Stupid plant tricks: Lenophyllum texanum

Officially, I have not been growing any Lenophyllum texanum since New Year's Day, 2013, when I threw out the one pot that I had growing, marked it down on the spreadsheet as deceased, and went on.

The plant had other plans. In the process of disposal, some leaves fell off, which I noticed but figured weren't worth the trouble of digging out of the flat and throwing away. Sure, it's a desert plant, but how's it going to survive with no soil, brief periods of water, and little light, was the thinking.

A year and a half later, the leaves have grown into whole plants. The roots have intertwined to form a little mat, against which all the stems can brace themselves, keeping them upright even without any soil. And apparently the mat is good enough at retaining water that they can make do, and even thrive, with just the water they get from being sprayed for about 15 seconds, every couple weeks.

This is impressive, and would even be endearing if it gave the impression of having to exert itself a little. I'm happy to root for underdogs every now and again. But it's not acting like a plucky little underdog, struggling to survive against all odds; it's closer to an unstoppable Terminator type. For the moment, I'm going to keep it -- it's growing in an unused space in the flat, and it's not asking anything of me -- but at least 50% of that decision is because I'm no longer sure whether it's possible to get rid of it.

Random plant event: Cereus peruvianus

I have two very tall, weak Cereus peruvianus. They've been with me since 2004, and for some of that time, I have just plain not had a good bright spot to keep them. Because of the lack of light, they get tall and weak, and because they're tall and weak, the number of possible locations is reduced, so it's this whole unhealthy-cactus vicious cycle.

Currently, the only location available to them (without cutting them down, anyway) is in a corner of the plant room, where the ceiling is 10 feet (3 m) high, as opposed to the 8 feet (2.4 m) or less everywhere else in the house. (More on that decision here.) The cacti have been okay there -- they're not growing much, and they're covered in cobwebs, but nevertheless they stay alive and grow and stuff. So occasionally it happens that, because they're right inside the door, we accidentally knock them over when we're bringing big things in or out, and because they are weak from being a little light-starved, when they get knocked over, it usually doesn't end well for them. Or for us, either, because there are not a lot of things that will ruin your day like a cactus falling on you.

So the last time this happened, it was with the taller of the two plants. When it hit, it landed on the edge of a shelf, so it basically snapped itself off at the point of impact. I straightened it back up, threw out the piece (I was tempted to propagate it, but I already had one cutting, from when the same thing happened with the shorter of the two plants, and I didn't see much point to doing another. I think this was also during a period when I was feeling unusually purgey w/r/t the plants, because of scale, or because I was tired of moving them in and out all summer, or something like that.), and waited for it to resprout. Which it did, in two places, up at the very tippy-top of the plant. And now one of those branches has reached the ceiling, meaning that I need to make a decision again about whether or not to start a new plant from it BUT WAIT THAT'S NOT WHAT THE POST IS ABOUT:

The post is about this:

One of the new branches is also producing roots, about nine feet in the air.

I knew that lots of plants (Monstera, Crassula, Chamaedorea) can produce aerial roots, including quite a few cacti (Selenicereus, Hylocereus, Schlumbergera), but it had never occurred to me that this was something that Cereus might do. How often would it really get the opportunity in the first place? It's not like they grow next to trees that they might attach themselves to, or anything.

So I figure I pretty much have to try to propagate now whether I want to or not. I mean, this is meeting me way more than halfway.

Stupid plant tricks: NOID trees

Yarn-bombing trees isn't a new thing, but this is the first time I've seen it in person, and I wish I'd gotten more pictures. (I had somewhere to be; couldn't be helped.)

The whole downtown area appears to have been done; there are many much better photos here.

There's also an intermittently awkward and under-edited interview with one of the organizers, if you're really interested:

Stupid Plant Tricks: Plectranthus oertendahlii

You are probably aware, if you've grown Swedish ivy (Plectranthus verticillatus) at all, that the sap turns orange when exposed to air. It'll even stain skin orange, in fact, which is one of the more annoying things about the plant.

Plectranthus oertendahlii, slightly past its prime blooming period.
Plectranthus oertendahlii, on the other hand, doesn't do that. As far as I can tell, its sap starts out clear and then stays clear. But it does something similar. When the flowers get wet, like for example when you're watering them in the bathtub, they'll turn the water blue.


I realize this photo doesn't show the blueness coming from the flowers. You're just going to have to trust me that that's how it happened. I first noticed this a few weeks ago, and wondered about it, but so many things get sprayed around the shower when I'm watering that I thought possibly it was unrelated to the plant. But, lo and behold, there the blue water was again the next time I watered the plant.

I doubt this has any practical applications. I don't know whether it will dye fabric (I'd bet not); I know it doesn't dye skin. I have no idea what part of the flower is responsible. I don't know how dark the color can get. It's pretty pointless to know this, or to tell others about it. But there you go anyway.

Stupid Plant Tricks: Dracaena fragrans

The husband had a large Dracaena fragrans when we met, not quite eight years ago. Over time, it grew, as plants will. By last year, when we were getting ready to move to the new house, it had gotten tall enough that it was hitting the apartment ceiling, so we cut it back, and threw the top into a vase of water, to be planted later, once things were no longer quite so crazy.


Over a year later, we have a four foot (1.2 m) tall corn plant growing in a vase of water. It's not entirely happy with the situation -- there has been some chlorosis, probably because tap water doesn't have enough iron and/or magnesium to keep it going. I've recently added tiny amounts of N-P-K fertilizer, epsom salts (for magnesium and sulfur), and a trace element supplement for outdoor trees that contains iron, copper, manganese and zinc, and things seem to be getting better, but really the point is not so much whether one can grow a perfect Dracaena fragrans in water for more than a year, but that one can grow one in water at all.


This isn't the first time something like this has happened here; the previous time we moved, a Yucca guatemalensis got cut back and was also temporarily placed in water. That one got planted up within a few months, though. I'm pretty sure.

Now that I've posted about this, I'll probably give the Dracaena soil relatively soon, but I figured it was worth letting people know that Dracaena "lucky bamboo" sanderiana isn't the only Dracaena one can grow in water. I can't imagine why anyone would need to know this, but if you've wondered, well, now you know.