Next Time You Buy Madonna Flowers, Remember This

Actually somewhat less diva-ish than I would have expected from Madonna. Maybe she's mellowing. (Plus I think she's also turning into Romy, from Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion -- check out the way she pronounces "loathe.")

(Via)

Question for the Hive Mind: Clivia miniata

So I've had this Clivia miniata 'Aztec Gold' for a long time now (since August 2008), and I like it. It's never flowered, but that's okay: I like it well enough as a foliage plant. I mean, I'm a little disappointed, sure, because it had flowers when I bought it, and they lasted about five minutes once I got it home so I never had a chance to get a halfway decent photograph of them and now I've been waiting for over three years to see flowers again but No! It is fine! I like it as a foliage plant! I swear!

But it's also been very strange a few times. There was one spell a couple summers ago when I noticed black gunk on the leaves, so I went to wipe it off with a wet paper towel, and it turned the towel the most brilliant shade of yellow. And the black gunk was -- when I checked the plant more closely -- down in the spaces between leaves, making it more or less impossible to clean up. I never found out what was happening, but it's happened again at least once and doesn't appear to be harming the plant, so I've accepted it as part of the cost of growing a Clivia, or at least this particular Clivia, and I don't worry about it anymore.


But now we have a new thing. Gone is the mysterious black/yellow substance, and instead I saw a strange new dead thing in the middle of the plant, at the end of July. It's since dried up, and once dry it pulled out easily enough, but I don't know what it was. It was too short and too thick to be a leaf, plus it was dying as soon as it appeared: could it have been a flower that aborted development? And if so, why'd it stop? If not, what was it, then? And as long as I'm asking questions: what was the black/yellow stuff?

Pretty picture: Epidendrum Neon Valley

I don't think I like Epidendrums, when it comes right down to it. I mean, I try, and sometimes I think, oh, that's a nice color combination or whatever, but they just don't do it for me. Give me a few large flowers (Paphiopedilum, Cattleya) instead of a huge cloud of tiny flowers (Oncidium, Epidendrum) any day.

Not saying you have to agree. Just personal preference. I'd make an exception for fragrant flowers, but I haven't run into any straight Epidendrums that were fragrant either. At least not fragrant enough that I noticed.

Random plant event: Agave lophantha offset

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've had an Agave offset for me indoors. One of the A. victoriae-reginaes has lots of offsets, but I think they were all present when I first got the plant, so I don't get credit for them. But this one is definitely new, and definitely all happened while the plant was in the house.


It's inconvenient timing: the A. lophanthas are close enough to one another now, and the marginal spines sharp enough, that they've been scratching one another's leaves and leaving scars. Adding a new plant into the mix, that can't be moved further away from the others, is not going to help the situation. Still, though, I'm happy if the Agaves are happy.

Music Video: Overdub "Five Step" (Radiohead / Dave Brubeck)

Found this when I went looking for music in 5/4 time. (Why was I looking for music in 5/4 time, you might ask? I don't remember.) It had somehow never occurred to me that "Fifteen Steps" (the Radiohead contribution) might feel odd and jerky because it was in an unusual time signature, or that "Take Five" might be so named because of its unusual time signature (also 5/4).



But then, there are lots of things I haven't gotten around to wondering about yet. I'm a busy guy, with limited wondering capabilities.

As a bonus musical selection -- and I realize many of you will have seen this already -- Alanis Morissette's cover of the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" is still a thing of beauty, four and a half years later:

Pretty picture: Sedum kamtschaticum

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of last week were unusually productive for me. Plants got watered, posts got written, trips were taken, I caught up on e-mail, I sorted pictures, I had time and energy to deal with everything. Since then . . . not so much. Like, I spent several hours yesterday trying to write a post about Sedum kamtschaticum and not being happy with anything I wrote, and then at one point I had a random I-wonder-if-I-could-find-this-on-the-internet thought and wound up down a YouTube hole for the rest of the day. (You'll find out what I was looking for this afternoon.)

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

It's been a busy week for all of us.

Name That Mutant!

The husband and I went to see the rabbits on Tuesday. Mostly the trip was disappointing -- I really only saw a handful of plants I was at all interested in buying, and couldn't afford the one below, which is the one I wanted the most.


I know it doesn't look like much. It's mostly interesting because of who it is, not what it looks like. Can you guess the species? I'll give you one hint: it's the subject of one of the plant profiles. (Not much of a hint, I realize, since there are now 100 plant profiles as of a few days ago. But that's all you get.)

 

 



 

 

 

The answer: it's Schefflera actinophylla 'Renegade.'

This is the first one I've seen in person. From the (small, low-resolution) pictures I saw when I was working on the S. actinophylla profile, I couldn't figure out how 'Renegade' worked: the leaves appeared to stick out of the main stem directly, instead of being multiple leaflets on a long petiole, the way the species usually works.

(A normally-shaped but poorly-photographed S. actinophylla leaf.)
Having now gotten a close look at 'Renegade,' I understand a bit better. The plant still has petioles, they're just . . . um . . . well, I thought of phocomelia.


The petioles ("Petioles" might not be the right word for it, but I am confused about the difference between "petiole," "petiolule," "pinna," "rachis," and "rachilla," and was unable to figure out which was which on my own. So I'm just going to call them all "petioles" until somebody can explain to me what the correct terminology would be, at which point I'll change it. Is there a botanist in the house?) are extremely short, and abnormally thick, but produce the same number of leaflets. Instead of pointing in every direction, the leaflets wind up all pointing away from the main stem. I also noticed when I got home and was looking at these pictures that 'Renegade' appears to do something I've never seen on any other Schefflera: it has a third layer of petioles, in spots.

The regular "petiole" is considerably shortened, and indicated by the pink line. Then there are the "petioles" which connect to the individual leaflets, as in the normal plant (orange). Except that even the petioles' petioles have petioles, on the far left and far right (yellow). This is cool, but more or less impossible to describe without a visual aid.
So I find myself both attracted and repulsed by 'Renegade.' On one hand, it has going for it that it'd make a much tidier plant: it won't take up as much floor space as one of the more standard varieties, and the overall shape of the plant is a bit more defined. On the other hand, it's kind of a monster and will probably scar the fragile psyches of children with its grotesque deformities. So.

What does everybody else think?