I didn't exactly intend to go for two days without posting, but what's happened is that my brother took advantage of a we're-so-sorry-we-screwed-up-everything-associated-with-the-SimCity5-launch-so-terribly offer from game publisher Electronic Arts (EA), wherein they were selling a bundle of five games very cheaply (I want to say $5 but am too lazy to check on this), and then he gave me the redemption code for one of them because he already had it. And the game in question is Sims 3. And it happens that I now have a computer capable of running Sims 3, so . . . well, you see where this is headed.
The good news is, 1) Sims 3 shouldn't affect the actual posting frequency all that much. With the previous computer and Sims 2, the computer wasn't powerful enough to do anything else at the same time as Sims, plus whenever I wanted to play, I had to set aside an hour and a half or so for the game to load first (no, seriously), plus however much time I wanted to spend actually playing. I don't have these problems now, so Sims won't be cutting into my time nearly as badly. Also 2) I've made considerable progress on dealing with the huge number of photos I took in September, so some of the random plant events from August and September that I haven't posted about yet will be coming relatively soon.
The bad news is, part of the reason Sims isn't going to affect the projected posting frequency very much is that the projected posting frequency was already pretty low. This is because it's that time of year when I have to bring plants inside for the winter, and that's an extremely complicated, boring, and time-consuming process. At the 60% complete mark, I've already run out of room, so some fairly extreme things are about to start happening to the plants with scale, and to the larger underperformers.
Meanwhile, there's an orchid. It's not going to set the world on fire with its beauty or anything, but it's okay.
And really, setting the world on fire is an unreasonably high standard to have for orchid beauty, now that I think about it. (When's the last time that even happened?)
The tag said "Cty. Joseph Romans," but after some investigation this turns out to be the equivalent of Enanthleya Joseph Romans, which itself is a hybrid of Cattlianthe Portia with Encyclia phoenicea.
I had planned on taking a new Sheba picture to post today, but then it rained all morning yesterday, making that difficult. So instead you get a photo from August 2010, not terribly long after we first got her (in March 2010).
Sheba's been fine as far as I can tell, though her latest thing is dandruff. Terrible, terrible dandruff, from like her rib cage on back to her tail. (Though I doubt it would show up in photos -- it really was the rain that was the problem, I swear.) This has never happened before. She doesn't seem particularly bothered by it, and dandruff is (barely) preferable to bald spots, so we're not freaking out or anything, but still.
It is really happening, y'all. The Anthurium seedlings are actually blooming! And a full 1-3 years ahead of schedule, even!
Previously, I reported that seedlings #59 ("Bijoux Tuit"1) and #282 ("Dave Trading") had produced their first blooms; now things are beginning to accelerate a bit. So here's the report.
Bijoux is taking her3 time, but the flower is continuing to develop. I think there's maybe something wrong with it, either from drought stress or thrips4 or something, because the spathe is kind of twisted strangely and has dead patches and stuff. But it's still developing, and it seems only sporting to give them all a practice spathe or two before expecting high-quality blooms. As for the color, it's obvious enough that the spathe color is going to be the in the same pinkish-red neighborhood as her mother.
What she lacks in original coloration, she makes up for by being the earliest bloomer, which is a characteristic I probably want to encourage in future generations.
#282 - Dave Trading
Mother: White Gemini
Date started: 19 May 2012
Dave's first bloom, reported on in the previous post, aborted before it got very far. The cause might have been drought stress; I don't really know. He's since started to produce a replacement, pictured above. The color is unclear so far -- initially it looked like it was going to be the same pinkish-red as 'Gemini' and Bijoux. Then it turned slightly purplish, which was briefly very exciting, and then it dulled and eventually dried up. The replacement flower is sort of light pink, but it's not unusual for them to emerge a lighter color than they eventually become, so I'm waiting to see what color the plant settles on.
#76 - Bob Humbug
Mother: Gemini
Date started: 18 Nov 2011
Bob is one I'm particularly close to; he's always had really big, nice, dark green leaves. And, I mean, notably so. Like, I would see him while watering and be like, wow, that's some exceptionally sweet-ass foliage on #76. Because I say things like that sometimes.
Unfortunately, he spontaneously dropped his inflorescence too: it was looking like your basic pinkish-red, but then it turned slightly purplish and dull, like Dave's had.
A couple weeks later.
So oh well. Bob is still secretly my favorite. Don't tell the others.
#243 - Sal Monella
Mother: White Gemini
Date started: 5 May 2012
Sal is interesting because he's the first one to have a distinct flower color: it's a pretty straight-up, solid red red. Possibly even dark red: the spathe was still getting darker when I wrote this on Monday night.
This is a little bit surprising, coming from a plant whose mother had pure white spathes. Since 'White Gemini' was originally a sport of the pinkish-red 'Gemini,' though, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that there could be genes for red pigment somewhere in Sal's genome. And even if we're sure the red doesn't come from 'White Gemini,' I have no idea who the father is, and I do have a red Anthurium in the mix here, though it doesn't bloom very often. So the pollen could have been from a red-blooming father. We will probably never know.
#238 - Rudy Day
Mother: White Gemini
Date started: 5 May 2012
Note the weird cupped leaf at bottom right. That's the sort of thing I was talking about in footnote 4.
Sal's fraternal forty-tuplet5 brother Rudy was just barely starting a spathe when I got the above picture. So far, it looks like he's headed in the direction of a 'Gemini' sort of pinkish-red, but we'll see what happens.
#108 - Deena Sequins
Mother: noid purple
Date started: 21 December 2011
And finally, the first bloom on a plant that's not from 'Gemini' or 'White Gemini.' Disappointingly, Deena's showing no inclination to be purple like her mom; instead she's pink. I'm guessing eventually, this is going to mature to yet another pinkish-red. (I forgive the reader for being skeptical that the nine pictures in this post are of different seedlings.) But hey: at this point, it's fun to have anything happen. We'll worry about whether they're quality plants later. Meanwhile, pinkish-red is apparently the new black.
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1 Explanation for new readers: I have been giving names to the seedlings, to make it a little easier for me to keep track of them in my head, and to amuse myself. The names being given out are names of actual and hypothetical drag queens, plus the names of actual and hypothetical roller derby players, and as such are not likely to become the official names of any actual patented cultivars, should any arise. But you never know. 2 As explained in the above-linked post, I'm not yet at the point where I'm making deliberate crosses; it's too difficult to tell when an attempted pollination has worked, and I never have very many inflorescences shedding pollen at any given moment. Consequently, I only know the female (seed) parent for any of these crosses, not the male (pollen) parent. 3Anthuriums are both male and female, like most plants, but I'm using the pronouns that normally go with the first names, because anthropomorphization is kind of what I do, and that's what reads naturally to me. 4 Not that I've seen thrips. But they're starting to do that thing they did before, when they had scale and thrips. (Weird pale bumps on the leaves; leaves that curl up into brittle, easily-torn little bowls; random brown holes and tears. I don't know if all these are the work of thrips, or even if any of these things are thrips. But that's my suspicion at the moment.) 5 Well if you're so smart, how's about you tell me what the term for a multiple birth of forty children is called, huh?
Second post about this particular species of orchid (the first is here). It's not photographing any better or getting any more interesting, though in this year's picture you can see more of the plant, so I guess that's something.
Also, unless there's been some huge change since Sunday morning, it looks like Stromanthe sanguinea is the next profile subject. (I suspect someone voted repeatedly, because all six plants were very close for the first day and a half of the poll, and then all of a sudden Stromanthe has three times the number of votes the rest of them have? Either someone was cheating, or the post got linked from the International Stromanthe-Lovers' Facebook page. And there's probably not an International Stromanthe-Lovers' Facebook page.)
This photo is very old (actually all of these photos are very old; I'm still working on a backlog of transmitted light photos from like 2009), but seems particularly appropriate right now. I had two Ficus elasticas. I just threw the small one out because it had scale, and I was like, whatever, I don't like trying to get rid of scale and it's a duplicate anyway, so I'll pitch it and grow the other one. But then the other one came in from outside, and it's been growing mostly horizontally the whole time it was outside because it's apparently one of those trailing rubber trees,1 so I don't have any spot large enough to put it. And it's not like I'm hugely fond of F. elastica even when they're grown well. So I'm seriously considering throwing it out, or restarting from cuttings, or trying to sell it on Craigslist, or something like that. It's actually looking like a lot of the plants are going to have to be thrown out, sold, or restarted, in order to make space for the ones I actually want to keep. October's gonna be rough.
Pilea peperomioides, newish leaf.
Pilea peperomioides is probably not the most difficult "easy" plant I've ever tried to grow, but it's definitely on the list somewhere. And I have no idea what I was doing wrong.
This is perhaps not as flashy as some of the photos that follow it, but I think it's my favorite picture from this set. It's possible that I'm just a sucker for parallel venation.
Caladium 'Cardinal.'
Look out green! The red is right behind you! Run! Run! Aiiiieee!
Canna 'Tropicanna.'
As much as I love the red-blooming, green-leaved Cannas (and I do, very much), it seems weird that I haven't yet made it a priority to get one of the other varieties. Not necessarily 'Tropicanna,' (does it even come true from seed? Probably not, right?) but something. It's not as if there aren't a lot of options to choose from. Maybe 2014 will be the year.
I've seen Graptophyllum for sale exactly one time since I've been blogging, and I didn't buy it, because it was kind of underwhelming in person. (The books make it look a lot cooler.) Also you have to figure that if it were a satisfying houseplant, people would already be growing it everywhere. So I'm thinking I didn't miss much, but the picture still wound up pretty cool.
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1 A joke: there is no such thing as a trailing rubber tree. Though there is a rubber vine (Cryptostegia grandiflora), which is neither related to Ficus nor to Hevea brasiliensis, the "real" rubber tree. Common names are dangerously misleading! Shun them!
I will get back to Sheba eventually, I promise. But first: a report on the state of the local wildlife.
I usually get one hummingbird sighting every year, and that happened earlier this week. It flew away before I could adjust the camera settings, but the pictures would have been shaky blurs photographed from a distance anyway, so you're not missing much. However, I have a picture of a white-lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata), which hovers in air sort of like a hummingbird and is therefore, to my mind, every bit as good as a hummingbird.
This particular individual was hiding in one of the plants on a day when I had to bring them in for the night, and then I got to chase it around the plant room, kitchen, and living room for what felt like a very long time, before I managed to catch it and take it outside. It then hung on the mouth of the container for quite a while, having exhausted itself trying to fly through windows and clear plastic walls for fifteen minutes. Which meant I got some more or less decent pictures.
The green tree frogs (Hyla versicolor) continue to appear all over the property; 2013 is definitely the Year of the Green Tree Frog.1 There was also, briefly, a pickerel frog (Rana palustris), who lived in the Portulaca / Tagetes bed for about a week and then moved on.
Rana palustris.
There is also a strong case to be made for 2013 as the Year of the Wasp,2 the Year of the Caterpillar, or the Year of the Black Bees, but the frogs feel a lot more noteworthy. Or at least a lot more suddenly abundant, at least.
And yes, this is the same species as the solid-green frogs in the earlier posts. They can apparently choose to be solid green or gray-and-green. So that whole spiel from Kermit about how hard it is to be green: bullshit. He could just be gray, if green is so tough. What a whiner.
It's also been a good year for jumping spiders, though surprisingly light on any other spiders. Usually by this point in the year, I've seen a few black and yellow garden spiders (Argiope aurantia), but this year there's nothing.
Arachnophobes should start scrolling down really quickly . . . NOW.
RAWWWWRRRR!
(Oh, it's over here? Okay then.) RAWWWWRRRR!
This is the most adorable spider I have ever seen. It's even better in the full-size version.
-----ARACHNOPHOBES STOP-----
I've seen a few butterflies around, though most wouldn't stay still long enough for pictures, and it hasn't been anything very interesting. Mostly blues this year. The dill we planted failed to attract any swallowtail caterpillars, and very few butterflies of any kind, which was disappointing, though it may be that the cool, wet early summer depressed the numbers of butterflies in general.
I think this is a pearl crescent butterfly (Phyciodes tharos), though there are so many small orange and brown butterflies out there that I'm not confident about it. The plant is Haworthia limifolia var. ubomboensis.
I did manage to get a couple pictures of one swallowtail, though, at the ex-job.
Female eastern black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)? Plant is some Echinacea variety; I didn't check the tag.
Great year for bees, though. Lately I've been seeing mostly bumblebees, but I've seen at least four different species of bee over the course of the summer, and I'm probably forgetting a few.
Probably the less said about caterpillars, the better, but there is one that I thought was interesting. I found it on the Portulaca in early July.
I spent a long time at What's That Bug?, looking through their butterfly and moth caterpillar archives, but didn't see many pictures that were substantially similar, and the few that were similar were for caterpillars not actually found in Iowa. So I have no idea. (I considered submitting the photos to WTB, but they sounded kind of swamped with submissions already, and it's not like this is an emergency or anything.) But it's kind of cool-looking, as caterpillars go.
Finally, yes, there are grasshoppers (most likely the differential grasshopper, Melanoplus differentialis) around as well. They seem to be particularly fond of the Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris ssp. cicla 'Bright Lights'). Which is good, I guess. I mean, something ought to be. We tried sauteeing it with some other greens, early in the summer. It wasn't terrible, but it didn't leave us with any particular desire to do it again. So we designated it an ornamental and haven't touched it since. And it's doing a great job being ornamental.
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1 Why? Well, it was an unusually wet spring, which I'd think would have to be good for frogs. There's also been some habitat disruption in the area -- some kind of pond or sewage lagoon or something got filled in. Though I don't think that was this year. I'm pretty hazy about the details.
It could be helping, too, that when the rain stopped falling in early August, we let the grass go dormant and stopped mowing. In previous years, we have watered parts of it instead. And I think we've always mowed, until this year. Which if you think about it has some implications for the frog population. (CUT TO: Miss Piggy, crying "KERMIEEEEE!!!!!!" as she sinks to her knees.) 2 To a disturbing degree: there is often a crowd of them gathered on the light fixture above our front door. As we don't use the front door very often, this hasn't been dangerous yet, but it's unsettling, like driving past a convenience store and seeing a crowd of high-school boys loitering in its parking lot. There are also a lot of wasps between the back door of the house and the garage during the day. Again, they've never actually attacked us, but surely it's only a matter of time before I come whipping around the corner of the house with a huge plant and upset somebody. And they've even shown up in the house once, which was a fun day.
That said, if you can observe them at a remove, like in photographs or something, they're kind of neat. Though that's true of a lot of things.
Oh, Mr. Subjunctive, you silly goose, why do you have to be so negative all the time? Why phrase it as "plants I'm not currently mad at," instead of "plants I love," or "plants that are doing well," or something along those lines?
That's . . . a really good question. I'm pretty sure some of it is just that I'm a relentlessly negative person.1 And there's also the issue that lots of other blogs use phrasings like "plants I love," and I'm trying to be different.
But there's also the issue of plant betrayal. In the seven or so years I've been doing this, I've been deliriously happy with any number of plants that later turned on me. Euphorbia trigona, once a darling, is now a constant struggle with fungus. Hoyas always seem to succumb to some kind of dramatic and sudden collapse.2Cordyline fruticosa never quite shook the spider mites. I miss one watering and the Episcias all collapse on me, or get devoured by caterpillars, or turn brown and dry out. That sort of thing. And I occasionally wind up looking at one of those older posts, where I'm talking about how delighted I am with a plant, and feel stupid, because I know that a few months or years later, I couldn't stand that plant anymore, or it was dead, or whatever.
Therefore, it needs a qualifier. I'm not mad at them at the moment. Three months from now? Anything could happen. This is a terrible attitude to have, but . . . .
I guess I have no conclusion to that sentence; it's just a terrible attitude. (I never promised to be inspirational.)
These six plants are also the leading candidates for the next plant profile, by the way. I have no strong preference about which I want to write about, so I figured I'd put it up for a vote. So be ready for that, at the end of the post.
Here we go. In no particular order:
1. Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta'
Breynia disticha turns out to be a very different plant if you let it spend a summer outside than it is if you make it stay indoors all summer taking violin lessons, or whatever it is you make your Breynias do. It's not that it was growing poorly for me inside, exactly, but it wasn't getting enough light to produce any variegated leaves, the branches were flopping over into all the plants around them,3 and it wasn't branching very much.
Once it went outside for a summer, though, all that changed. Faster growth, all sorts of color, branching -- almost everything turned around. The floppy branches are apparently just Breynia's thing, because that part didn't get any better. But still.
It had been a pretty good plant for me before this, too, as far as that goes. Aside from a brief and easily-won bout with spider mites, there have been no pest problems, and although it wilts dramatically whenever I'm the slightest bit late with the water, it always bounces right back once I give it a good soaking. I've propagated from cuttings a few times (difficult, but doable), humidity seems not to be a big issue, and it's even flowered for me once, not that the flowers are a particularly big deal.
2. Philodendron mexicanum
My original cutting of Philodendron mexicanum got too long to be manageable, so I chopped it up into two-node cuttings and rooted them in water. They all got busy building roots immediately, so now I have a pot with three plants in it, which is the one in the picture.
Like some other vining Philodendrons, P. mexicanum is maybe a little too enthusiastic for its own good (I'm already contemplating chopping up the original cutting again, and it hasn't been that long. A year, maybe?), but the leaves are really lovely (I neglected to choose a photo that shows the red-brown undersides, though if you're interested you can check out this post.), and it's easy to grow, as far as I can tell. Fairly weak artificial light, normal indoor temperatures and humidity, water every two to four weeks.
My only problem to date has been with thrips, of all things. They weren't that hard to get rid of, but they were surprisingly fond of the plant, and apparently used it as a species headquarters, from which they launched expeditions to the neighboring plants.
3. Beaucarnea recurvata
This is probably the most unexpected plant to land on this list. It's not that it was ever doing poorly, exactly; it's more that it's never done much of anything at all. The reason turned out to be pot size and light intensity: after five and a half years of leaving it alone, I repotted it and gave it some direct sun, and bam, new growth. Quite a bit of it, even. (I'm sad to think of how disappointed it will be this winter: I doubt I'll be able to spare a direct-sun spot once all the plants come in from outside.4)
Even without new growth, though, it was one of those plants I could depend on not to give me any drama. It was fine with the variable temperature in the plant room, it never got any pests, and if it was unpropagatable, it was at least durable.
The propagation thing is likely to continue to be a problem in the future, but otherwise, I feel like I may finally have figured Beaucarnea recurvata out.
4. Polyscias fruticosa
And then Polyscias fruticosa is probably the most obvious plant to go on the list. I've even been publicly happy with it in the past. I have some pretty serious concerns about it for the future,5 but right now, at this particular moment, all is well, and it's been thriving. I'm also pretty pleased with the cultivars I have ('Elegans' and 'Snowflake,' which is just variegated 'Elegans'), and have managed to propagate 'Elegans' a few times, albeit with some difficulty. They're all perfectly happy, and even pest-free (knock wood), so long as I give them some direct sun every day and don't get too unpredictable with the water (both too much and too little leads to defoliation, though too little seems to be worse).
The best part is that as it ages, the plant is developing a sort of Cousin Itt (or possibly Gossamer?) look, which I enjoy.
5. Scindapsus pictus
I have one main problem with Scindapsus pictus, which is that I tend to forget that it exists. Which is to say that whenever I'm listing plants in my mind, in whatever category, I never remember to include it.
It's a perfectly nice plant, as plants go. I treat it horribly: it's on a shelf a couple inches below other plants, which block most of the light. It gets air-conditioning blasted directly at it during the summer. I'm pretty sure the soil hasn't been changed since I bought it in July 2008. But no worries! Scindapsus just keeps plugging away, slowly building leaf after leaf, without complaining or getting bugs. It's the damnedest thing.
I've had an S. pictus many years ago that wasn't nearly as forgiving; this is far enough in the past that I couldn't guess what the problem might have been. So it's possible that I've just been bizarrely lucky for five straight years.
I have yet to attempt propagation, because it's not necessarily a plant I want more of. Maybe someday.
6. Stromanthe sanguinea cvv.
Finally, I continue to be impressed with Stromanthe sanguinea. I have two varieties of it, 'Triostar' (shown) and 'Magicstar,' both of which are much easier to grow than anything from the Marantaceae ought to be.
It's not perfect. There's an unfortunate tendency to develop spider mites, and there are limits to how large of a pot I can use here in the house, because the root systems are relatively shallow and rot-prone, so I can only up-pot for just so long before it's time to start over again with a freshly-propagated plant. Even so, being able to grow something this attractive at all is awfully cool. And when I need to propagate, it's always been game, which is a definite bonus.
So see? I can say nice things about the plants sometimes.
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1 No. Really. I am. It's okay. I don't mind. Usually. 2 Though it's possible that I'm on the verge of figuring that one out. All the Hoyas that have succumbed to Sudden Hoya Death Syndrome were also not getting any direct sun at the time of death. The cause-and-effect relationship is murky, but in the absence of any other leads, I'm thinking this must be the key, somehow. 3 Which was a problem, because the plants around the oldest and largest Breynia were mostly Euphorbia trigona. Top-heavy thorny plants shouldn't be placed next to floppy-branched leafy plants, as a rule: you wind up losing hours of your life trying to untangle them from one another. 4 Next summer, though: look out! I'm putting the Beaucarnea outside, and fully expect it to grow substantially before autumn arrives. A friend in town has a Beaucarnea that she puts outside every year, and it is amazing. (Had I been thinking, I'd have gotten a picture for you, but I wasn't.) 5 It's 1) a very big plant, with 2) brown, woody stems and 3) lots of delicately-cut leaves, living 4) in a room where scale has recently been discovered. If scale decided to take up residence there, I stand very little chance of catching the infestation early. I've added some pre-emptive imidacloprid to the soil, as well as to the soil of some of its neighbors, but if you look closely at the photo, you may be able to make out a faint aura of doom around the plant.
Have questions about PATSP? See the Infrequently Asked Questions post, or ask directly by e-mail. To e-mail, remove the two "d"s from the below address:
mrsubdjunctive@doutlook.com
Please note: I am a person, not a houseplant-care-advice vending machine. If you've asked a plant-care question and I responded, that took time and effort that I could have spent on something else, and it's nice if you acknowledge that with a "thank you."
Also: no, I will not help you draw attention to your Kickstarter. No, I do not need the services of a blog-ads optimizer. No, I'm not interested in promoting/reviewing/giving away your products. Fuck, no, I will not write for free for your blog. I know these things are important to you, and you feel that your case is so special that I would obviously make an exception to the rule if you asked me because of how special your thing is, but I assure you: it is not special, and I will not make an exception. (This means you, Mother Earth Living.)
As of 20 June 2021, comments may not be approved for several days, because Google / Blogger has made it less convenient for me to check them.
Lynn P. Griffith, Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: a Grower's Guide (Amazon • B&N) Lynn P. Griffith, Jr. Tropical Foliage Plants: a Grower's Guide, 2nd Ed. (Amazon • B&N • Powell's)
Mr_Subjunctive used to work at a family-owned greenhouse / garden center in Iowa City, IA. As of 16 December 2021, he has 1234 houseplants, which is too damn many. Most are Schlumbergeras.
Photos on this blog attributed to mr_subjunctive are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. All other photos retain the licensing preferences of their owners and require permission for reuse. Contact mr_subjunctive for help in locating the sources for other photos.
Text on this blog: all rights reserved. Text may not be duplicated by any means without permission of its author, who is actually pretty easygoing under most circumstances and will probably say okey-dokey if you ask to reproduce something (but you still have to ask, and credit mr_subjunctive as the author of the excerpted part).
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