As usual: much to do, not quite enough time in which to do it. Not especially proud of this photo, but I have to go with what I've got. (The primary problem, if you care, is that I have a lot of recent photos to deal with before I can start writing posts about them, and I'm having trouble finding time to deal with the photos. Partly this is because dealing with photos is boring.)
P. venustum is from the Himalayas (East Nepal to NE Bangladesh). It's named for the goddess Venus. Some good information here.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum venustum 'Fox Catcher'
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 1.53-1.56
Rules and Stuff
1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.
2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.
3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.
4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.
5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.1
6) All polls will be open for three days.
And now, the results from matches 1.37 to 1.40:
Even with the obvious handicap of having glued-on flowers, Cereus tetragonus2 came very close to winning match 1.37. It didn't, losing to Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk' by a handful of votes (55 to 48), but it came really close.
Chlorophytum comosum, despite some protests, pretty easily beat Echinocactus grusonii in match 1.38, 64 to 40.
Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk' faces Chlorophytum comosum in match 2.19, which will begin October 11.
Match 1.39 was pretty close, but Kalanchoe luciae & thyrsiflora managed a win over Peperomia clusiifolia, 56 to 42.
Finally, match 1.40 was very one-sided: Echeveria cvv. stomped Nephrolepis exaltata by 87 to 20.
Kalanchoe luciae/thyrsiflora goes up against Echeveria cvv. on October 11, in match 2.20.
And now, today's new polls:
Match 1.53
Cycas revoluta (sago palm) vs. Espostoa lanata, Oreocereus trollii, & Cephalocereus senilis (old man cactus)
Match 1.54
Tradescantia zebrina (wandering jew) vs. Portulacaria afra (elephant bush)
Match 1.55
Tillandsia cyanea (pink quill) vs. Kalanchoe blossfeldiana (flaming katy, kalanchoe)
Match 1.56
Self-heading Philodendrons ('Autumn,' 'Prince of Orange,' 'Moonlight') vs. Davallia and other furry-rhizomed ferns like Polypodium/Phlebodium (rabbit's-foot fern, hare's-foot fern, bear's-paw fern, kangaroo fern)
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1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?
2 (Or whatever it is: it's identified as at least three different species and I'm not enough of a cactus expert to make a judgment. Calling it C. tetragonus follows the usage of CactiGuide.com.)
Monday, October 3, 2011
Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 1.49-1.52
Rules and Stuff
1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.
2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.
3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.
4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.
5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.1
6) All polls will be open for three days.
Results, matches 1.33 to 1.36:
I was surprised by how close match 1.33 (Dionaea muscipula vs. Pilea mollis 'Moon Valley') turned out to be. I figured carnivorous plants would inspire strong feelings either for or against, and that whichever it was, pro- or anti-, almost everyone would feel the same way about venus flytraps. Instead, Dionaea just barely squeezed past Pilea, 54 to 49.
In match 1.34, by contrast, Aeschynanthus spp. whaled on Ardisia crenata so hard that its grand-seedlings are going to feel it, winning by 22 to 68.
Dionaea muscipula and Aeschynanthus spp. will face one another in match 2.17, on 11 October.
In match 1.35, Aechmea fasciata whipped Rhapis excelsa by 58 to 35.
Spathiphyllum cvv. KO'd Coffea arabica 62 to 36 in match 1.36. Neither of these surprised me much, but I'm a lot happier about one than I am about the other.
Aechmea fasciata and Spathiphyllum cvv. will cross swords on 11 October as well, in match 2.18.
On to today's bouts --
Match 1.49
Adenium obesum (desert rose) vs. Episcia cvv. (flame violet)
Middle row, L-R: Episcia NOID, E. 'Pink Acajou,' E. NOID.
Bottom row, L-R: Episcia 'Silver Skies,' E. NOID.
Match 1.50
Zamioculcas zamiifolia (zz plant) vs. Alocasia amazonica 'Polly' (african mask plant)
Match 1.51
Ficus benjamina (weeping fig) vs. Begonia rex-cultorum cvv. (rex begonia)
Match 1.52
Asplenium nidus / antiquum (bird's-nest fern) vs. Haworthia spp.
Middle row, L-R: Haworthia limifolia var. ubomboensis, H. cymbiformis (?), assortment.
Bottom row, L-R: Haworthia attenuata, H. limifolia var. limifolia.
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1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?
Animal: Tenodera aridifolia
I think mantids are awesome, though I have two reservations. One is that this species (common name: Chinese mantis) is apparently known to catch the occasional hummingbird or lizard, and I can't get on board for that. Hummingbirds and lizards should be alive. As much as possible.1
I also insist that they not get any larger if they expect me to continue to like them. I don't think this is being unreasonable. Four inches (10 cm) long: awesome alien-looking bug. Four feet (1.2 m) long: nightmarish monster that catches you in its knife-lined legs and eats you alive, beginning with your face. 
This species is native to China, and was introduced for pest control around 1895, says Wikipedia. Why anybody would bother when North America had several perfectly good mantids already, I have no idea. There seems to have been a general feeling in the late 1800s that we should just introduce any damn species we like to North America, whether necessary or not. People in the past were weird.
Anyway. Seeing mantids around is one of the nicer parts of this time of year. I assume they're around the rest of the year, too, but smaller, and therefore easier to miss.
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1 Oh! I've also seen hummingbirds this year, twice, at the Cannas. Which I didn't mention previously because I don't have photos -- they took off as soon as we saw one another. But I really did see them.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 1.45-1.48
Rules and Stuff
1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.
2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.
3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.
4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.
5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.1
6) All polls will be open for three days.
Results from matches 1.29 to 1.32:
Ordinarily I write up the results about six or seven hours before the poll ends, and then just paste in the numbers after the poll closes at 5 PM. Makes it easier to keep up, and usually there's a wide enough split between competitors that it's obvious who's going to win well before it happens. I couldn't do that with match 1.29, though: it'd been close all along, and then as of 11:30 AM yesterday the two differed by a single vote, so it was still too close to call.
This led me to realize that I didn't announce a procedure for breaking ties. I'd thought of two possibilities when I was planning the RATJ: 1) a re-vote (arguably the most time-consuming, but also probably the most fair), or 2) I could break the ties myself (fast unless I have a hard time deciding, which is more and more likely to happen as we get closer to the end, and also arguably unfair to anybody who voted, since I wind up getting two votes that way). I have since thought of a third option, which is what I'm actually going to do for ties: if there are any, the winner will be determined by coin-flip. It doesn't drag the contest out for another three days, it's not biased, and it's easy to do. So now you know.
(In the end, Pachira aquatica defeated Pilosocereus pachycladus by a single vote: 53 to 52.)
Match 1.30 was likewise extremely close, with Cordyline fruticosa cvv. maintaining a tiny lead over Euphorbia lactea for most of the contest; when voting ended, Cordyline led Euphorbia by only three votes, 54 to 51.
Pachira aquatica and Cordyline fruticosa cvv. will now face one another in match 2.15, on October 10.
In match 1.31, after some wavering back and forth, Mimosa pudica smacked down Ravenea rivularis, 60 to 46. But in a sensitive way.
Match 1.32 is the only match from this group where the results were never in much doubt: Hibiscus rosa-sinensis clobbered Dracaena sanderiana, 69 to 36. (Asked to comment, Hibiscus said, "I got lucky.")
Mimosa pudica and Hibiscus rosa-sinensis will go head to head on October 10 as well, in match 2.16.
And now for today's first-round action:
Match 1.45
Nematanthus cvv. (guppy plant) vs. Dracaena deremensis cvv.
Match 1.46
Schefflera actinophylla / arboricola (umbrella tree) vs. Gardenia jasminoides (gardenia)
Bottom row, L-R: Schefflera actinophylla ('Amate?'), S. arboricola NOID.
Match 1.47
Begonia cvv. (rhizomatous begonias) vs. Hedera helix (english ivy)
Match 1.48
Lithops cvv. vs. Sansevieria trifasciata cvv. (snake plant)
Center row, L-R: S. trifasciata NOID, 'Hahnii,' 'Hahnii Pearl Young.'
Bottom row, L-R: S. trifasciata 'Moonglow,' 'Black Gold.'
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1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 1.41-1.44
Rules and Stuff
1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.
2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.
3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.
4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.
5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.1
6) All polls will be open for three days.
Results for matches 1.25 to 1.28:
In match 1.25, Platycerium spp. beat Stromanthe sanguinea cvv., 65 to 51.
Match 1.26 went to Gynura aurantiaca over Hypoestes phyllostachya by a similar but slightly wider margin, 66 to 48, though there were some complaints from people that they didn't like either plant and didn't want to have to choose. Which is fair enough.
Platycerium and Gynura advance to the second round, where they will compete with one another on October 10.
The other two matches were basically blowouts: in 1.27, Aloe vera trounced Gymnocalycium spp. 83 to 33, and in 1.28, Schlumbergera cvv. smashed Dracaena surculosa by 91 to 23, which is not close at all but nevertheless a little closer than I had expected.
Aloe vera and Schlumbergera also meet up on October 10, in match 2.14, and I gotta say I'm a little nervous about the outcome of 2.14.
If anyone besides me cares, we're now about 2/3 of the way through the first round. (It'll end next
Today's matches:
Match 1.41
Ficus pumila (creeping fig) vs. Dendrobium cvv.
Match 1.42
Sedum morganianum / burrito (burro's tail) vs. Beaucarnea recurvata (ponytail palm)
Match 1.43
Euphorbia ammak / ingens / trigona (large columnar Euphorbias) vs. Oncidium alliance orchids (dancing ladies)
Center, top to bottom: Vuylstekeara Aloha Sparks 'Ruby Eyes,' Odontocidium Tiger Crow 'Golden Girl,' Wilsonara Lisa Devos.
Right side, top to bottom: Oncidium Saint Dawn Gold, Bakerara Truth 'Silver Chalice.'
Match 1.44
Polyscias fruticosa (ming aralia) vs. Austrocylindropuntia subulata monstrose (Eve's needle)
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1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?
Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture
So hey, I got to go to the Emergency Room again this week. It was more fun than the times I went for heat exhaustion (1) (2), but also quite a bit scarier in places.
The story is, I woke up from a nap on Thursday afternoon and my right eye was blurry. As in, I couldn't read the computer screen with my glasses on, sitting eighteen inches (46 cm) away. This is fairly alarming, but not entirely unprecedented -- it's normal for me to be a little bleary when I first wake up. It's not normal, though, for the fuzziness to last more than a couple minutes. There was no pain, no flashes of light or dark spots, no numbness or weakness or fever -- just really blurry. (It was worse than the blurriness one gets from having one's eyes dilated at the optometrist's, but not as bad as looking at the world through a thin, grease-soaked piece of paper, if that helps at all.)
So, this being 2011, I googled for "sudden blurred vision in one eye," or something to that effect, and a number of pages came up, all of which mentioned stroke and retinal detachment as a possible cause. I have family history of both, so this got my attention. And after about half an hour of blurred vision, we decided to go to the ER; within an hour of waking up, I was at the hospital. (The blurriness cleared up en route, so by the time I got to the hospital, I was seeing normally again, but still, everything through my right eye was out of focus for at least 45 minutes.)
Various drops were put in my eyes, lots of people pointed lights of varying colors and intensities at them, I got an eyeball-pressure test to check for glaucoma, which was better than the usual eyeball-pressure test but still damned weird,1 and so on and so forth, and then the diagnosis was . . . that my eyes were dry. Or at least the one had been.
Which was kind of anticlimactic. I mean, not that I would rather have found out that my blurred vision was because your retinoblastoma gave you a stroke. And by the way, you also have glaucoma. And you just died. but -- dry eyes? Really? That's it?
The theory is, in essence, that I don't produce quite enough tears to lubricate my eyes properly, plus maybe dry air (unlikely, with all the plants in the house) and seasonal allergies (never noticed 'em before, but I suppose it's possible). As far as I can tell, this is probably true, but it doesn't quite satisfy. I mean, I'd also like to know why Thursday, and never before. I mean, if I have congenitally unlubricated eyes, you'd think I would have noticed before my late 30s.
But I'm okay anyway, I guess.
This whole getting-old thing is clearly not for the faint of heart, though.
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1 The usual test involves sitting with your chin in a cup while they blow puffs of air at your eyeball. I hate this because I can never not jump when it happens, and I have a fairly low tolerance for being startled anyway. The new test is that they give you eyedrops (which burn slightly) to numb the eye, and then they take a pen-like thing and touch it to your cornea, which tells them how much pressure your eye pushes back with, or something like that. I didn't like the eyedrops, but this was still much, much better than the air-puff thing.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Rumble Among the Jungle, Matches 1.37-1.40
Rules and Stuff
1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.
2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.
3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.
4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.
5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.1
6) All polls will be open for three days.
Today's results (matches 1.21 to 1.24):
Match 1.21 is another one of those rare matches that started out favoring the eventual loser (Ficus lyrata, in this case) and then flipped. Dracaena marginata cvv. won, 61 to 51.
Match 1.22 was quite a bit more one-sided: Cereus peruvianus beat Fittonia albivenis cvv. without even transpiring hard. Final score was 71 to 40.
Dracaena marginata will face Cereus peruvianus in match 2.11, on October 9.
The most one-sided match for this set was 1.23, Polyscias balfouriana and P. scutellaria vs. Hoya carnosa cvv. Hoya won easily, taking Polyscias down 82 to 23.
Finally: match 1.24 is where I realize that I hate slightly more than half of y'all. Maranta leuconeura cvv. defeated Anthurium cvv. 63 to 50.2 I take some consolation in the fact that it was at least relatively close.
Hoya carnosa and Maranta leuconeura next compete on October 9, against one another in match 2.12.
And now, the matches for today:
Match 1.37
Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk' vs. Cereus tetragonus (fairy castle cactus, Acanthocereus tetragonus, Cereus hildmannius cv.)
Match 1.38
Chlorophytum comosum cvv. (spider plant) vs. Echinocactus grusonii (golden barrel cactus)
Match 1.39
Peperomia clusiifolia cvv. vs. Kalanchoe luciae / thyrsiflora (flapjack plant)
Match 1.40
Echeveria cvv. and related plants (Sedeveria, Graptoveria, Pachyveria, etc.) vs. Nephrolepis exaltata cvv. (Boston fern, fluffy ruffles fern)
Middle row, L-R: Graptosedum 'Alpenglow - Vera Higgins,' Echeveria coccinea flowers, Echeveria 'The Rose.'
Bottom row, L-R: Echeveria nodulosa, Pachyveria x glauca, Echeveria x shaviana 'Pinky.'
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1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?
2 Seriously, though -- you guys take Yucca guatemalensis and Anthurium both out in the first round? Have I done something to make you hate me?
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