Random plant event: Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Splish Splash' flowers

Not quite what I had in mind for today's post, but I'm having trouble with the longer pieces I'm working on, so instead you get this.


This is one of the coleus cuttings I'm trying to overwinter; I have all of them under lights for the time being and didn't expect to have to watch for flowers, but apparently I do.

I know: not interesting. I suck. The really frustrating thing is that I know more or less where I want to go with the posts I'm working on, and I'm just having trouble getting them to work properly. I hate trying to write from outlines, but it may come to that.

New Plants, Part Whatever

I had planned to spend all day yesterday diligently working on the blog and/or watering, because both of these are things that always need to be done, and experience has proven that when things need to be done, it works out best for me if I do them. I even had a specific post idea in mind. (I won't tell you what it was, but you would have found it brilliant.)

But then the husband said he wanted to go to Iowa City for something or another, and I have that pending tax refund burning a hole in my pocket, and this is the time of year when my former employer puts everything on 20% off¹ in order to move stuff out the door and make room for the annuals.² So this was my moment to buy anything I'd seen in the last six months that I really wanted and hadn't already bought.

So I bought.

And yeah, I know the pictures aren't great. I was in a hurry and the light was crap. Only so much I can do.

Two of the four plants have appeared on the blog as walkaways already. Anthurium podophyllum (which if you've not yet seen pictures of what A. podophyllum is capable of becoming, you should) --


-- and Monstera deliciosa (née Philodendron) 'Cheesecake' --


-- were both from Walkaways Part 4. (The Monstera returned later, for an unfinished business post.)

I hadn't really intended to buy the Monstera, originally. I walked away from it just fine the first time, no pangs of longing and regret, it was totally cool. But then I did the unfinished business post, and Karen715 pronounced them "to die for" in the comments there. Apparently Karen715 has the power to change my reality merely by saying that something is cool, 'cause after that, I started thinking, well, they're not so bad, and I bet I could find someplace to put one if I come into a lot of money someday. . . . So the Monstera is her fault.

Which we are okay with as long as she promises to use her powers for good.

I also picked up a Eucharis grandiflora, even though I already have a Eucharis grandiflora, because . . . there were a bunch of them blooming, and they had this really nice 4-inch one that was way nicer than the 4-inch one I've got at home, and -- well, and I got caught up in the moment. Though even that one, I'd considered buying before, so it was also a walkaway that I came back for. Technically.


And then finally, a kind of NOID. It's an Aloe, I'm pretty sure. WCW had told me last summer that the only identification they had for it was "hedgehog aloe," and when I look up "hedgehog aloe" on Google I get the ID of Aloe humilis. The problem is, the pictures I get when I look for "Aloe humilis" don't look a whole lot like this particular plant; the main difference is that the on-line pictures have a lot of bumps on all sides of the leaf: front, back and margins.


My plant does have two bumps on the upper leaf surfaces, but otherwise, they're all on the margins. Which makes it all kind of ambiguous. So I think it's probably Aloe humilis, but I am far from confident about that.

The reason for buying it doesn't make a lot of sense either: I kind of felt sorry for them. They haven't sold well for the store: I don't think it's any fault of the plant, just that they got too many of them. But so regular readers may be aware of my soft spot for plants that nobody else likes (e.g.), and I guess this is another case of that. The actual thought process was something like, Aloes and I get along well, this is one I didn't have already, and it has three offsets. Which put it over the edge.

Contrary to what you might think, I'm not ordinarily quite this much of a pushover for new plants: there's a guy in my head who processes all new-plant requests and tries to talk me out of them (Do you have a specific, available physical location in mind for this? Do you already have one of these, or anything that is strongly similar? Could you find it cheaper somewhere else? Do you have reason to think you'll be able to keep it alive for a year or more? Do you actually have the money physically on your person? Could this money be more productively spent elsewhere? Etc.), and I gave him the day off.³ He's back on the clock again at least until I receive the tax money, but I figure I'd been good for quite a while⁴ and deserved something new.

If anybody thinks they might need his services the next time I give him the day off (I'm pretty sure it'll be no later than the end of March), send me an e-mail.

-

¹ Except for the things that don't count, an exception which is mainly there to cover the highly-desirable blooming stuff (Phalaenopsis, Cyclamen, Primula, etc.). This was annoying to have to describe or explain to customers, but I have no problem enjoying foliage plants, and actively dislike some of the bloomers which don't fall under the discount, so it's not much of an issue for me personally, as a customer.
² This is a lot of the reason why the bloomers don't count: the flower shop has one table's worth of space in the greenhouse regardless of what's in the rest of the greenhouse. So there's no need to sell them any faster than usual.
³ Easier said than done, of course, since I then had to field questions from him for half an hour about whether giving him the day off was a good idea.
⁴ (Seriously -- my last new plant purchase was December 13, more than a month ago. I am the very model of restraint.)

Saturday morning Nina picture

I came into the office at one point on Wednesday and saw this. Not only is Nina very literally hanging by a single toenail here, but she did it for long enough that I was able to take at least 30 pictures of her doing so before I stopped, and she was still hanging when I stopped taking pictures. So I don't know how long this went on, but I figure for at least five minutes.

She didn't seem uncomfortable. The square-cube law suggests that there's no real reason to think she would be, either (which is why I didn't try to "free" her). Though it's very different from our ordinary understanding of how the world works, as creatures that weigh kerjillions of times more than Nina does.

As time goes by, it's getting harder and harder to come up with pictures of Nina doing something new, that I haven't already posted to the blog, but we're clearly not out of odd photo opportunities yet.

Picture: Cyrtomium falcatum frond

We had an ice storm on Wednesday, which I'd been looking forward to, but then I spent the last several hours of Wednesday without the internet, which made it suck anyway. I'm having terrible luck with weather this year. The blizzard was not a particularly good storm, plus it led to the plant room panic, and now the ice storm (which was okay, not the best ice storm ever, but not terrible) knocks out the internet for several hours. It's as if bad weather can be inconvenient even when you don't go anywhere or do anything. How is that fair?

We also lost the telephone (We have a landline. The husband also has a cell, but it frightens and angers me in a caveman-encountering-fire kind of way, so I rarely use it.), which is a little scary -- suppose we'd been relying on just the landline, and needed to call 911? Is this a plot by the cell phone companies to slowly kill off all the people who rely solely on their landlines?

But anyway. Which all means that I spent most of yesterday catching up on the internet, and boy was there a lot to catch up on. Among other things, there's DRAMA! at Garden Web. And then also for some reason I spent a lot of time monitor-shopping (browser-shopping? What's the internet equivalent of window-shopping?) at Glasshouse Works, because the husband made me do my taxes (long story), so now I know I have money coming to me at some point and want to spend it. (There's nothing in particular at GHW that I have to have, but I am very intrigued by Dyckia velascana. As well as twenty or thirty other things. Though I will probably not buy all of them, and may not buy any of them.) And what I should have been doing during all that time was watering plants, because . . . on any given day, the odds are about 4 out of 5 that I should be watering plants at some point during it.

Anyway. All of the above is to explain to you why I don't have anything better to show you, post-wise, than just an unfurling Cyrtomium falcatum frond. Though it's a very nice frond. Probably better full-sized, by the way.


So we've got this today, we'll do a Nina picture tomorrow, and then I'll be back on track. I have a particularly weird Nina picture in mind. It should be a big hit with everybody.

Random plant event: Salvia elegans flowering indoors

I guess the Salvia elegans cuttings are maybe getting confused by the shop lights they're under, because I'm noticing several of them beginning to flower. Or possibly they made up their minds to flower when they were water-rooting on the kitchen windowsill, and since they were already committed to it, they're doing it even though they're under lights.

This probably works better when opened full-size in its own window.
In any case. They're short-day plants, and the lights are on from 6 AM to 10 PM, so something isn't adding up properly. I've seen people saying elsewhere on the internet that they'll start blooming around August, and continue through the winter if they're in a greenhouse, which presumably is what's happening, except -- they should think it's summer now, shouldn't they? I mean, if they're getting sixteen hours of light per day and all.

Wev. In any case, I now have forty-three three-inch plants from cuttings living in my office, plus the parent plant (which lives in the basement, since it's too big for the office), and I'm in the process of making even more. The idea is to sell or trade them in the spring. A lot of times when I go in or out of the office, I wind up running my hands through them just to get a whiff of the smell. I don't use the word "delightful" very often (at least, not unironically), but it's a delightful plant.

Just as soon as I get through the Phalaenopsis profile, I'm starting on one for Salvia elegans. Let's hope it's easier, 'cause Phalaenopsis is turning out to be a huge pain.

List: Houseplants With Mostly-Chartreuse Foliage

This list differs from some of the previous ones in that most of these plants will be particular cultivated varieties, not species. I don't know exactly when or how it happened, but at some point in fairly recent history, somebody decided that the houseplant market was ready for this color, and then all at once, bam, every plant had a yellow-green twin. I've been wondering for quite a while whether there was some kind of explanation for this sudden proliferation -- some kind of genetic engineering manipulation that could generate a chartreuse version of anything, perhaps? -- but as best as I can tell, this was a change of fashion, not of genes. It appears that nature's been pitching us chartreuse sports for forever, and there's only recently been a market for them.

As with some of the previous lists, this list is true only for certain values of "houseplant," "mostly," and "chartreuse." You may disagree with some of my choices. It also probably goes without saying that we're (for the most part) talking about plants that are yellow-green when healthy, not yellow-green due to disease or nutrient deficiencies. Withhold magnesium long enough, and you can turn almost anything yellow.

Asplenium antiquum, the Japanese bird's-nest fern. (Possibly not technically chartreuse, but at least a very very light yellowish-green. This also goes for Asplenium nidus, the . . . um . . . "regular" bird's-nest fern.)

Dracaena deremensis 'Limelight.' (D. d. 'Lemon-Lime' and 'Goldstar' are sometimes close, but the amount of actual chartreuse varies a lot with them.)

Epipremnum aureum 'Neon.' (pothos)

Pelargonium x hortorum 'Vancouver Centennial.' (geranium)

Philodendron 'Golden Emerald.'

Philodendron hederaceum 'Lemon-Lime.' (heart-leaf philodendron)

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Quarterback.' (coleus) Other varieties are available which contain some chartreuse in the leaves.

Spathiphyllum cv., maybe 'Golden Glow.' (peace lily)

Vanilla planifolia, variegated. (vanilla orchid)

Vriesea ospinae var. gruberi.
Which of the ten do I like? I'm a huge fan of Philodendron hederaceum 'Lemon-Lime,' in large part because the new leaves come in as a pinkish-orange color, mature into yellow, and then eventually settle down into a light yellow-green with time. Since all three ages are present at any given time, this makes the plant a lot more colorful than similar plants like Epipremnum aureum 'Neon,' and I also find it way easier to grow than Epipremnum, so it's win-win for me.

Dracaena deremensis 'Limelight' is another plant I really like. But I don't think I've ever met a D. deremensis that I didn't like. So that explains that.

The Spathiphyllum-that-might-be-'Golden-Glow' is my third choice in this group. I'm not ordinarily that thrilled with spaths. A well-grown one is, it's true, a thing of beauty, but they're still so common that it's hard to get excited about them. But this particular one, whatever its name might be, is pretty darn different, and it's just as well-behaved as all the others: treat it well and it will look fine.

I like the Vriesea too, but it is so far kind of undecided about me, so it doesn't make the top three list.

Any chartreuse houseplants I've left out?

Not pictured:
Some Asparagus spp. (asparagus ferns) are a very light yellowy green, particularly the new growth, and especially A. densiflorus sprengeri and A. d. myersii.

Dieffenbachia 'Rudolph Roehrs;' possibly some other Dieffenbachia cvv.

I've seen a few Dracaena sanderiana (ribbon dracaena, "lucky bamboo") cultivars around that had the same basic coloration as D. deremensis 'Lemon-Lime,' with a green center and chartreuse margins. I don't have a cultivar name for them, but they were pretty striking, as D. sanderiana go. Asiatica has a solid-chartreuse variety called 'Lucky Gold.'

A few chartreuse cultivars of Ficus maclellandii (long-leaf fig) and F. microcarpa are known, though I've never seen them in person, only on-line at places like Asiatica. Asiatica also sells a Ficus benjamina it calls 'Monique,' which supposedly has chartreuse or yellow leaves with a green center, but I've seen 'Monique' before and it does no such thing, so they may be mistaken about the name. Or I am. One of us is clearly very confused.(UPDATE: I've seen a plant like this where I used to work which was tagged 'Margo;' Googling for it didn't actually turn up anything conclusive, but there was a page about a company called "Margo Nursery Farms," which had just patented a chartreuse variety of Ficus benjamina it was calling 'Golden King.' So it may be that the names got crossed at some point, and the plant I saw was 'Golden King.' The pictures which came up for the name 'Golden King,' though, were different from the plant I saw, though, and looked more like the standard variegated Ficus. But the point is: I have seen a chartreuse Ficus benjamina, in person. I'm just not sure what it's called.)

There's a Hedera canariensis variety, the name of which escapes me, where the new growth is light green to chartreuse. It sounds cooler than it is, though.

Asiatica Nursery sells a Homalomena lindenii 'Lemon Glow,' which resembles H. 'Emerald Gem' except for the color.

There are some chartreuse or chartreuse-and-green cultivars of Nephrolepis exaltata (boston fern), like 'Rita's Gold' and 'Tiger Fern.'

Pandanus veitchii (Veitch's screw pine) probably shouldn't be chartreuse, but sometimes is anyway, perhaps due to nutrient deficiency. The reason I'm including it anyway is because the plant doesn't otherwise appear to suffer when this is happening, I haven't definitively proven to myself that fertilizer fixes the problem, and there is also a cultivar with chartreuse edges that stay chartreuse even if the rest of the leaf comes in green. So it's borderline, but close enough.

Pedilanthus tithymaloides (devil's backbone) is ordinarily solid green, but the variety I have is mostly yellowish, with a little flame of green in the leaf centers.

A 'Golden Xanadu' Philodendron exists, though I've never seen it in person. Asiatica has one called 'Xanadu Gold,' which is more or less what I imagine 'Golden Xanadu' to be.

Asiatica has a Philodendron 'Hammerhead Gold,' which looks like a chartreuse P. bipennifolium.

Also from Asiatica: Philodendron 'Jungle Fever,' 'Malay Gold,' 'Ring of Fire,' and P. bipinnatifidum 'Gold Satin.'

Philodendron 'Moonlight.'

Asiatica also has a few chartreuse or chartreuse-and-green Rhapis excelsa varieties. They are all appallingly expensive, as both Rhapis and Asiatica tend to be.

There are a few Soleirolia soleirolii cultivars which are chartreuse; we had trouble keeping them going at work, though.

I know of one Syngonium podophyllum cultivar that's about half chartreuse and half green, with the basic pattern of 'White Butterfly,' though I'm not sure what it's named.

Xanthosoma 'Lime Zinger' is also only a partial houseplant, but it's so vividly chartreuse that I'm willing to let that slide. And you probably could grow it indoors, if you really wanted to.

Random plant event: Spathiphyllum 'Golden Glow?' flower

After the previous post where I noticed that my chartreuse peace lily was sprouting, I decided to fertilize it, as a reward for, you know, doing something. So then it almost immediately decided to reward me for rewarding it by growing flowers, three or four of them. Which means that I now have to, somehow, reward it for rewarding me for rewarding it. I don't see this ending well.


I don't know for sure what variety this is. I've been calling it 'Golden Glow,' which is the chartreuse Spathiphyllum that Asiatica sells, because that's the only chartreuse variety I know the name of, but it wasn't tagged when I bought it, and there's a good chance that it's probably not actually 'Golden Glow.'

Whatever it is, I've only ever seen them one place (Frontier, in Cedar Rapids), and even Frontier only had them on one occasion. A lot of people don't like the chartreuse plants (it takes a while to get used to the idea that this is the normal foliage color, and not chlorosis), which might explain why they aren't more commonly available. It's been a perfectly well-behaved plant, though (we've had problems, but they've all been on my end, mostly me letting it dry out too much), and I've had it for one month shy of three years. This is, I think, the first reblooming in that three years, but if it's as simple as fertilizing -- which appears to be the case -- then I think we'll be seeing more of these flowers in the future.

Chartreuse week continues at PATSP tomorrow, with a list of chartreuse/yellow/yellow-green foliage plants.

Pretty picture: Crossandra infundibuliformis

Old picture, from work. We didn't get these in very often, and when we did, we tended not to get very many. I'm not sure why (it wasn't my decision: the flower shop were the ones bringing these in); they tended to sell more or less right away, so I never got to know the plant very well.

The foliage is nice (somewhat like Coffea: dark green and shiny). According to one of my houseplant books, they'll bloom more or less continuously in good conditions, so maybe it doesn't even matter if the foliage is nice or not. (Though the same book makes them sound like kind of a pain to keep flowering, too. Foliage is never entirely beside the point.) The color in the above photo is a little screwy: the flowers were more of a deep orange, rather than being a yellowish orange like they appear above. Apparently more of a pink/salmon/red color is more typical, from what I see around Google.

I assume there must be something really wrong with this plant, since I don't see it for sale very often. Since I don't have a lot of direct experience with it, though, I don't have any good theories about what its fatal flaw might be. Is it boring? Buggy? Impossible to please? Does it become weak when exposed to kryptonite? Anybody who has a theory is invited to share their experiences in comments.