I can has frog?

Um. So I was pulling the plants out of boxes and taking the plastic sleeves off them and attaching price tags and whatnot, and after a few hours of this, I look down in the box of asparagus ferns I've been unpacking and see this guy.

(It's somewhat alarming, by the way, to look down into a box of plants and see movement. Just in case you'd ever wondered.)

There's no point in leaving him in the greenhouse, because the pesticides would get him. I couldn't bring myself to do that. Mercy killing was out of the question also -- that's never gone well for me either. So I caught him and brought him home, and now I have no idea what to do. We gave him a shot glass full of water and a few fragments of roast beef (the theory being that frogs are carnivorous, even if they don't normally kill and consume cattle -- though what a PBS nature special that would be), and a plant for oxygen, but this leaves a lot of questions open, obviously.

I suspect he's probably doomed regardless of what I do. But I'm willing to try to meet him halfway. Anybody want to make any wild stabs in the dark on this one?

UPDATE: I'm reasonably sure that what I have is a Hyla cinerea, or green tree frog. As it happens, they're a popular species of pet frog, and they're even the state amphibian for two states (LA and GA). The down side is that they are said to need a lot of space: the articles I ran into on-line all seem to agree that a ten-gallon is the absolute minimum possible, plus there's advice about non-chlorinated water and sterilizing terrarium materials in bleach-and-water solutions before adding them to the terrarium, and there's all this stuff about crickets, and . . . well, and I need another thing to take care of like I need another piece of caucus-related campaign literature, so something is going to have to be done. I just have no idea what one does with excess frogs. Pet stores? Animal shelter? Still trolling for suggestions, here. . . .

Oh, and -- they don't eat roast beef, but then we kind of suspected that.

UPDATE: The story concludes here.

Random plant event: Dischidia nummularia flower

This plant was an oddball: both the only one of its kind that we had, and a plant I'd never heard of before. I got this picture of a flower a few days before the plant sold, but the lucky part is that because of the flower, the plant got my attention and I took a few cuttings before it sold. So far the cuttings seem to be doing okay, knock wood.

It's not that the flower is anything amazing or special. I actually walked right by it any number of times, I'm sure, before I saw it, and it didn't have any charming scent or anything either. But hey.

Criminal (Philodendron x 'Autumn')

Okay. So here's where things start to get a little weird. What could it mean to call a plant a "criminal?" What laws do plants break? What laws could plants break?

I mean, I suppose you could call invasive or weedy species "outlaw plants," if you wanted, and there's also the possibility that pot-breakers should be punished in some legal fashion, but, I don't know, somehow this wasn't a satisfying way of looking at the situation, to me, and anyway I've already done those particular plants, so I'd have to come up with something different.

So let's take a step way the hell back and ask ourselves what the contract actually is between a person and a houseplant. At first glance, it seems like the obligations are mostly on the human's side: we agree to water, feed, defend against insects, clean, mist, prune, and so on and so forth. But, the plant, in turn, is expected to: grow, keep itself more or less presentable, reproduce when requested to do so, and not give in overly easily to the attentions of others, by which we mostly mean bugs. In other words, the plant is more or less expected to be a 1950s TV housewife, but without the vacuuming-in-pearls business.¹

In that light, a criminal plant would be the opposite: unattractive, no growth, unpropagatable, bug-prone, some kind of terrible joke of a plant that thinks you're just swell and everything but would really rather be out burning its bras and taking drugs with those dirty, dirty hippies.

Ahem. Perhaps I've let the metaphor get away from me. But still, you see the thought process. And in those terms, for me, there is really only one plant that's even competitive for the Criminal slot, and that is Philodendron x 'Autumn.'


Those of you who know me will have been expecting Syngonium podophyllum, and it's true that Syngonium and I have had our share of difficulties, but the problems were really entirely my fault: once I learned that it was all my fault, we've been getting along better. Not perfectly, but well enough that Syngonium doesn't qualify. Philodendron x 'Autumn' does.

I have had this plant for almost a year now (I bought it on January 6, 2007, so we've only got two or three weeks left before we hit an anniversary.). In that time, it has come as close to doing absolutely nothing as I think a plant can. Hell, even my Zamioculcas zamiifolia eventually grew a leaf, and propagated. 'Autumn' lost three leaves, and gained four, and that is all.

And it doesn't even look especially presentable:


As with the corresponding character in The Breakfast Club ("John Bender"), Autumn's problems are not entirely of its own making. There's been a little abuse, much of it inadvertent. I repotted it as soon as I got it home, just as I had done a few months prior with some similarly-sized 'Moonlight' Philodendrons (which had done beautifully for me, by the way, and are still looking quite fetching even as I type), and waited.

Eventually it became apparent that there was Something Wrong. It was staying wet after waterings way longer than it should have, like two or three times longer than the 'Moonlights.' A soil inspection turned up the fact that the poor thing had basically no roots anymore, and furthermore was in soil that would have been too heavy and wet for a perfectly healthy plant (if I'm remembering right, it would probably have been straight Miracle Gro), and had rocks blocking its drainage holes anyway.² So it got brand-new, somewhat improved soil, and then, to my everlasting shame, I stuck it back into the four-inch plastic pot which had been too large and water-retaining for it in the first place. I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I didn't have anything smaller at the time.

But otherwise, it got reasonably good treatment. It was watered when the top inch or two was dry (however infrequently that happened), it got decent light and a fair amount of warmth (it was certainly never cold), I never saw any bugs on it. And all it could ever muster were these little tiny leaves about two inches long, some of which never even unrolled all the way.

So eventually I took it out of the pot again, to see what was up, and – it still has no roots to speak of. Just a two-inch taproot, nothing more. So. I moved it down again, into a still smaller pot (now a three-inch square),³ and still we wait.

'Autumn' is rumored to be the most difficult of the four cultivars in its little clique: 'Autumn' is bad, 'Prince of Orange' can be reasoned with sometimes but is still kind of fussy, 'Moonlight' and 'Imperial Red' are everybody's buddies. I don't have any idea why this is: it makes no sense to me. (Your results may vary anyway.)

Consequently, though, 'Autumn' rates a much higher difficulty level. My experiences aren't necessarily typical, but I've heard enough things from enough people to make me think that it likes to be somewhat drier (hence: more rot-prone, more drought-resistant) and better-lit than 'Moonlight.' Not that doing those things will help you, if it decides you're not worthy of its respect: then it'll just make fun of your wardrobe and tear up a library book. But it's something you can try nevertheless. I suspect, too, that this is one of those plants like Dieffenbachia spp., where some people find it terribly easy and will read this whole piece thinking I'm insane, while others find it impossible no matter what they do and will be nodding their heads as they go. There are a few plants like that. (Pothos is another one: mine are all falling apart on me lately.)

In the greenhouse, 'Autumn,' 'Prince of Orange,' 'Moonlight,' and 'Imperial Red' all behave more or less the same: I haven't noticed any of them being more problematic than any of the others. Only at home has there been a difference. So it could be that I'm making too big a deal of the differences, and I just happened to get a specimen of 'Autumn' that was a bit of a bum. Time will tell. For right now, it's doing only as much work as necessary to keep me from throwing it in the trash, and that won't be enough to save it indefinitely. Watch your back, 'Autumn.'

EDITED 5/13/08: Decreased difficulty level from 5.1 to 4.4 after the combination of downpotting and public humiliation seemed to turn the plant around (see this post). It's still more difficult than the similar Philodendrons, but it looks like a lot of the mess was my fault.

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Photo credit: Judd Nelson: from leavemethewhite.com; all others: my own.

¹ (Or, looked at in a more sinister way: 1950s housewives were expected to be potted plants, more or less, except that they also had to do chores.)
² Whether or not to put rocks in the bottoms of your pots "for drainage" is between you and your god(s): I won't tell you that you have to or that you shouldn't. There's a lot of disagreement about the practice: some people always do it, for everything, all the time, and other people never do it because they believe it to be harmful. I personally fall mostly in the latter camp, though I make exceptions in the event that one is trying to move a plant from a standard-proportioned pot to an unusually tall and skinny one, in which case having rocks or clay shards or something in the bottom might well improve the inevitable center-of-gravity issues that this kind of pot always has. And there's also something to be said for doing something besides setting the plant down on top of six inches of wet, rootless soil, which couldn't possibly end well. The simpler way of dealing with this, though, is to just not use such a tall and narrow pot in the first place.
I myself always stuck stones in the bottom of pots for years, because my mother did and I assumed that that meant it was useful for something. In actuality, though, I think it generally either does nothing or impedes drainage, usually the former.
³ Did you know that round pots are measured by the diameter across the top, but square pots are measured by the length of the diagonal, by industry convention? A "three-inch" square pot is a square with sides 2.1 inches long. This leads to all kinds of chaos and confusion.

Random plant event: Davallia cuttings finally take, sorta:

Several months back, I cut my Davallia trichomanoides tyermanii all up because it needed to be repotted, and the rhizomes had grown over the sides of the pot they were in. So I cut them all back, moved the plant, and then tried to root the rhizomes, because I'd been told one could do that sort of thing.

Months later, I have to say, this has not paid off like I thought it might. I started 19 sets, each containing three small cuttings, and of all of those, only two seem to be alive at all, and of those two, only one appears to be doing well.

This is not necessarily bad, condidering that I didn't know what I was doing, but even so: I should have used longer sections of rhizome, I should have found some way of pinning them to the ground that worked, and I probably should have used something other than potting soil to try to root them in, because I think the potting soil wound up too soggy or too dry most of the time.

That said, I think I have a new plant (maybe two) anyway:

LOLSpath

I don't think there's anything I can add to this.

Princess (Murraya paniculata)

This plant was my husband's decision. He doesn't choose plants for us very often, but about a year ago (Dec. 29, in fact), we were at the greenhouse where I now work, and he saw this, and decided he wanted it. And I was all like, no, no, are you kidding, it's $50, and we'll never be able to keep it alive more than a few months, but he ignored me and bought it anyway, as sometimes happens. And so naturally it's turned out to be one of my favorite plants, which means that now, it pretty much gets everything it wants, all the time, and I have to admit that I was wrong every time I tell this story, which is relatively often. (Though I was still right about the Hedera helix, which he bought at about the same time. So there.)

The plant is, by now, a bit spoiled. During the summer, I was watering it about every three days, which may not sound unreasonable until you consider that this is a huge plant, in a big (three-gallon?) pot:


And it was actually using that much water, too. Heavy watering kept it alive for quite a while, but it never bloomed as much as it did when we first got it, until I started feeding it. First I was feeding at half-strength, every month or so. And what I noticed was that it started blooming about every month or so. So then I started feeding at every watering, again in half-strength, and then it bloomed all the time. So then I started watering at full-strength with every watering, and – it kinda stopped, actually. I think the issue is that I did this at the same time that we had a bunch of cold, gray days outside, and so it had the food but not the light. In any case, it's the only plant that I feed that often, or make a point of feeding at all, because it's the only one that responds when I do.

Light is also important if you want it to bloom: ours here has gotten one of the coveted front-and-center spots in the only south window, because that's what it wanted and it tends to get what it wants. Often, buds will form all over the plant after a feeding and watering, but only the ones facing the window will develop and open, at least until the plant gets rotated.

The rest of the care is not terribly hard. Full sun, lots of food and water, but temperature is not a big deal: according to one site, it's hardy outdoors to 28ºF, and can be grown outdoors in zone 9b, so I think we can assume that any indoor temperature should be fine. I've worried about the humidity from time to time, but it hasn't seemed to have any problems with that, even in the winters when it's dry in here. It will dump a bunch of leaves if the soil gets too dry, which are a pain to pick up, and the flowers wind up all over the floor all the time when the plant is happy (individual flowers last only two or three days), so it gets some difficulty points added for grooming.

The leaves are dark green and naturally stay shiny. Growth is slow, but fairly consistent throughout the year.

The flowers smell more or less identical to orange blossoms (my mother's comment recently was that "it smells like Texas," referring to the orange groves all over the lower Rio Grande Valley where we used to live, and she came up with this before I told her that the plants were related). I've gotten sufficiently accustomed to the smell that it's starting to just smell like "home" to me: unless there's been some kind of terrible incident, the Murraya is usually the first smell I notice when I come through the door, and it's in bloom often enough that there's an association built-up. It's nice to come home to.

The first set of flowers we got turned into small (less than an inch long) reddish fruits after the petals fell off; most of the flowers in subsequent batches, and all the flowers for at least the last nine months, have failed to fruit and I'm not sure why. I kept some of the early fruits, thinking that seeds could be planted and all that, but they went moldy almost immediately so I pitched them. It turns out, after some investigation, that moldy fruit may still contain viable seeds, but the plant hasn't given me another chance in a very long time, so unless and until it decides I've learned my lesson, that information is kinda useless to me. Everything I've read about propagation suggests that cuttings are not easily done and have a high failure rate, but seeds are relatively easy (though the plant will not flower until it's at least a year or two old, and seedlings aren't quick growers). I tried rooting a cutting once, some time ago, and it didn't go anywhere, though that was before the mini-greenhouse.


Murraya paniculata also has a long association with human beings. It's native from India, south and east to Pakistan, China (reflected in one of the common names, "Chinese box") and the Philippines, and then south through Malaysia, Indonesia, and into Australia. It is used as an outdoor ornamental, frequently as a hedge, in all kinds of tropical climates, with the predictable result that it is an invasive species in many islands of the South Pacific (including Hawaii), non-native areas of Australia (primarily Queensland), and south Florida: birds spread the seeds by eating the fruits.¹

Humans have used the twigs as chew-sticks for cleaning teeth, the leaves for flavoring food, and various parts of the plant as treatment for dysentery and minor aches. The leaves are said to have an astringent effect, and so are used in the healing of wounds. Couldn't actually vouch for any of these practices personally, but the food-flavoring part interests me. (Actually, the minor-aches part interests me too: everything has been hurting, especially my head and neck, for the last two or three days. I don't know if I'm getting sick or what. Even if I am, I'm not sure I'm ready to start gnawing on the houseplants just yet, but I'm not going to rule it out.)

The wood is said to be used occasionally in woodcarvings or furniture, though this is not common because it's not economical: the plant just doesn't grow quickly enough.

The plant is used in bonsai a lot more than I ever suspected, too, because it will sprout from old wood after being cut back and isn't that tough to care for or induce to flower. (I admit to being a little puzzled about how one gets it to flower without feeding, or how one maintains it as a bonsai if one is feeding it enough to get it to flower. I'm also puzzled about why you'd want it to flower – the flowers aren't huge, but they're big enough that it seems like they'd be way out of proportion in a bonsai setting. Clearly more investigation is needed.)

Murraya also has connections to some interesting culture: this site says that in Javanese culture, the plant is said to be capable of warding off witchcraft, bad luck, and the devil himself.² The story I find more congenial is from the specific Javanese site of Jogjakarta Sultanate, where the king always stopped to think by a Murraya tree before entering the palace hall for a meeting, so that the plant became associated with wisdom and contemplation.³ 'Cause, I mean, if you're looking for a way to banish devils and witchcraft, you could do a lot worse than taking some occasional quiet time to think about stuff.

I'm just saying.

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Photo credits:
Molly Ringwald: from leavemethewhite.com; all others: my own.

¹ The fruits are said not to be edible by people, but I doubt that means that they're toxic, just that they don't taste good. Incidentally, nothing I ran across suggested that any part of this plant is toxic to pets or children, which should be of interest to readers with one or both.
² This has not been my experience, at least in the bad luck department: I have about as much bad luck now as I ever did. It does seem to be effective as a devil repellent, though: I have spotted no devils in nearly a year. It is also an effective thermonuclear bomb repellent, elephant repellent, and great-white-sharks-falling-from-the-sky repellent. It is less effective at warding off loss of employment and drunken college students, though in fairness, I don't think there's anything that can repel drunken college students.
Related note: Our upstairs neighbors just came back from wherever they've been for the last few days, and started up a drunken party with bongo drums at about 10:15 PM last night. This would be less problematic if they had longer attention spans, or any kind of natural rhythm whatsoever, but instead the drums start and stop, get louder and softer, arrive on, just before, or just after the beats, and come in 90-second segments before morphing into some other pattern, so it's impossible to try to sleep through. We called the cops, because it sounded like there were several of them (guys, not drums -- we think there are only one or two drums) and they were drinking and yelling, and also because anybody who doesn't understand that bongo drums at 10:15 PM in an apartment building is a bad idea is probably not going to respond to reason anyway. To their credit, they stopped pretty immediately. I personally hope that they stopped immediately because they all spent the night in jail for underage drinking, but that's because I am a mean, mean fucker when I can't get to sleep when I want to sleep.
³ Well, wisdom, contemplation, and royalty, let's note.

Happy Boxing Day!

(I figure, let's celebrate the stuff that's really worth celebrating.
Like: getting rid of all the damn poinsettias.)

Wishing you all the very best during the joyous Boxing Day season, as well as a happy and prosperous New Year,

mr_subjunctive

Pop quiz: answers and key

Well, I hope everyone had a pleasant Christmas and all that. I did get some writing done, so a little of the pressure is off. I suspect I'm going to have to take short vacations like that every so often, especially as we go into spring and work supposedly gets more intense. But we'll see how it goes.

Sarah S wins the pop quiz, by virtue of being the only person to make any guesses, so congratulations, Sarah. You nailed at least seven of them. Your $50,000 check should be arriving in the mail within a week.¹

These are the leaves I know are in the picture:

PAINFULLY EASY:
Ficus lyrata (fiddle-leaf fig)
Syngonium podophyllum (arrowhead vine)

EASY:
Epipremnum aureum 'Marble Queen' (pothos)
Ficus benjamina
Begonia spp. (flowers)
Pelargonium x hortorum (geranium) (flowers; would also accept "Pelargonium spp.")
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis (leaves)
Plectranthus verticillatus (Swedish ivy)
Bougainvillea spp. (bracts)
Saxifraga stolonifera (strawberry begonia)
Bryophyllum daigremontianum (mother of thousands)

MODERATE DIFFICULTY:
Chamaedorea seifrizii (bamboo palm)
Euphorbia pulcherrima (poinsettia) (leaves and bracts)
Cyclamen persicum
Alternanthera dentata (Joseph's coat)
Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant)
Spathiphyllum spp. (peace lily)

DIFFICULT:
Ludisia discolor (jewel orchid) (upper left)
Sansevieria trifasciata (snake plant) (upper right)
Peperomia argyreia (watermelon peperomia) (upper right)
Ficus elastica (rubber plant) (lower right)

NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE:
Dracaena marginata (Madagascar dragon tree) (lower left, mostly covered and wadded up)

(clicking on this picture will bring up a much larger version, with annotations written over the various sections of plant debris)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

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¹ (Poetic license, as I'm sure you guessed already. There's no check, it wouldn't be for $50K if there were one, and I probably wouldn't get it together to have it arrive within the week if one existed. Other than that, the sentence is accurate.)