Pretty picture: Cymbidium NOID

Cymbidium NOID.
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Assorted Stuff / Hiatus Announcement

SPECIAL NOTE: I try not to go two consecutive days without a post, but a bunch of stuff popped up on Monday that made it impossible for me to get one together for Tuesday. And then Tuesday was complicated as well (malware on a computer -- not mine, but one I use for Sims and Hulu -- plus unprecedented levels of family drama¹ and the usual barely-doable-within-the-time-available watering), and none of those problems have been resolved yet, so we may as well treat this as the beginning of another long hiatus, 'cause that's what it's going to turn into whether I like it or not. (You can't say you weren't warned.)

Orchid pictures will probably continue to go up about every four days, with minimal commentary, since they're already uploaded and scheduled.

Previously-arranged plant sales, blog comments, and e-mail correspondence should all continue to happen, albeit possibly a bit slower.

So here's the last regular post for a while. I was trying to make up for missing Monday and Tuesday by cramming lots of little fragments of posts together into one (Sort of like a blog-post McNugget.), until my Tuesday went to hell and I ran out of time.

1. Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips'
Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips' is the first plant I've bought in two months, and only the third plant I've purchased in the last six months. (The previous two purchases were the Salvia elegans, which I'm now thinking was a bad decision,² and the Ananas lucidus, which is doing quite well.)


Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips.'
I wouldn't have gotten this one either -- it was on the pricey side,³ and is a genus I haven't tried to grow before -- but I've been wanting a Mangave to try for a very long time, and this is the first thing I've seen for sale that was even close to a Mangave. So we're trying it. So far, so good, though it's lucked into one of the outdoor spots, so I really won't have any idea what it's like to grow indoors for another six months.


2. Amorphophallus konjac
I got an Amorphophallus konjac bulb from a reader at the end of last summer, as part of a trade. Stored it in the plant room on a low (cold) shelf, then potted it up this spring, around the end of April. And then there was a lot of waiting for it to do something.

It still has a ways to go, but I should be seeing an actual unfurled leaf fairly soon. Kind of excited.


The one bad thing about Amorphophallus is that plants with pronounced dormancies, that need to be stored dry during the winter, make me really nervous -- I'm always scared that I'll kill the plant accidentally and not find out until I go to start it again. I don't know why this is more scary to me than the plant-killing I do all the time, but it just is.


3. Grocery Store
Saw some unusual houseplant-related items in the produce section of the grocery store last week; Hylocereus fruits --


-- and Aloe vera leaves.


I knew Hylocereus ("dragon fruit") were sold, though I don't think I've ever seen any around here before. Didn't see a price on them. The opposite is true for the Aloe -- I've seen plenty of Aloes, but never expected to see the leaves for sale without the rest of the plant being attached.


4. What Fresh New Hell is This?
From the ex-job:


The plant looks fine -- some kind of NOID Rhipsalis, I'm guessing -- but what the hell is it growing in? Is that all coconut fiber? Can epiphytic cacti live in something like that?


5. Zea mays
One way to know that you live in Iowa next to a corn field is to check your lawn for . . . hmmm. I don't know if there's a term for these or not.⁴ I'm going to call them "cornweed," until I hear a better name.


There's also a few in the garden along the fence, though you can't see them clearly from this photo.
Squirrels drag unharvested corn cobs from last year's crop into the yard, then scatter the seeds around as they eat them. The corn these will produce isn't likely to be anything we'd want to eat (field corn is gross), so it's kind of pointless to leave it, but all the Iowanness in me rebels at the idea of pulling up a cornstalk, so they stay.


6. Gomphrena 'Audrey White'
In other news, Gomphrena now comes in white. Maybe it always did. I wasn't aware of it until this year, though. I don't know how I feel about it.




I guess that's it for now. See you when I see you.

-

¹ I and the husband are personally fine, and don't expect to be directly affected by any of what's going on. Just in case you were worried.
² I had a bunch of cuttings going in the basement, which were doing fine, and then I let them get too dry and lost 4 out of 5 of them. There may have been spider mites as well. This is exactly what happened to the previous batch of S. elegans, as I described back in April, so it's possible that it's just not a plant I can grow anymore.
³ ($14.99 plus tax for a 5-inch pot)
⁴ (There's "volunteer corn," which are the seeds that fell into the soil instead of getting harvested, which come up the following year and are generally removed, but I'm looking for something more specific to the situation of having corn spontaneously appearing in one's lawn.)

Pretty picture: Phalaenopsis Sogo Yukidian

Not really happy with the way the picture turned out here; it's sometimes difficult for me to get good pictures of white flowers because the camera reads white spaces as light, and then darkens everything else to compensate. But it wound up okay, I suppose.

Hard to find much to say about a white phal, though this has having an unusual number of flowers open at once, which I guess is noteworthy.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

They said it would never happen. Some even said it couldn't be done. But I've done it: I cleaned and replanted Nina's terrarium.

She got part of a strawberry as a house re-warming gift, though as far as I could tell she didn't actually eat any of it.
Gone is the Pellionia pulchra. It grew well, it handled drought like a champ, but it choked out everything else, and eventually started choking out itself, even. So behold the next crew:



1: Murraya paniculata (seedling)
2, 4, 6, and 7: Begonia 'Tiger Kitten' cutting (4) and rooted leaves (2, 6, 7)
3: Ctenanthe burle-marxii
5: Episcia 'Coco'

The Ctenanthe has lived with Nina before, and did awesomely; I'm less sure about the other plants. They should all be fine in a terrarium, but I don't know if they'll be fine with the transplanting (which was kind of rough on the Begonias in particular) or the inevitable cricket-nibbling. There's also some danger that the Episcia and Ctenanthe may grow fast enough to crowd out the other plants. It's not even a particularly hypothetical danger, since that's basically what the Ctenanthe did the last time it was in the terrarium.

But we'll worry about all that other stuff later: right now all I care about is that I actually got it cleaned up, after many months of procrastinating, and consequently should be able to enjoy several guilt-free months before I have to do it again. It's surprising how much of a load off my mind that is.

Question for the Hive Mind: Episcia 'Pink Acajou'

Tuesday and Wednesday were travel days this week. I ordinarily spend weeks at a time stuck in the house, because I'm always either frantically watering plants or trying to recover from same, so getting to leave on two consecutive days is pretty mind-blowing stuff. The Wednesday trip was to the ex-job, among other destinations, so I have a bunch of new photos to be sorted through, which you'll probably see here eventually, though there's a pretty good chance I'm going to go on another hiatus from the blog relatively soon, for reasons which are actually pretty similar to the ones that made me go on a blog hiatus previously. (#3 doesn't really apply this time around, but the other three still do.) I don't know for sure when (or whether) the hiatus might begin, but you've now been warned that I'm thinking about it.

ANYWAY.

The actual plant-related point of this post has to do with one of the Episcias I got by trade last year. 'Pink Acajou' did nicely to begin with, but over the course of the last year, it's gotten all weird on me and I can't figure out why. Since I know some of y'all have more gesneriad experience than I do, I thought I'd show you the pictures and see if it looks like anything specific and obvious.



On the left: 'Pink Acajou' after it'd been here for about six weeks. On the right: what it looked like last week. It's possible that the photo is of a cutting of the original, not the original plant, but it doesn't really matter because they both look like this, with the tiny, dark, gray-brown leaves. The original and copy aren't in the same location.

I have other Episcias in the same spots, which get similar treatment, and they're not doing anything like this. If anything, the other Episcias are all going the opposite way, with larger leaves and more vivid colors. So I think I know how to take care of Episcias in general, just maybe not 'Pink Acajou' specifically. But you tell me.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Judge Phillip

Judge Phillip is Paph. Pinocchio x Paph. philippinense. Unusually vivid color, plus it was tagged correctly, so I'm exceptionally fond of this one. (It really doesn't take that much to make me happy.)

New plant

I got this from Cactus Jungle, the finest source for cactus and succulent plants in the San Francisco Bay Area, about a week ago. (I'm pretty sure it is, anyway. I haven't checked them all, and if we're being honest, it's not like I've been to Cactus Jungle personally. But it's still probably the best one, 'cause it's the only one that's ever been nice to me.) The reason was that [Google and] I answered a question correctly back in February, and it's taken this long for the weather to warm up enough to receive plants, and for the nursery business to settle down enough to mail them.

Stapelia variegata.
Originally, the prize was supposed to be a Lithops, but we agreed to do this instead, because a Lithops would only have died on me immediately, and I have a little more confidence about growing Stapelias. The pictures of flowers that come up when you google the species are pretty wild (or you can look at the Top Tropicals page for the species, which has some photos); I don't necessarily expect flowers ever, but I'm optimistic enough that it's been given one of the coveted outdoor spots this summer, so maybe we'll get lucky.

The current official name is Orbea variegata, according to Plant List. I would have sworn that I looked this up on Plant List at some point this spring and they had it down as Stapelia instead of Orbea. (Or maybe I dreamed that. I do dream things like looking up plants on Plant List now: it's not impossible.) Whichever. It's officially an Orbea. For the moment.

So but thanks to Cactus Jungle. (And remember, Cactus Jungle is the finest source for cactus and succulent plants in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's Cactus Jungle, 1509 4th Street, Berkeley, CA 94710.)

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?