Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Okay, obviously what's going on here is just a bad, blurred picture. But the longer you look at it, the weirder it gets -- the differently-sized legs, the different-colored eyes, the flattened ears with a ghost image of vertical ears, etc. -- so I was amused.

In other Sheba-related news, she caught a squirrel a couple weeks ago. I don't remember why I didn't write about it when it happened: I suspect it was just that I'd already written the Sheba/Nina picture post for the week.

I didn't see it happen, which I regret because I've seen her chase squirrels unsuccessfully so often and it would have been nice to join in her moment of triumph, but whatever. The husband convinced her to drop it almost immediately (which is weird, 'cause we can never convince her to drop the glowy ball -- on more than one occasion, she held on to it for more than 45 minutes before we could retrieve it¹ -- and it seems like a squirrel would be way better than a ball), and later disposed of it.

Sheba has, so far, declined to comment.

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¹ We would just let her carry it around as much as she likes, but 1) it was expensive, for a dog toy, and if destroyed would be a bigger deal to replace, and 2) the packaging said not to leave the dog unsupervised with the ball, which implies that it might hurt her if she ever did figure out how to tear it apart. So we throw it as long as she returns and drops it promptly, but if she starts to take longer to relinquish, then fun time is over. Occasionally I throw the ball one too many times, and then we wind up following her around the house for 45 minutes, waiting for her to drop the ball so we can grab it, wash it off, and put it away again. This is tedious enough that we don't break out the glowy ball that often, which if Sheba would only realize this and act accordingly, she'd get to play with the it way more than she does.

Pretty picture: Mammillaria (?) NOID

Okay. I feel a little better. The orchid show pictures were a little easier to sort through than last year's, because 1) the lighting worked out better or something -- more of them were decent to begin with -- and 2) I didn't take as many shots of each flower, so I didn't have to do as much agonizing over which shot to use. Some of them still didn't turn out that great, but what they may lack in quality, they make up for in quantity: I now have 91 orchid posts scheduled through March 2013, with the pictures already in place (if not any text yet). So I'm pretty sure you'll never have to wait more than 5 days between posts, even if I don't write another post for a year. (We still have 2 pictures from last year to burn off first, but after that, look out.)

Meanwhile, some cactus flowers, from the ex-job. These pictures were taken at the end of January.


I suspect Mammillaria, but I'm not positive, so if anybody has any guesses, feel free to share. Perhaps the stripes are a clue?

Random plant event: Senecio cephalophorus 'Blazin' Glory'

Between trying to keep up with watering the plants, propagating new plants, keeping up (poorly) with e-mail correspondence, sorting through all the orchid photos I got on Saturday,¹ trying to make decisions regarding the book (which is looking increasingly like it will not be a book, but something shorter), writing the blog, and working on half a dozen small side projects of various kinds, I'm getting very close to the point of being so overwhelmed by my list of things to do that I'm unable to do any of them. Consequently, posting is going to be light for . . . a while. I don't know precisely what I mean by "light," or "a while:" time will have to tell, but I figured I should let you know this is coming, and apologize for it. In previous years, things had normalized again around mid-June, but this year may never actually settle down: if I find myself with time again, I may have to use it on writing the "book" (or whatever the hell it's going to be) instead of posting more to the blog.


Oh, and there's also a plant. I don't know much about Senecio cephalophorus 'Blazin' Glory,' except that it's a Proven Selections² plant and the ex-job has some this year. (I think this is the first year they've had them.) The plant in the photo is just barely more than a plug;³ I'm not sure how big one can get in a single season, but I bet large quantities of 'Blazin' Glory' are impressive outdoors when they're all in bloom.

The Proven Winners website claims that 'Blazin' Glory' can be grown indoors as a houseplant. That's probably true, but I'm positive that I don't have a bright enough spot for one. (That's been a problem for other Senecios in the past, as well.)

Plant List says that the correct botanical name for this plant is Kleinia cephalophora. The Timber Press Guide to Succulent Plants of the World (Fred Dortort) says that not all botanists agree about splitting some Senecios off into the genus Kleinia, and that in any case Senecio is the name most accepted in the horticultural world.

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¹ You'll probably see a lot of orchid posts during the next year. I got pictures of somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 different plants, and unlike last year, most of those turned out well enough that I can probably use them without too much manipulation.
By comparison to the last year of orchid show photos, Paphiopedilum fans will be pleased; Cattleya fans will be disappointed.
²The difference between a Proven Winner and a Proven Selection, according to the Proven Winners website:

Proven Selections® are regionally accepted, but not great performers in all locations.

Sometimes plants that are known to be very good, but generally available become Proven Selections®. Most gardeners are not aware there is even a difference in these two types of plants. However, this is our way of trying to focus great plants into the parts of the country where they will do their best, rather than sending them willy-nilly everywhere, which will not help gardeners succeed.

³ Many annuals are started in trays containing hundreds of small cylindrical pockets of soil and then are shipped to the retailer once they've rooted in the tray. A solidly-rooted plant will pull out of the tray along with its cylinder of soil; these small plants are called plugs. As soon as plug trays arrive, we repotted the plugs into the pots we were going to sell them in (usually 4"): potting up plugs is one of the major February and March garden center tasks.

Pretty picture: Baptistonia echinata

If everything went according to plan yesterday,¹ I now have about a million orchid photos to sort / crop / color-tweak, a task which could probably occupy me for the next eleven years or so. I only actually have two weeks before I run out of last year's pictures, though, so I'll have to go a little faster than that.


Meanwhile, this week, we have Baptistonia echinata, yet another in the very, very long line of plants that were mis-tagged: the tag said "Baptistonia echinacea," not B. echinata. I understand that it's easy to mis-write an uncommon word if there's a much more common, similar word already in your brain, but even so: does no one know how to proofread anymore? I was also disappointed because my first impulse was to hope that someone had named a species of Echinacea E. baptistonia, so as to confuse search engines, but alas.²


Couldn't find much specific information about B. echinata on-line. It's from Brazil, it's epiphytic, they like lots of humidity but are fairly temperature- and shade-tolerant; if I understand this post correctly, it's the only species in Baptistonia.

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¹ (I'm writing this on Wednesday the 7th.)
² Possibly no big loss: all available evidence suggests that search engines would cope just fine, it's people who would constantly be mixing them up.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

I am occasionally impressed by Nina's ability to stick to glass surfaces, but then I remember 1) all the hard-water buildup probably makes the glass a bit rougher and easier to stick to than I'm thinking it is, and 2) I bet if I only weighed three grams (0.1 oz), I'd stick to lots of stuff too.

The lid is not normally open on the cage; I opened it for the picture because I can't get good pictures through the screen. I don't get good pictures without the screen either, but try to ignore that.

(Side note: if you are one of the many, many people to whom I owe e-mail currently, I am very sorry. Don't hold your breath.)

Walkaways Part 17

A few interesting plants from the ex-job:

Calliandra emarginata.
They were selling Calliandra emarginata as a bonsai (or at least a bonsish; I don't think they've ever had actual bonsai bonsai), which guarantees that I will never buy it, but it's an interesting plant. No clue what they're like to grow indoors; I don't even have any idea what they're like to grow outdoors.

Kalanchoe 'Fantastic.'
I've had mostly-bad experiences with the Kalanchoe genus in general, and consistently bad experiences with Kalanchoe luciae specifically, in the past, so this wasn't particularly tempting, but it was new (to me), and I can't argue that it's not a cool-looking plant.


I don't know whether this is K. luciae or K. thyrsiflora, and it appears no one else does either: Google results are split about 50/50. The tag, for the record, said K. thyrsiflora, not that that means much.

Loropetalum chinensis.
Loropetalum chinensis is another bons-ish; I include it here mostly because I'd never heard of it before and it's kind of pretty.

Polypodium formosanum var. cristatum.
I intend to try this plant someday. I've had some ups and downs lately with footed ferns (two of my three Davallias have taken a recent hard turn for the worse, over nothing in particular that I can see; one has died as a result), but Phlebodium aureum is one of my favorite plants, and Polypodium grandiceps seems to be working for me so far, so P. formosanum seems worth a try even so.

It's possible that the correct name is Phlebodium formosanum, not Polypodium formosanum; Glasshouse Works gives both names but appears to favor Phlebodium. If that's the case, then I'm even more interested.

Philodendron 'Pink Princess.'
Finally, Philodendron 'Pink Princess.' For most of the last few years, I haven't seen it for sale anywhere around here (I think I saw them at Wallace's once), and now all of a sudden the ex-job has gotten them on two separate shipments, as 6" (shown) and also as 4". It's an interesting-looking plant, but I'm not terribly interested in 'Pink Princess' because it's super expensive, and everything I've heard about it suggests that it's really slow-growing. The two things are probably related.

I don't remember what the ex-job wanted for the 4-inch plants, but it was definitely over $10, maybe something like $15. They paid a lot to get them in, I understand (don't know how much, but I know how they calculate these things, and the retail prices reflect wholesale), but $10 for a 4-inch tropical plant is never going to seem acceptable to me.

Random plant event: Aglaonema 'Maria,' with special guest star

This could also have gone into Tuesday's unfinished business post, but it seemed special enough to warrant its own. In this case, the news is that one Aglaonema seed I started around December¹ has actually germinated. Not that it's particularly interesting to look at yet:


But even so. I didn't expect this to work at all, so having anything happen is pretty neat.

I planted the seed in a mix of soil and unchopped sphagnum moss, per the instructions from the University of Florida. The soil/moss was put in a clear plastic cup, covered with saran wrap (held on with a rubber band, because it wasn't staying on by itself -- saran is less sticky when wet), and left on a shelf with a shop light overhead and another underneath, giving it maybe a little bit of bottom heat.

It actually gets better (and weirder) than that, though, because the first thing I noticed happening in the plastic cup was not that the seed was sprouting, but that the sphagnum was sprouting. Not only did I not expect this to happen, I wasn't even aware that it could happen: I thought the sphagnum was dead by the time it got packaged up and sold.


I've seen plenty of claims on-line that peat moss² is being harvested at an unsustainable rate from the wild, mostly for garden soil and related gardening products, though the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association, unsurprisingly, disagrees. It would therefore be interesting to produce my own, I guess, though 1) I doubt the husband would permit me to build a sphagnum bog in the basement and 2) even if I did, I'm guessing proper habitat reproduction would require a fair amount of energy, which might negate the environmental benefits of having a home bog. Though I'd get to tell people I had a sphagnum bog in my home, which gives coolness points³ which would partly negate the increased energy usage, in the sense that I'd mind less about destroying the environment if everybody thought I was cool.

But whatever. The sphagnum sprouts are kinda neat-looking. I'll probably try to keep the stuff going in the cup after I take out the Aglaonema,⁴ just to see what it decides to do next. I mean, why wouldn't you?

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¹ Not sure of the exact date. The first Aglaonema seed I started was in December, but this is the second one. The first was planted in vermiculite, and hasn't done anything yet. So we may be looking at a germination time of around 8 weeks, give or take, depending on exactly when the second seed was started. There's a third seed as well, currently still on the plant, though the berry is starting to shrivel up a little so I should probably hurry up and do something about that.
² Wikipedia explains the difference in terms thusly: "sphagnum" is the live organism that grows on top of the bog; "sphagnum peat" is the decaying old growth underneath. It then becomes "peat moss" after decaying, compacting, and being packaged up.
³ Fine. Eccentricity points, then.
⁴ (Which will probably be whenever the Aglaonema hits the top of the saran wrap.)

Unfinished business: various

Excoecaria cochinchinensis.
I asked the question earlier, whether Excoecaria cochinchinensis (Chinese croton) is particularly susceptible to spider mites, like its namesake Codiaeum variegatum (croton). The answer is a pretty emphatic yes, as my plant somehow managed to attract an advanced mite civilization (They were already making steam engines!) despite not having any mites visible on the adjacent plants.

I figure I'm pretty committed to keeping the Excoecaria I have, for however long that lasts, but I won't buy another one.

The moral, I guess, is: don't buy any plant that's called a croton, whatever adjectives are in front of the word.

Dischidia ruscifolia.
Y'all didn't know that this was a question, because I didn't mention it (aside from a glancing reference at the end of this post), but I've been wondering for a while whether Dischidia ruscifolia was easy to propagate. I sent cuttings to a reader last summer, and s/he said yeah, piece of cake, just stuck them in water when they arrived and potted them up when they had roots, but I hadn't tried it for myself.

Well. I've tried it now, and if anything s/he overstates the difficulty: there were short roots visible within a week. I didn't bother letting them get longer; I figure anything that starts rooting in water that easily will root in soil even easier. I am now, as I said in the post, fond of D. ruscifolia at least on principle, and maybe even in actuality. It's impossible for me not to like a plant that causes no problems and propagates well.

Hatiora NOID.
The Hatiora NOID from this post, which shattered on me, and then flowered once while dying, is apparently not done for yet: I started four pots of shattered pieces of the plant, and all four have at least one rooted fragment growing in them now. It's still a serious decline from how it looked when it first got here (above), but at least I managed to salvage something:


It's possible that this is just setting me up for an endless cycle of shattering and regrowth, and I'd be better off if the plant had just died and been done with it, but until the plant demonstrates otherwise, I'm going to interpret this as an apology.

Ananas lucidus.
A very, very long time ago, I saw an Ananas lucidus for sale at the ex-job, which I found very, very appealing. I wanted it, but I didn't have any place to put something that big, and I think they wanted some completely ridiculous amount of money for it, like $50ish. So I told myself no, ignored my piteous cries and foot-stomping tantrums, and kept my fingers crossed that 1) they wouldn't all sell, 2) the unsold plants would eventually begin to offset, and 3) someone at the ex-job would separate off the offsets and sell them in a more manageable size and price.

Well, all of these things happened, though I'm afraid my crossed fingers are permanently deformed: I had to wait two years. But as of January, I now have one of my own. It's a little green, because they had it in too dark of a spot for most of the time it was there, but it's been coloring up again since I stuck it under a light:


Now that it's here, of course, I'm remembering how large they get, and questioning my judgment. But. You know. I'm always questioning my judgment.


Last, I am pleased to announce that I have finally been successful at germinating Schlumbergera seeds, following one failed attempt. The only thing I did differently was, I let the seeds dry out overnight after I separated them from the fruit pulp; in the first attempt, I planted them immediately.

It took longer than I was expecting -- for some reason I was thinking they were supposed to germinate almost immediately, but instead, I didn't notice seedlings until 5 March, sixteen days after sowing. In fact, it took them so long that I'd already written this part of the post bemoaning my inability to sow Schlumbergeras from seed, and having a sour-grapes reaction ("Like I need hundreds of Schlumbergera seedlings anyway -- I already have hundreds of Anthuriums, and it's not like the house is that big.") to my failure.

So now we have an interesting problem, which is that the Schlumbergera seedlings are supposed to be uncovered once they start to develop, and the Anthurium seedlings seem to do better if they have the higher humidity of an enclosed container, but they're both in the same container, and both are too small to withstand transplanting. Odds are, I'll let them fight it out and hope that one or the other grows fast enough to transplant. I have plenty of Schlumbergera fruits left, after all. And it really is true that I should probably focus on one genus or the other.

This isn't even all the seed-sprouting news I've got, but I have to leave something for later posts.