Random plant event: Billbergia nutans

I probably shouldn't be posting this so soon after the cribplants post, because I'm unable to stop calling it "Bizzlebergia nutans, also known as biatchz tearz" in my head. But: it's blooming. That counts as a thing happening. When things happen, you have to blog about them: those are the rules. So biatchz tearz it is.¹

Billbergia nutans has very sneakily become one of my favorite plants, despite its relative dullness for most of the year. Part of this is because when it does decide to do something, it becomes very interesting -- seriously, five different colors on the same inflorescence! -- and part of it is because it's so undemanding to grow.²

This time around, instead of a single bloom spike, I've gotten at least seven. I'm not sure if this is all attributable to it being larger; I've also been fertilizing it pretty heavily since about August or September, and I repotted it in September. I noticed the first bloom spike in I think mid-November, so the changes could be connected to the blooms.

Ominously, the Cryptbergia x rubra has continued to bloom throughout all this: the first inflorescence is still producing flowers, and a second Cryptbergia rosette in the same pot is developing a new inflorescence, so that will continue for a while. Naturally, I have attempted to cross-pollinate the two. I'll let you know if fruits / seeds / seedlings happen.

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¹ As a side note, I looked at some lists of houseplants through gizoogle, just to see if there were any other particularly amusing name transformations to tell you about. Only a few worked for me, but that's probably just as well:

• Aglaonema (Chinese everchronic)
• Crassula ovata or Pachira aquatica (chedda tree)
• Chamaerops (European hustla palm)
• Cryptanthus (ghetto star)
• Cyrtomium falcatum (phat-leaved holly fern)
• Asplenium (birdz nest fern, mothafucka fern)

The search also yielded this, regarding the toxicity of poinsettias, which amused me:

A lil pimp took a dirt nap up in 1919 from smokin poinsettia. Currently, feedin experimentz indicate dat while poinsettia may cause a lil irritation, tha reportz of serious poisonings is pimped outly exaggerated.

There's something really wonderful about the sentence "A lil pimp took a dirt nap up in 1919 from smokin poinsettia."
² It doesn't hurt that it grows really quickly, too. Yearbook photos:
May 2010. 4" / 10 cm pot.
September 2011. 4" / 10 cm pot.

January 2012? 6" / 15 cm pot.

September 2012. 6" / 15 cm pot.

December 2012. 8" / 20 cm pot.

Random plant event: Spathiphyllum

It took a bit longer than advertised, but the Spathiphyllum seeds have germinated.

There are a lot more than I initially expected to have; it turned out that even though only one of the bumpy things on the spadix definitely changed color, several of them, including the green ones, had been successfully pollinated. So a few days after I started the first batch of seeds, when I went to remove the flower from the plant, the spadix sort of exploded into more seeds. Since I am helpless to resist seeds, I went ahead and picked them all out and sowed them on vermiculite in the basement with the first batch.

I got 75% germination from the first batch (6 out of 8); I don't know about the others, because I didn't count the number I started with. Germination took about 11-18 days, only slightly longer than the 10 days predicted on-line.

The question of whether or not it is possible to grow peace lilies from seed, which once seemed plenty urgent, has now more or less been answered. (True, we'll still have to wait until they survive transplantation and get big enough to bloom and everything, but it seems like the biggest obstacles -- pollination and germination -- are out of the way.) We can now move on to why one would do this. Anybody? Theories?

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Londonlight

Paphiopedilum Londonlight is a cross of Paph. London Wall (seed) with Paph. Nulight (pollen), according to The International Orchid Register.


I don't really know anything about it beyond that, but the flowers sure are pretty.

For more important, up-to-the-minute orchid news, stay tuned to PATSP.

Music video: Adenium Anniversary

A reader e-mailed me a link to this, and . . . whoa. I don't understand a lot of what's going on, of course, not speaking Thai Korean. I don't think the music is related to the Adeniums, though I'm charmed by the idea that it might be. (The world needs more plant-themed dance pop.) But this is part of how Siam Adenium (WARNING: website has freaked out one reader's antivirus software, and contains autoplaying video and audio) has chosen to market themselves on-line.



I'm not entirely clear what anniversary this is supposed to commemorate; the website hints that it's the 8th anniversary of something, presumably the founding of the business? I suppose it's not important.

You know what, though: this makes me sort of want to try Adeniums again. Some of the stuff in the video is pretty awesome. The website is even worse: they've got Adeniums that appear to be about 10 feet (3 m) tall, they have "standard" forms with a crown of foliage sitting on a long, bare trunk, they have crested Adeniums, variegated Adeniums, Adenium seeds, fragrant Adeniums, doubled Adeniums, bonsai Adeniums, just everything. I didn't think there was anything that could get me to try Adeniums again, but the website might actually have done it.

And it gets worse. There's an Aglaonema page, which has me biting my knuckles in envy. Green ones, white ones, black, red, pink, contrasting midrib, contrasting veins, contrasting margin, spotted -- it's a little overwhelming. I kind of just want all of them. Though I already wanted to own all the Aglaonemas; this is just a reminder.

I don't know what the company is actually like to deal with, and there appears to be a minimum order on at least some products, so buyer beware, but they certainly do have plants I would want, if I had money and weren't trying to cut down on the number of plants I have to take care of and had space to keep more plants and had a dedicated staff of plant-waterers and so forth. Perhaps someday.

List: Missing From Retail, Part 2 of 5

The explanation and background for this post can be found here, at part 1. (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5)

What other never-available plants do houseplant books try to get me excited about?

Camellia 'Sekidotaroan.' Photo by KENPEI, from Wikimedia Commons.
I know Camellia cvv. (camellia) are still out there, because I see them pretty regularly on the blogs of outdoor gardeners from the southern U.S. Less clear is whether they're growable indoors. The books say yes, but I've never seen them sold as such, and they're popular enough outdoor plants that I'd think there'd be an indoor market for them if it was at all possible.

Why would the books tease us like this? As commenters suggested in Part 1, it probably has to do with changes in new home construction: less drafty, no unheated sunporches, that sort of thing. There could be other, Camellia-specific things going on as well, but I'd bet that warmer, more energy-efficient homes explain a lot.


Caryota mitis. (My picture.)
There are several things about Caryota mitis (fishtail palm) that don't work so great indoors. They can get to be enormous,¹ they tend to be buggy (my first attempt ended abruptly due to scale; they're also appealing to spider mites), they're expensive when you do see one for sale,² and they need a lot of water.

However, I don't think any of those things are the reason why I don't see them for sale that often: I think the reason is that people don't like the ragged tips on the leaflets. I mean, that is how Caryotas are naturally supposed to be, but I bet people assume something is wrong with the plant and move on.

Cissus antarctica. Photo by Dinkum, released to public domain. Found via Wikimedia Commons.
I've never seen Cissus antarctica (kangaroo vine) in person, either for sale or in someone's home. Wikipedia provides a clue as to why: "It doesn't do well above 15°C, especially when exposed to central heating, which can cause the leaves to drop." It's not too hard to draw a line from warmer homes, to people having a tougher time growing them, to people buying fewer of them, to growers producing fewer of them, as with Camellia.

It's also probably relevant that C. antarctica isn't a particularly flashy plant. No variegation, no brightly-colored flowers, no fruit, not even a particularly interesting leaf shape (though I like it personally) or manageable growth habit.

Cobaea scandens. Photo by Michael Wolf, obtained via Wikimedia Commons.
Cobaea scandens (cup and saucer vine, cathedral bells) actually does have flashy flowers, and it's even weedy in New Zealand (according to Wikipedia), both things that ought to make it suitable for indoor cultivation. Also it is deliberately cultivated as an outdoor plant, so seeds are available. I mean, it's not like it's some super-rare thing that's only found in a seed bank in a single botanical garden somewhere. And yet, I'd never heard of until I bought the Kramer book a few weeks ago. Some of this, I'm sure, is just my natural adorable obliviousness asserting itself, but even so, it seems like a plant this unusual should be inescapable if it can be grown indoors at all.

A few of the comments at Davesgarden.com refer specifically to growing Cobaea as a houseplant. Some of the other comments mention it getting 20 feet (6.1 m) long outdoors, and being inclined to pull down large objects, so maybe that's the explanation? Another complaint is that there's a lot of foliage for not very many flowers, and that the flowers don't actually smell that great. All of which I will accept as an explanation until I find a better one.


Costus barbatus. My own photo (though not my own plant!).

I've never seen a Costus spp. (spiral ginger) for sale, though I always thought they looked interesting in pictures. Having seen some in person (at the Quad Cities Botanical Center), I'm less interested: I'd never realized how big they could get.³

I assume the size is the main problem, though finding out that they're related to gingers doesn't make me want a Costus much either.⁴ If they get burnt leaf tips even inside the humid, warm dome of the QCBC, there must be something touchy about them.


Cyperus alternifolius. Photo is mine; it was also taken at the QCBC.
I have no actual memories of seeing Cyperus alternifolius (umbrella plant, umbrella palm, umbrella papyrus, umbrella grass, umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh) for sale anywhere, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure I've personally seen someone growing one indoors (about 15 years ago, granted), so they must be available somewhere. My impression is that they need a ton of water and are really prone to spider mites; if anyone can confirm or refute that, I encourage you to do so.


Eriobotrya japonica. Picture is my own.
Eriobotrya japonica (loquat) leaves have a pleasant fuzzy texture, the plants grow slowly enough that they're not going to outgrow your windowsill immediately, and they're about average difficuly indoors. (I've had one for a couple years, due to the generosity of a PATSP reader, and aside from a brief and easily-corrected spell of spider mites, it's been fine.) So why are they not in stores? Couldn't tell you.

In theory, it's possible to get your own for free or mostly free, by buying a loquat and planting the seeds, so maybe there's no demand. (I don't actually see loquats for sale that often, but I don't spend a lot of time searching for them either. I'm sure I could find one if it were really important that I do so.) Or maybe they have some horrible characteristic that I haven't run into yet with my own plant.

Eucomis comosa. Photo: H. Zell, via Wikimedia Commons.
Eucomis cvv. (pineapple lily) is certainly visually striking, and I know they're sold in containers somewhere, for indoor cultivation, because I've seen people asking about them on the UBC indoor plant forum. I suspect they probably need more light than I could provide, but that wouldn't apply to everybody around here, so there must be some other reason.


Fatsia japonica. My own photo.
Fatsia japonica (Japanese aralia) isn't entirely unknown in Iowa -- the ex-job had them once before I started working there, and I've seen them at least a couple different times at Wallace's, in the Quad Cities. (The photo above was taken in Wallace's.) And I could be forgetting some occasions. But they're a lot rarer than the books would make you think. My own experience with them has been uniformly pretty negative: the one I had in 2009 lasted about six weeks before I found mealybugs on it and threw it away, and when I've looked at them since, I've generally found spider mites. Like with Camellia, Cissus antarctica, etc., I'm wondering if forced-air heating isn't in the process of driving them out of the houseplant trade.

Geogenanthus poeppigii. Photo by Cliff, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Magnus Manske.
I am completely unable to explain why I've never seen Geogenanthus poeppigii (seersucker plant, formerly G. undatus). Not even in a botanical garden. They were once widespread enough that all the books mentioned them, and they look neat enough that they would surely sell if offered. Hell, Geogenanthus is even in the Commelinaceae,⁵ so there's reason to think they could be produced in commercial quantities without a lot of effort. Also the sunporch theory wouldn't seem to apply; it's my understanding that Geogenanthus likes it warm.

Most sources that talk about G. poeppigii mention that it needs high humidity, so it's possible that it just doesn't do well enough for long enough in a store to be worth bringing in. But stores regularly carry any number of other plants that need high humidity and go downhill quickly without it: Calatheas, Selaginella, rex begonias, etc. Why is Geogenanthus special?


Again, this topic doesn't really lend itself to recommendations, though I can say Eriobotrya is fine indoors. The one I'd most like to try is Geogenanthus, even though I doubt it would do well for me.

Not pictured:

• Bougainvillea cvv. (bougainvillea): uncommon, but I see them occasionally in the independent garden centers.
• Bromelia spp./cvv. (bromeliad; no common name): never seen.
• Callistemon citrinus (syn. C. lanceolatus; crimson bottlebrush): I may have seen them occasionally as faux-bonsai; I'm not sure.⁶ Never a full-size plant.
• Campanula isophylla (Italian bellflower, star of Bethlehem): have never seen.
• Carissa macrocarpa (natal plum): have never seen.
• Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle): routinely sold as an outdoor annual here, but I don't know anybody who's tried to keep one going indoors, nor would I ever attempt to do so myself, after seeing how much spider mites like them.
• Catopsis spp./cvv. (bromeliad; no common name): never seen.
• Chamaerops humilis / Livistonia spp. (European fan palm, Mediterranean fan palm; Chinese fan palm): rarely seen.
• Chirita / Primulina (chirita, primulina): have never seen. My personal plant died of unknown causes.
• Clerodendrum ugandense (blue butterfly bush, blue glory bower): once or twice at the ex-job.
• Crinodonna corsii (crinodonna, hybrid naked lady): have never seen?
• Crinum spp./cvv. (crinum lily): never seen, though I do know more than one person who's tried growing them indoors.
• Daphne odora (winter daphne): never seen.
• Dyckia spp./cvv. (dyckia): never seen in retail in Iowa. My first died more or less immediately; a second one is luckier so far.
• Eranthemum nervosum (blue sage): never seen, though I'm not sure I'd recognize it if I did.
• Euonymous spp./cvv. (spindle, spindle tree, euonymous): probably as an outdoor plant, but I don't shop for outdoor plants so I wouldn't know. I've never seen one sold as a houseplant, despite the books' collective insistence that this happens all the time.
• Faucaria spp. (tiger jaws): seen very occasionally.
• Ficus deltoidea (mistletoe fig, syn. F. diversifolia): rarely, if ever.⁷
• Freesia cvv. (freesia): very rarely, and so far only at the ex-job.
• Fuchsia cvv. (fuchsia): seasonally as an outdoor annual; I've never seen them sold as houseplants.
• Gelsemium sempervirens (Carolina jessamine, evening trumpetflower, woodbine): also never seen, but I don't know that I could recognize an unlabeled plant.

As ever, if you have other suggestions for the list, if you think I must have seen some particular plant somewhere, if you have an explanation for why they're not sold, etc., please leave a comment. Especially that explanation one. Or, again, plants that I talk about a lot that are never for sale where you live.

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¹ There are some pictures of a full-sized Caryota at this post, if you're interested.
² (which has only happened to me a couple times in Eastern Iowa, both of them quite a while ago)
³ Sure, I know they probably don't all get as big as the one in the photo. But even the smallish plants in some of the Wikimedia Commons pictures are big enough that they're never going to be desktop or windowsill plants.
⁴ Costus is in the family Costaceae, while Alpinia, Kaempferia, and Zingiber are in the Zingiberaceae. Both the Costaceae and Zingiberaceae are in the same order, the Zingiberales.
I've tried growing Alpinia zerumbet and Zingiber malaysianum, and they did okay, but they clearly weren't that happy. One of the Alpinias got scale, which isn't its fault; the other Alpinia rotted out, which arguably is its fault; the Zingiber is still with us, though it died back dramatically one or two winters ago and has literally never been the same since. So the Zingiberaceae isn't a family I'm looking to explore right now.
⁵ Same family as Tradescantia pallida, Tradescantia spathacea, Tradescantia zebrina, Callisia fragrans, and Cyanotis kewensis. Of the group, only Cyanotis kewensis is at all difficult to grow or propagate, and it's not really that hard.
⁶ All the different species of faux-bonsai look pretty much the same to me, because they're all usually about 3/4 dead.
⁷ (There are a couple Ficuses I never completely identified from the ex-job, so it's possible this was one of them. I'm fairly certain I've not seen any for sale locally in the last three years.)

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Not really any Sheba or Nina news; things have been quiet since Sheba's bald patches cleared up.

I really like how this photo (from 29 November) turned out.

Pretty picture: Rhyncholaelia digbyana

BEST LITTLE GREENHOUSE IN TEXAS p. 6

INT. GREENHOUSE - DAY

Many customers milling around in the garden center's greenhouse. The sound of approaching rapid footsteps. MR. SUBJUNCTIVE runs into the room from the left, breathless, and stops in front of a plant.

MR. SUBJUNCTIVE (shouting)
Look! An orchid!¹

The CROWD OF SHOPPERS shuffles toward the indicated flower.
CROWD OF SHOPPERS
(murmuring) Oh my gosh, it sure is, wow how pretty, Judy will you look at that, etc.
MR. SUBJUNCTIVE looks behind himself, then resumes running and exits room to the right.

WOMAN #1
Who was that?

WOMAN #2
I didn't get a good look. Was that Mr. Subjunctive?
POLICE enter from left, running, followed by 12-year-old JIMMY, on a bicycle.

ADULT JIMMY (V. O.)
Later, of course, we found out that it didn't mean anything, that Mr. Subjunctive was just trying to jazz up the blog with a random snippet of drama because he didn't have anything interesting to say about Rhyncholaelia digbyana. But once word got around that Mrs. Carlson had just been found dead, buried under a pile of Cattleyas in her home, with spelling corrections written in black Sharpie on about half the tags,² things didn't look good for him. No wonder he ran.
CUT TO:
INT. INTERROGATION ROOM

MR. SUBJUNCTIVE sits at table in room, alone, while CHIEF MARTINEZ and OFFICER SCHENKENBERG watch him through the one-way glass.

MARTINEZ
You get anything out of him?

SCHENKENBERG
He just said he was helping the old lady correct her plant tags day before yesterday and doesn't know anything. Then he started asking for a lawyer.

MARTINEZ
Correcting her plant tags? Does anybody actually give a shit about whether plants are identified correctly?

SCHENKENBERG
I don't know, Chief. Sounded fishy to me too. Should we get him his lawyer?

MARTINEZ
Ennh. Go ahead, but you don't have to hurry. Maybe we can get him to say something before the lawyer gets here.³
-

¹ (That I blogged about previously!)
² For the record, this plant was tagged correctly.
³ Obviously there would be more to the story than this, but let's pretend the rest of the script has been lost, 'cause I don't think I'll be able to write a complete script. And probably the story is all downhill from this point anyway. I didn't really plan anything out.

Cribplants, yo.

I've just become acquainted with gizoogle.net, a site which Snoop-Doggifies Google results and/or websites. What is Snoop-Doggification? Er. It's probably easiest to just show you.

Unfortunately, a lot of the formatting gets lost in the process, so the resulting blog doesn't look much like PATSP, but I was especially tickled to see what it did to the list of houseplant books from the first Missing From Retail list:

• Crockett, Jizzy Underwood. Crockettz Indoor Garden. Little, Brown n' Co., Boston MA / Toronto ON, 1978.
• Kramer, Jack. Da Illustrated Guide ta Flowerin Cribplants. Peerage Books, London, 1985.
• Powell, Charlez C. n' Dizzle M. Vining. Orthoz Complete Guide ta Successful Cribplants. Chevron Chemical Co., San Francisco CA, 1984.
• Stuckey, Maggie. Da Cribplant Encyclopedia. Doubledizzle Direct, Inc., Garden Citizzle NY, 1993.
• Griffith, Lynn P., Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: A Growerz Guide. Ball Publishing, Batavia IL, 1998.

I would absolutely buy a book about cribplants.

I would also totally buy a plant named Bizzlebergia nutans, especially if I saw it described like this:

Bizzlebergia nutans (biatchz tears) be a pimped out plant, as far as I be concerned -- it grows fast, propagates easily, is hard as fuck ta kill, n' produces short-lived but straight-up horny-ass flowers up in tha late fall n' winter.

Also Gizoogle is quite a bit more honest than I am when it comes to the Musa photo from this post. My original:

I don't know what specific botanical characteristics distinguish Musa from Ensete.

The gizoogled version:

I don't give a fuck what tha fuck specific botanical characteristics distinguish Musa from Ensete.¹

Mixed feelings about this overall. On the one hand, I was extremely entertained for a couple hours on Monday night, but then I felt bad, because the Snoop-Doggified² versions were so much better than my original writing. But I got better. How did I get over this? By running other people's blogs through Gizoogle, and seeing how much improved everybody else was too.

As you might imagine, new layers of meaning would be added to any post where Carol talks about her hoe collection at May Dreams Gardens, but I prefer the garden fairy posts. (The most recent one emerges from Gizoogle signed by "Violet Chronicpea Maydreams," who is the "chizzle scribe fo' tha garden fairies n' tha garden fairy whoz ass likes ta put rocks along tha edgez of tha raised bedz up in tha Vegetable Garden Cathedral.") And I find the garden bloggers' bloom day inspirational quote much improved as well:

Our thugged-out asses can have flowers nearly every last muthafuckin month of tha year.
~ Elizabeth Lawrence

Moving on, here's Garden Rant, on the topic of which Presidents have had the best record on environmental protection issues:

A few muthafuckin years back I posted bout the ten chronicest prezs up in U.S, history, accordin ta dis crib. Back then, tha dopest recent environmental record was owned by Bizzle Clinton. It still is. Clinton created 17 freshly smoked up nationistic monumentz (4.6 mazillion acrez of preservation³), extended protections fo' wetlandz n' old-growth forests, n' banned off-shore drillin yo.

(Oh, word, Adrian?)
And I love Kylee's (Our Little Acre) account of finding a monarch caterpillar in her garden in November, mostly because I am amused by the milkweed --> milkchronic substitution:

But da most thugged-out astonishin muthafuckin thang I found was a monarch caterpillar fo' realz. A tiny one. It was so small, itz a wonder I even noticed dat shit. Da milkchronic it was on was mostly yellow n' dyin yo, but did sheezy some fresh freshly smoked up growth all up in tha top. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. Still, tha cold temperatures n' latenizz of tha season have caused most of tha milkchronic ta lose they leaves n' they're left as bare stems standin sentinel up in tha garden.

By now I'm pretty sure you get it, and since it was kinda stupid in the first place, I'll stop providing examples. Investigate further on your own, if you're interested.

DISCLAIMER:
OBVIOUSLY, none of the people who were "quoted" for this post said anything like what Gizoogle claims they said, however amusing I find the idea that they might start. I didn't ask permission first, because I'm not clear where the line actually is here -- I'm not reproducing text from other blogs, and the whole point of the humor is the obviousness that the people "quoted" would never, ever say any of these things, so it's hard for me to imagine a scenario in which the original authors would suffer any kind of material or emotional loss. But, if you are Carol, Susan, or Kylee, and you're offended by this anyway, for whatever reason, just leave me a comment or send an e-mail and I'll take it down and replace your bit with something from Fairegarden. (And if Frances is offended, I'll keep moving on until I find three bloggers who aren't. There is no shortage of bloggers.) And I'm sorry I didn't ask first; I expected you either wouldn't care or would be amused.
FURTHERMORE, no offense was intended toward PATSP readers. (Though y'all, at least, have been warned about the language, so I'm not going to take it very seriously if you claim to have been offended.)
ADDITIONALLY, Mr. Subjunctive does not, ordinarily, condone the use of the word "bitches" or any of its derivatives in reference to female humans,⁴ but there's a world of difference between "make me a sandwich, you dumb bitch" and "What up, my biyatch?", and I think this is clearly much, much closer to the latter. Though I can apologize for that too, if it'd make anybody feel better.
Peace out.

-

¹ This is not true in the very strictest sense. I care, but only to the degree that it makes it easier for me to tell which I'm looking at. If the distinctions are all in how the flowers are arranged or the shape of the cell walls or something that's not obvious to the eye, then no, I really can't care.
² I am aware that he is trying to change his name to "Snoop Lion." Dat don't even make no mothafuckin sense though, so I ain't even hearin it.
³ (It's the "4.6 mazillion acrez of preservation" part that does it for me.)
⁴ (and he's even a little uncomfortable using it for female dogs, as far as that goes)