Scenes From the Garage

What a terrible time of year this is. So warm out (71, 80, and 87 F on Sun/Mon/Tue, which is 22, 27 and 31 C, for those of you in civilized countries) that I feel stupid if I don't have the plants outside, because obviously they'd enjoy themselves, but too cold at night to leave them there, so I have to haul them all back in the house or into the garage or something, then drag them back out again in the morning. Except last night I did leave them outside (forecast was for a low of 62F/17C), so they were probably all destroyed by a freak hail storm or something. (I'll add that to the end of the post, if the hail thing happened.)

Starting tonight, it's going to turn cold again, so all the plants that I've been carefully moving around every hour so they don't sunburn are going to have to come back inside and live in their old spots again for four or five days. There are obviously worse things than having to move lots of plants around, but I can't remember what any of them are, because I'm exhausted from moving lots of plants around.

About 75% of that last sentence isn't even a joke.

Therefore, today's post will be a lazy and poorly-photographed assemblage of things I've seen when transporting the plants from place to place.

First up is the big Coffea, which is . . . big.

Also a Coffea.

It's spent a long time in the corner of the plant room. This is because that's pretty much the only place in the house where it would fit, and it's done nicely there. But I decided I wanted to give it a chance to spend a summer outside for the first time since I bought it in December 2006, so I wrestled it out of the corner and brought it outside and stood it up, and, well:

This is an inaccurate picture in two ways. One, the top tier or two of branches got whacked by the ceiling fan or bent against the ceiling or otherwise broken, at some point a day or two after this picture was taken, so the plant is now slightly shorter than this.

The second way the picture is inaccurate is because the plant is more or less upright. That's not unheard of, but it's not been typical lately. Because it's been grown indoors for so long, the stem is weak, and any little breeze will tip it over 60 degrees. For the moment, the precarious-looking wobble is sort of serving a purpose. I don't have any good spots for keeping a plant this tall in total shade, but it's always waving around, so none of the leaves wind up staying in direct sun long enough to burn.

That, or Coffeas are just naturally sunburn-resistant, 'cause it's been fine. I prefer to think that it's the waving around, not natural sunburn resistance, because then that means the waving and bending is a good thing. In any case, I'm hoping that the plant takes this as a sign that it needs to invest in a thicker, sturdier trunk before the summer's over.

Next up, the Aloe harlana, or whatever it is, had started to produce some flower buds before it got moved outside, but they're getting bigger and starting to color up now.

The above picture was taken on Monday; by Tuesday morning, when I got the plant out of the garage, the inflorescence was nearly horizontal. It didn't seem to be creased or broken, so the flowers might still open, but I don't have an explanation for the sudden change, so I'm a little concerned. If the flowers open regardless, I'll be pleased.

If they open and I get to see a hummingbird, I'll be more pleased, but so far since we moved, I've gotten an average of one hummingbird sighting per year, and I'd just as soon not use mine up so early and then have nothing to look forward to.

Next. Have I told you lately how much I love my Araucaria bidwillii? 'Cause I do. It's been around long enough now that I'm actually starting to think of it as a friend. Even by normal plant-personification standards (or, you know, "normal" plant-personification standards), that's a bit much. I guess it's true, what Bob Dylan said: the plants are my friends; they're blowing in the wind.

Puns aside, the A. bidwillii is putting on a bunch of new growth all of a sudden. Some combination, no doubt, of the longer days, brighter light, better air circulation, and increased root room -- I repotted it on 11 April.

Not all of the news is good. The goddamned fungus on the Euphorbias is not getting any better, despite pretty liberal application of chlorothalonil, and I'm alternating between rage and despair about that whole situation. (I suppose it's probably too early to give up just yet, though.) Also I was throwing the tennis ball for Sheba on Monday and mis-aimed it into the plants. Blew some leaves off of the big Agave victoriae-reginae, as well as partly pulping some of the weaker Aloes, which was a bummer. But these things will happen. And I've learned some sort of valuable lesson, I'm almost certain.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Memoria Larry Heuer

Paphiopedilum Memoria Larry Heuer is a cross between Paphiopedilum malipoense (previously) and Paphiopedilum emersonii. I don't think I have any particularly strong feelings about it one way or the other.

Random plant event: Cordyline glauca

After hearing a while back that Cordyline glauca was a man-made hybrid, I attempted to track down its origins for this post, and found a few sites implying that it wasn't a hybrid at all, that it was actually a variety of Cordyline brasiliensis. So then I went looking for information about Cordyline brasiliensis, but GRIN has never heard of C. brasiliensis, Plant List was apparently broken Saturday morning, and Tropicos has heard of C. brasiliensis but was unable to provide me with any information about it that I could understand. (Which is a problem I have every time I try to use Tropicos for anything.)

So I still have no idea what Cordyline glauca's origin might be. I suppose we're lucky that no lives are at stake.

Fortunately, we don't need to know its origin in order to appreciate its flowers. I've posted pictures of C. glauca flowers previously, but 1) the older photos were produced under the lower-light conditions of the ex-job's greenhouse, and the inflorescence was consequently a bit stretched-out looking, 2) these are better pictures than those in the other post, and 3) the flowers are almost exactly the same color as the current blog background, and one doesn't often get opportunities to be so matchy-matchy on the blog.

I've only tried Cordyline glauca indoors once; I don't recall it ever having any pests, but it also didn't grow very much. It sort of limped along for a few years, then died. Cause of death was undetermined, but I suspect at least some of the problem was that it wasn't in strong enough light. I didn't try to replace it because the specimens available around here are usually pretty big (~3-5 feet / 1-1.5 m tall) and expensive (~$30-40).

Flowering is, of course, unlikely indoors, though probably not impossible.

-

Unrelated but still interesting: having scale infestations suddenly seems . . . not so bad.


(via MetaFilter)

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Spent a lot of yesterday moving plants outside, and then (after looking at the weather forecast) back inside again. The location is sort of new: the husband poured a slab of concrete on the north side of the garage last fall, which means I've got a decent-sized, mostly-shaded, level surface to fill up with plants this summer.

Unfortunately, they're not accustomed to outdoor light yet, so even if it had been warm enough to leave them out, I couldn't have done it. The side of the garage still gets some direct sun in the afternoon. Sunburn isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's worth going to a little extra trouble to avoid. So for a while, I'm going to be moving plants out every morning and then in again every night.

As for the pets, Sheba had a pretty nice Friday; both the husband and I were outside a lot, so she got to sniff every square inch of the back yard. Several times. Apparently it's fascinating.

Book review: Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener, by Joseph Tychonievich

DISCLAIMER 1: I was not provided a copy of this book for review by Timber Press, and am a little irritated about this because they knew I wanted one. Instead, I paid for my copy. Like a commoner.

DISCLAIMER 2: I know Tychonievich as an e-mail and blogging acquaintance, and we're on friendly terms as far as I know. (If that's changed, he's neglected to tell me about it, but obviously he's been busy lately. I'm not assuming anything one way or the other.)

Let's skip ahead to the conclusion, since that's all some of you are likely to care about: I enjoyed Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener a lot. It's not exactly what I was looking for in a plant-breeding book, but I was certainly entertained, I learned things, I will almost certainly re-read it, and I am well satisfied with the purchase. If you are dabbling in plant breeding, or thinking about maybe getting into it at some point, this is well worth your time and money, and you should go ahead and buy it. Now the details:

Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener does two things particularly well. The first is that Tychonievich manages to squeeze a lot of specific information into a pretty short book (216 pp.), and does so without obscuring it in a lot of jargon or oversimplifying it to the point of uselessness.

The second thing Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener does really well is emotional: not only does he tackle potentially intimidating subject matter accurately and clearly, but he makes plant breeding sound like a really good idea. It's fun! It's easy! It's surprising! It's a really good idea if you like looking at flowers or eating food! If you're sort of abstractly interested in plant breeding, but have been intimidated because it seems complicated, technical, time-consuming, or unrewarding, this is a good way to talk yourself into it. If you already were interested, as I was, this is a slightly dangerous book, as it's likely to convince you that you need to devote even more time and space to plant-breeding. (I'm already looking a bit differently at the the Irises we have around the house.)

I had two disappointments with the book, one about the content and the other about the format. Both are comparatively minor.

The disappointment I had about Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener's content is that not one houseplant was discussed.¹ It's hard for me not to take that a little bit personally, especially since we'd established some time ago that the universe does in fact revolve around me so this is just careless, Joseph.

I'd thought that at least there might be a mention of African violets (Saintpaulia) at some point, as people breed those indoors all the time, but no. Not even anything about the few outdoor plants I have an interest in,² or any plants that are even related to the two plants I've been crossing in the house.³ I'd been hoping for something more directly and specifically applicable to my interests. And it's not like there wasn't room: 216 pages. Another 5 pages about Christmas cactus wouldn't have killed anybody.⁴

As long as we're sort of on the subject, here are Anthurium seedlings number 2 ("Alexis Mateo," left) and 26 ("Peaches Christ," right).⁵ These were both started on 18 July 2011, and lived in essentially the same location and received essentially the same care until 1 January 2013, at which point Peaches was repotted. Why is Alexis lagging so far behind? No idea.
The formatting disappointment: the section on genetics would really have benefited from a diagram or two. The rest of the book was a really easy read, and I was excited about it anyway, so I blew through it really fast with no problem, except for this one bit in the genetics chapter. Tychonievich uses an extended metaphor about cookies and cookie recipes, which was initially clear, but then after a few paragraphs I started thinking about how hungry I was, and by the time the metaphor came back around again, I was too distracted to follow. Re-reading cleared things up. This section stands out mostly because it's the only part of the book that wasn't pretty immediately clear, and it's an important, if small, section of the book.

If those two things are my biggest complaints about the book -- and they are -- then obviously I still like it pretty well. I don't want to get too detailed about the specific information in the book, but I certainly learned things, and there are solutions for some plant-breeding problems that I intend to try at some point.

I've also been inspired to step up my geekery; there are way more things I could be tracking that just the date I started the seeds and the seed parent. I predict an explosion of spreadsheets in my near future. (Leaf size! New leaf color! Leaf shape! Overall size! Amount of branching/suckering!)

Probably also an explosion of new seedlings, too. I'm looking forward to it.

You can buy Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener directly from Timber Press, from Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

Joseph Tychonievich's also writes the blog for Arrowhead Alpines, which you should have been following already but I'll let it slide just this once.

-

¹ (Unless you count coleus, which you really shouldn't.)
² (Iris and Canna)
³ (Anthurium and Schlumbergera.) There are no cacti mentioned at all, and only one mention of an aroid -- Arisaema triphyllum, or Jack in the pulpit -- which is only a single sentence about the flower structure.
⁴ Not that there aren't still plenty of plants covered. And a lot of the information is general enough to apply to plants not specifically discussed. The plants that get the most page space are: columbines, coleus, daffodils, Dianthus (the whole genus), hollyhocks, roses, snapdragons, zinnias, beans, cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower/etc., corn, lettuce, squash, and tomatoes, but violets, petunias, radishes, daylilies, and assorted other things make appearances as well.
⁵ For new readers, who might not be aware: I have been giving the Anthurium seedlings the names of drag queens (and roller girls/guys), both real and imaginary, because it amuses me to do so and they're mine so you can't stop me. These are not necessarily the names I'd give them if they were actual patented cultivars. Though they're not necessarily not the names I'd give them either.
I haven't named the Schlumbergeras, though I'm open to suggestions if someone wants to throw out an idea.

Pretty picture: Brassocatanthe Neapolitan Cutey

The 2013 orchid show was smaller than previous years, it seemed like, and a larger percentage of the orchids they had were in roped-off displays. Not the worst thing in the world, but inconvenient for taking photos, since most of the plants they had were too far away for me to photograph.

So at one point I asked a lady sitting behind a table, who seemed official (though I'm not sure who she was or what she was doing), whether stepping inside the ropes to get photos was completely forbidden, or merely frowned upon, or totally okay. I only sort of got an answer. It was something along the lines of, well, it's basically forbidden, but if you get in and out quick and don't fall on the plants, I won't tell on you. *wink*

Which I took to mean that it was probably okay, but only as long as nothing bad happened. And what are the odds of that? And it wasn't like there weren't plenty of plants around that were accessible enough to get pictures of anyway. I mean, it wasn't like there were any in the roped-off area that I was just dying to get a photo of. So this is the first of a few pictures during the next year that were taken from a distance, with a shaky camera, because I didn't trust myself not to fall into the display and crush everything if I got closer. Which in retrospect is pretty silly, since she was basically saying to go ahead, but oh well.

Brassocatanthe Neapolitan Cutey is Brassocattleya Hoku Gem x Brassanthe Maikai; it takes after the latter a lot more than it does the former, apparently, which is too bad, 'cause Hoku Gem is pretty.

Pretty pictures: Gerbera cvv.

It's been a very long time since I've mentioned Gerberas here. And there's a good reason for that: I don't like them very much.

Some of this is because they were hard to keep in the greenhouse (too wet and they mildew, too dry and they wilt), but even the healthy ones seem a little bit too much, in a bad way. Aggressively cheerful motivational speaker types, almost. Like if gerbs could talk, they'd spend all day spewing something like, It's just GREAT to be here with all of you on this FANTASTIC and BEAUTIFUL day and isn't it WONDERFUL how we can all get together and have FUN like this and now I'm going to burst into song IF YOU'RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT CLAP YOUR HANDS. . . .

So why do a post about them? Because I've never seen gerbs like these before:

These were at the ex-job last Wednesday. Neither one had an ID tag.

I don't know if this kind of flower, with the two-tone petals, is a new thing in the world of Gerbera daisies -- it's not a part of horticulture I keep up with, for obvious reasons -- but it's at least not very common; most of the pictures that come up in Google image search are of red, orange, and pink single-color flowers. So it seemed newsworthy.

Question for the Hive Mind: Brassolaeliocattleya Helen Brown

I was excited about this for about five minutes, when I first saw it. But this is just more foliage, not a flower bud, right?