Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

The picture today is of Sheba sniffing at a couple dead palm fronds in a ditch by the side of a rarely-used gravel road. The photo was taken May 1, and I have no explanation for it -- isolated palm fronds are unusual roadside debris in Iowa.

Palm Sunday was April 17, two weeks before this, and anyway I thought churches kept the palm fronds, or at least burned them and kept the ash, to use the next year on Ash Wednesday (Have I been misinformed?), so they shouldn't be escaping into the ditches. And anyway there's only one Catholic church in town, and it's about as far as a person could get from this site and still be within the city. If someone dumped an ailing plant into the ditch, there would have been more fronds, and they would have been attached. I can imagine scenarios where this would happen, but they all seem a little too unlikely to be the actual explanation, and yet, we have the fact of the palm debris, so something unlikely must actually have happened. I invite baseless and outlandish speculation, if anyone has some to share in the comments. Or even rational speculation, if that's all you've got.

Pretty pictures: Stenorrhynchos speciosum

Two orchid posts in a row that both reference last March? What's going on here? What happened to PATSP?

It just worked out that way. Sorry.

Today, we have Stenorrhynchos speciosum, again from the orchid show last March. It's one of the possible parents of an orchid we saw at last year's show, Stenosarcos Vanguard 'Fireball,' but the flowers are more densely-packed on this than on Stenosarcos.


And I remembered to get a full-plant photo! (At least, as close to a full-plant photo as the crowded displays at the show permitted. And not a very good one. But still: progress!)

Unfinished business: Phalaenopsitrocity

Wound up back at the grocery store yesterday, where I first saw the blue-dyed Phalaenopsis flowers at which we all shuddered two months ago, and they still had them. (More accurately, they'd probably gotten new ones in: I can't imagine even long-suffering Phalaenopsis blooms hanging around for two months, looking exactly the same.)

Which means that I can answer some questions people had back at the end of March.

The bark in which they were planted was not blue; it was normal bark color. Most of the roots were normal gray-white also, though I saw a couple that were the same blue as the flowers. From this, I think we can conclude that the flowers aren't being dyed blue by watering with blue water.

I think I've found a smoking gun for the method, after looking around a bit:


I realize it isn't the best photo (bad lighting), but I think it's clear enough that you can see an injection site with a darker-colored ring around it (it may help to blow the picture up to full size by opening it in a separate window). Not sure what's going on with the leaf that's next to it, but it looks like it's been dyed a little bit too, or maybe bruised.

It's still a lie when you know how it's done, of course. And I'm still angry about it. But my curiosity is satisfied.

Pretty picture: Muscari sp.

Apologies for the brevity. Lots of sale-/trade-related stuff going on here at the moment, and it's left me without a lot of time to write, but I did want to take a moment to officially notice Muscari, who (which?) are (is?) maybe a few days past prime blooming at the moment. As last year, I find them utterly charming.

Portals

One: the first batch of plants are ready to be mailed out. If you're reading this after 10 AM Monday, CDT, they're probably already somewhere in the postal system, even, barring some sort of horrible catastrophe, sudden appearance of an interdimensional portal, etc.

Two: I did another interview, the results of which are up today at EDGE on the Net, which describes itself as "the largest network of local Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) news and entertainment portals in the world." This leaves me a little puzzled still about what EDGE actually is, but in any case, I'm in it: Strange Fruit (and Flowers and Leaves).

To readers arriving from EDGE: Hi! You might be interested in The Best Houseplants You're (Probably) Not Growing, or the plant profiles (see list in the sidebar).

Pretty pictures: unusual Tulipa flowers

I haven't been taking pictures in town so much this year, because I was only ever doing that on walks with Sheba, and Sheba and I have been doing a lot more walking on the gravel roads around town. Plus, it's mainly the same stuff that was there last year, which you've seen already. (If you were reading last year. Which I realize some of you weren't. But that's what the archives are for.)

I have, though, seen a couple tulips that were new to me this year, which I present for your consideration:

A NOID double yellow. I've seen very few double tulips around here. Mostly this year I've been noticing that there were lots of white ones. Were white tulips all the rage last summer and fall and I just didn't notice?

Okay, so it's not unusual. I really liked the picture and wanted to include it.

No clue. I looked around on line and found some photos of tulips that were similarly pointy, but nothing that was splayed open like this.

Same flower from a different angle.

Almost-opened buds from the pointy orange tulip.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Nothing much to talk about today; nobody's run away or eaten anything they shouldn't or been unusually adorable or any of that. Which is fine. Not complaining.

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.