, by not cultivating them there on purpose, and they don't do it.

Lantana camara 'Landmark Yellow.' Native to: Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, Northern South America. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

5. Can the toothpaste be put back in the tube?
Finally, even assuming that I accepted the premise that Ardisias are ruining everything, and stopped writing about them in any but the most disparaging terms, destroying them in garden centers whenever I came across them, exactly what would be accomplished? It's like telling someone not to say anything pleasant about starlings, lest someone be moved to keep one as a pet. That particular toothpaste is already out of the tube, and unless the entire state of Florida mobilizes to find and destroy Every. Single. Ardisia within its borders, and search every vehicle entering the state from top to bottom, it's now part of the Florida ecosystem. Period.

Complete eradication of an invasive species is the sort of thing that really requires a commitment from an entire state's government and population in order to be successful, and that's clearly not happening in Florida. Also, I'm not even sure that invasive plants and animals are ever completely eradicated. Maybe on small islands, where the chances of re-introduction from outside are minimal, and the population is constrained by the limited land area. Maybe then. But for all the effort put into trying to control and remove Asian carp, sparrows, Caulerpa taxifolia, garlic mustard, kudzu, multiflora rose, pigeons, gypsy moths, purple loosestrife, Hessian fly, cane toads, nutria, zebra mussels, lampreys, rabbits, cottony cushion scale, rhesus monkeys, rosy wolfsnails, monk parakeets, varroa mites, spotted knapweed, English ivy, gray squirrel, leafy spurge, brown tree snakes, dandelions, fire ants, tree of heaven, northern snakeheads, water hyacinth, crown of thorns starfish, and the many, many other problem species out there, in the various places they've wreaked havoc -- have any of them actually been eliminated? Is this a problem that ever gets fixed?

I don't exactly mean to say that since Ardisia elliptica is already in the wild, we ought to just give up and let it take over, just that there is a choice to be made here. Either Floridans specifically, and the U.S. in general, need to commit to eradication of the species, come up with a way to make controlling them more economical, or give up and let them take over. Because if you don't put enough money toward fixing this problem, you may as well just be throwing it away, year after year after year. And this is never, ever going to be dealt with properly if special exceptions are made for commercial plant growers. Hurricanes do happen, buildings do get knocked down: any plant being cultivated or mass-produced can get out and start the whole thing over again.

(Come back on Friday for the exciting conclusion. I promise a solution to the Ardisia elliptica problem, sentient molluscs, and wild speculation on what happens to gardeners in MRI machines.)

-

Photo credits: all my own.

¹ Which for various reasons kind of bothers me: I tend to think that, all else being equal, the word rape should mean rape, and not being defeated in video games, made to pay taxes, or any of the various other things it is sometimes intended to mean. It's not even a very good metaphor for those things, as metaphors go. This use of the word, w/r/t the environment, has some historical precedent, and I used it right back in my reply, in the same way, so I'm probably not the best person to be raising objections. But even so, it does seem like there should be a line somewhere.
² I'm almost positive that the anonymous commenter was male, due in large part to "his" use of the rape metaphor and obvious comfortableness in wandering onto a stranger's blog and calling its author irresponsible without, apparently, actually reading the post "he" was objecting to. Technically, I don't know, but I'm going to go with "he" for the rest of the post, because . . . he's obviously a guy.
³ If you want to be nitpicky, it really only proves that I have had one South Florida reader. Though I know I've had others, so fine, point taken.
⁴ (Well, you'd better.)
⁵ Examples: Echinocactus grusonii, Pachyphytum ovatum, Agave victoriae-reginae, Beaucarnea recurvata, Leuchtenbergia principis.
⁶ Anthurium podophyllum, Syngonium podophyllum, Chamaedorea metallica, Dieffenbachia spp., Selenicereus chrysocardium.
⁷ Tolmiea menziesii is native to the U.S. Pacific Northwest. A lot of carnivorous plants, for some reason, are from the continental U.S. and/or Canada, though none of them are particularly well-suited for cultivation indoors in someone's living room or office. (Dionaea muscipula is from the border between North and South Carolina, but also Sarracenia, Darlingtonia, Pinguicula and Drosera are all partly or totally North American genera.)
There are also a number of species which are occasionally claimed to be from the continental U.S., though the evidence is sketchy. Philodendron hederaceum, Phlebodium aureum, Peperomia obtusifolia, and Pedilanthus tithymaloides might be native to South Florida, Stenocereus thurberi may be native to Arizona, and Tradescantia zebrina and pallida might be native to South Texas.
⁸ And anyway, I shouldn't have to defend myself against things I imagine some jackass might ask. We'd be here all damn day.
⁹ An argument could be made that any introduced species is technically harmful to the native ecosystem, because even if it's behaving itself, it takes up space which could belong to a native. I mean, domesticated corn (Zea mays) is all but helpless to reproduce itself without human intervention, because we've bred them to be like that, so it's about as far from invasive as you could get. At the same time, the big cornfield at the end of my back yard is still taking up space that could be native Iowa prairie, full of native trees, butterflies, birds, leeches, or whatever, and so it still hurts the environment even if it were being cultivated with the most attention possible to fertilizer runoff, pesticide use, erosion, and so forth. (Which I doubt it is, but that's something for another post.)
I forgive this loss to the environment because, basically, I like to eat food. I find it helps me to stay alive, and staying alive has been a goal of mine for a good fifteen years now. Which is also a matter for another post.
¹⁰ HEAR assesses Ardisia elliptica as having a high risk of invasive and disruptive behavior (see assessment page), which is a lot like closing the barn door after the horse has already become an invasive plant. (A. elliptica is already all over Hawaii in the way that "Ghost Whisperer" is all over basic cable.) But it's cute that they're trying.
¹¹ Which is no doubt perfectly true of many of the people saying this. However: everybody thinks they're responsible and conscientious people who would never do anything harmful, even the people who are obviously not. So we can't really go by someone's self-assessment.
Also, even people who are responsible citizens can be distracted away from taking care of their gardens, for example by dying, or having to move suddenly, and there's no way you can guarantee that these things won't end up happening to you. I.e., I'm not trying to call anybody irresponsible or immature exactly, just saying that if you deliberately plant something known to be invasive in your climate or climates similar to yours, or a plant which strongly resembles known invasives, your intentions and plans don't count for shit, because you are not in absolute control of what happens.
¹² (Help, help, I'm being oppressed!)
¹³ (SPOILER: I am right.)
¹⁴ This is not a problem specific to Ardisia elliptica, either -- the same supplier was sending us a number of different plants which were Category 1 invasives in Florida. (Category 1: plants that have been determined to cause ecological damage in the state already. Category 2 invasives have expanded their ranges but have not yet provably hurt anything.) The Category 1 invasives they were shipping to us: Ardisia crenata, Ficus microcarpa, Lantana camara, Nephrolepis cordifolia, Schefflera actinophylla, and Syngonium podophyllum.
We also got the following Florida Category 2 invasives from Florida: Chamaedorea seifrizii, Epipremnum aureum, Jasminum sambac, Livistonia chinensis, Murraya paniculata, Pteris vittata, and Tradescantia spathacea. The full list of Category 1 and 2 plants as of the year 2009 is available as a .pdf file here.
So it's not just a matter of the Florida horticultural industry having a special exemption for Ardisia: they apparently have an exemption for everything. One hopes that this is because they have tough-as-nails regulators breathing down their necks at all times to make sure they don't accidentally do anything that's going to harm their native ecosystems -- I mean, aside from the harm that happens when you pave over large expanses of native ecosystem in order to construct gigantic greenhouses on them -- but it's probably actually that they get a special exemption because the city leaders want to be business-friendly or some such, or because they've convinced the regulators that there isn't really a problem, or because the regulatory agencies are so underfunded that they don't even try enforcing the rules for these plants. America is frequently fucked-up in this way.
But either way, what this tells me is that either 1) the citizens and elected officials of the state of Florida are just not that into their natural ecosystems, or 2) that the problem is not nearly as serious as Anonymous indicated, and Ardisia is not raping the environment so much as making unwanted sexual comments to it. I lean toward #1, having had some experience watching politicians ignore environmental issues.
¹⁵ (But not the seventh moon of Zecuponia 3! I mean, there's carnivorous plants, and then there's carnivorous plants, amirite?)
¹⁶ Heating a greenhouse in Iowa is not cheap, as I was informed way more often and emphatically than necessary while working at the garden center.
¹⁷ Testerical. (tess-TEAR-ih-cull) (from testes, by parallel with hysterical) Adj. 1. Exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion; irrational. Said of men. See also n. testeria.