Pretty pictures: Rime

(This was originally supposed to go up this morning, but then I got concerned that it wasn't, you know, planty enough. Thus, the Papaver photo earlier.)

On 27 December, we woke up to a clear, sunny morning where everything that had been outside overnight had turned white. This is called rime (in this specific case, "hard" rime -- there is also a "soft" rime, but it's different), and occurs when fog forms at below-freezing temperatures, and is very pretty.

These pictures were taken in and near Hills, IA, just south of Iowa City.

Pretty picture: Papaver rhoeas

This is terribly out of date, of course. The photo is dated May 25. I had a last-minute change of heart about the post I'd originally planned for last Monday, and changing one thing meant changing other things, so I'm sort of scrambling for subject matter at the last minute, even though I actually have way more stuff going on here in the house than I can blog about already. It's complicated, and would be difficult to explain. Therefore, Papaver in January. Not that I expect many people will complain.

*sigh* Ads, Again:

UPDATE 5:08 PM CST: I changed the time on this post to keep it at the top of the blog. There is a new mashup below, though.

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Yes, this is all the communication I've gotten on the matter: I have no idea what invalid activity they think my account might be at risk of generating, or why they think it might be at risk of generating any invalid activity at all. They don't, apparently, have to tell you.

Yes, I am unhappy and inconvenienced.

Yes, I have submitted an appeal.

No, I am not particularly understanding or cooperative.

Music Video: A Plus D "Standing in the Way of Connection" (The Gossip / Elastica mashup)

Incredibly boring video, but the interesting one I found for the same song was so hyperactive it hurt to watch.

The mix is "Connection," by Elastica, crossed with "Standing in the Way of Control," by The Gossip. I'm not terribly familiar with The Gossip (I know who they are, but they're a little after my time), but I love love love love Elastica's first album. (The second one is a piece of crap, alas, but the first one is great.)

It doesn't hurt that they're one of two band names that overlap with the plant collection: (Ficus) Elastica and (Chamaedorea) Metallica. Though I like Elastica a lot better than Metallica.

Random plant event: Murraya paniculata fruits

This has happened a few times since we've had the plant, but I've never quite been able to figure out how it gets pollinated. I don't remember ever trying to self-pollinate it (which is weird, actually, and unlike me), and most of the time we don't have any insects around which would do it (certainly not during winter). I couldn't find anything definitive on-line as to whether M. paniculata ought to be able to self-pollinate in the first place. I mean, clearly it must -- we only have the one plant -- but it seems like if it's able to self-pollinate then it really ought to be doing it way more often than this.

Ugh. Please kindly ignore the hard-water spots. This suddenly became really extreme and noticeable in the last couple months, and I don't know what to do about it. (Would winter make hard tap water harder, somehow?)
As it is, we see fruits on the plant about once a year, usually in the winter, and generally it's only one fruit per round. This year is special because there are two fruits at once. They look pretty identical in the photos, but there really are two of them.


A reader sent me a M. paniculata fruit quite a while ago (last spring? Summer?). I got one seed out of it, and tried to sprout it, but didn't use vermiculite (I know! What was I thinking?), so it dried out a lot, and may not have even been viable in the first place. I'll definitely try again with these, whenever the time seems right to do it, because nobody sells this here anymore. We couldn't even get it at work, due to the Florida quarantine for citrus greening. So if I want more of them (and I do: oh, my, how I do), I'm going to have to figure out how to propagate them from this plant. Cuttings are said to be possible, but difficult, and the husband discourages me (strongly) from hacking the plant to pieces, so I don't have a lot of opportunities for experimentation. Seeds are my best bet at the moment. Let's hope there are some viable ones in there.

Question for the Hive Mind: Weird Philodendron hederaceum gets weirder

Not terribly long ago, I found an oddball Philodendron hederaceum in the grocery store, which had faint dark-green speckling on the leaves, most noticeably on the newest ones. It wasn't dramatic, but it was unusual, plus cheap, so I bought it.


Then I kind of forgot about it for a while -- it was in a darkish spot in the husband's office, and it wasn't giving me any problems or doing anything very exciting, so I didn't have any particular reason to think about it much.

Then there was a rearrangement in the husband's office, and the plant got moved to a brighter spot, and it responded by producing new leaves, which was a bit more dramatic than the previous growth. (The leaves are too shiny to be able to get good pictures from; sorry.)




Which is all great and everything, but it leaves me wondering even harder what the hell it is I have. I was unable to find any varieties of P. hederaceum like this using Google, so I figure there are only four real possibilities here:

1. It really is a new thing, and I'm the first person to have seen one, which means I have discovered a new variety of Philodendron hederaceum and can now patent it and become rich. Which is not realistic because all indications are that the universe will never permit me to get rich. Plus, someone else obviously had it first, because it was like this when I bought it.

2. It's a newish, named, patented variety of P. hederaceum, which just hasn't shown up yet on-line, or I'm looking in the wrong places on Google, or whatever. Which is unrealistic because . . . how would you create a new variety of a plant without any pictures of it showing up on-line? Why wouldn't you tell anybody?

3. It's a really old, non-patented variety that nobody sells anymore, and I've never seen it anywhere before because when I did, I assumed it was Epipremnum aureum 'Marble Queen' and didn't give it a second look. Which is kind of implausible because . . . well, I can be unobservant, sure, and I can even be unobservant about plants, but that theory involves me being unobservant about plants for a length of time I consider implausible. If nothing else, I should have seen this variety when I was Googling around for the Philodendron hederaceum profile.

4. It's not a new variety or an old variety, but a regular P. hederaceum that's got a virus or nutrient deficiency or something. But that doesn't really work for me either, since the pattern of speckles is more or less the same as in Epipremnum aureum 'Marble Queen' and lots of other aroid cultivars. If 'Marble Queen' and the rest were because of a virus, I figure I'd have heard about it by now. And anyway it seems to be growing just fine, same as the other varieties I have.


Can anybody out there explain this, suggest resources to check out, or at least tell me which of the possibilities above strikes them as most likely? I looked at the International Aroid Society's website for a list of possible cultivar names, but nothing useful turned up. (Because I'm not an IAS member?) If I have to, I suppose I can try to track down the wholesaler, by asking the grocery store where they get their plants, but I'm hoping it won't come to that. (I have a guess already, and dealt with them at the ex-job, and didn't like it.) So, um. Theories?

Music Video: Partyben "Single Ladies (in Mayberry)" (Beyonce / Andy Griffith Show theme mashup)

Yes, another mashup. This one is perhaps more clever than good, and as usual the video isn't particularly helpful, but even so, it amuses me, so maybe it will amuse you.

I wasn't originally intending to make the mashups a regular PATSP feature, and I'm still not, not exactly, but I kept finding ones I liked, so I've decided to make January (or what's left of it) mashups month here. There won't be one every single day, but I've got eleven videos scattered through the remainder of the month, semi-randomly. There will still be plant-related content in the mornings: the videos, if they're going to happen, will happen in the afternoon. ("Morning" and "afternoon" meaning 4:30 AM and 4:30 PM Central Standard Time; it will not necessarily be morning or afternoon where you're viewing them.)

Random plant event: Carica papaya seedling

Partly/mostly inspired by the smallish papaya tree at the Quad City Botanical Center, we bought a papaya in mid December, and I scooped out a bunch of seeds and planted them to see how that would go. (The husband ate the papaya. It turns out that I don't like them very much -- not the flavor, the texture.) I planted 144 seeds on 14 December, which seemed like overkill even at the time, but I could have done two or three times that many: papayas have a lot of seeds.

Some of the seeds, after they'd been removed and cleaned up.
Then I put the flat on the back of a light fixture down in the basement, for the bottom heat. The first seedling popped up after just nine days, on 23 December.


Since then, at last count, twenty-two more have sprouted. I'm a little surprised it's not more than that, but I suppose they don't want to seem eager. Or possibly they're disappointed with the light. In any case, more are coming along every time I check, and I already have more of them than I'll know what to do with, once they're transplanted to pots.

I'm not actually sure what to do with them at that point, though. Are they difficult to grow indoors? Anybody who's tried this have some tips?