Random plant events: white flowers

Nothing gigantic and incredible going on exactly, but I've got three plants blooming recently that are all notable in some way or another, and as it happens, all three have white flowers, so it seemed reasonable to group them together into one post.

First up is the Coffea arabica, which struggled a bit this winter (dropping the lowest leaves, mostly, which for all I know is normal) but just got super excited and put out a huge flush of flowers.¹

I counted flowers at 38 separate nodes. If each node produces 2.5 berries (previously, either 2 or 3 seemed to be standard), and each berry produces 1.9 seeds (also based on previous experience), that's roughly 150-200 seeds.


The husband pointed out that 150-200 seeds might actually be sufficient to make a cup or two of coffee. I'm a little bit tempted, but I'd be more inclined to plant the seeds and get more plants. Assuming that there are seeds. Also assuming that the seeds will germinate.² (Obviously there's a great deal of premature chicken-counting going on in this paragraph.)


I tried, but was unable to get any smell from the flowers at all. (The husband could, so I'm not sure what my problem is.)

Next up, I've got flowers on my Haworthia limifolia var. limifolia. This isn't the first time that one of the Haworthias has attempted to bloom, but usually the flower spike shoots up into the fluorescent lights and then burns before I notice it, or it starts to grow deep within the leaves and then stalls and dies for some reason. I don't know for sure that this is the first time I've ever had one reach full bloom, but it's the first in a very long time, at least.


There is a chance that H. limifolia var. limifolia may be self-fertile: some Haworthias are and some aren't, from what I hear. I won't be attempting to get seeds from this one, though, because the flowers are so tiny and easily damaged that I doubt I have the necessary visual acuity and fine motor control. (If you've got a flowering Haworthia of your own that you want to try with, you'll want to check this out.)

Finally, I think most of us have seen Cryptanthus flowers before, and I've never found them all that interesting or attractive, but these made me do a double-take:


I think Cryptanthus flowers are always white,³ so the color's not a big deal, but I was struck by the size and shape: ordinarily they're small, flat, triangular things that are easily overlooked. This particular plant (a NOID), though, produces flowers that are a bit larger, and more trumpet-shaped. It's not a huge difference, but it was enough to make me think, oh, those are really pretty, for a Cryptanthus.

I won't be collecting seeds from this either, first because there are no other Cryptanthuses blooming at the moment so I have nothing to cross them with, second because the recent failure with the Cryptbergias has made me doubt I could pull it off, and third because there are much easier ways to get more Cryptanthuses, if more Cryptanthuses is what you want, and I've already got so many baby plants from offsets that I have no idea what to do with them all. But let the record show that I totally thought about it.

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¹ Google says that the bloom season is "mid spring" or March, both of which apply. So I guess everything's normal.
² This might be a good moment to update you on the progress of the Coffea seeds I started on 18 February. It's an easy update: absolutely nothing has happened yet, as far as I can see. This is not surprising; Coffea seeds are slow germinators, and right now, at one month, is the very soonest I could have expected anything to happen. Two months seems to be typical, according to Google; some sources say as long as four. (Nobody claims anything faster than 1 month.)
I'm also wondering if I maybe got some bad information; a lot of the sources I found while googling for germination times also say that seeds that have dried out too much are generally non-viable. The plan I was working from initially said that viability was best with seeds that had been dried for eight weeks, so somebody has to be wrong here. I'm starting to get a little anxious.
³ (I've never seen them in any other color, anyway.)

Pretty pictures: Masdevallia Prince Charming

Good old reliable Masdevallia 'Prince Charming.' Long may he wave.









Previous PATSP posts about Masdevallia 'Prince Charming:' 2010

tag: Masdevallia Prince Charming
origin: Masd. angulata x Masd. veitchiana

Random plant event: Kohleria 'Queen Victoria'

It's fun when flowers happen that you don't see coming. Even better are the flowers that you didn't see coming and had never seen before.

I've had Kohleria 'Queen Victoria' since May 2011, and it has not always been clear, in the two years since, that I was going to continue to have it much longer. My watering frequency is not quite often enough to handle some of the needier gesneriads. But it's been coming back in a big way since a repotting (last summer? fall?), and I honestly had no idea that it was even thinking about blooming. I just happened to glance over at the shelf in my office, saw what I thought was an unusually large Episcia flower, and then realized -- that was no Episcia.


So this is fun. I don't think they're self-fertile, so I won't have seedlings or anything, but it's new, and pleasant.

Unfinished business: various

As I predicted, the Cryptbergia seeds (or at least "seeds" -- I'm not sure we ever definitively proved seediness) have all failed, due to some combination of fungus and incompetence. Womp-womp.

Not much else is going on here, really, which I guess makes it a good time to look through the back posts and see if I have any updates about them. All these are from September 2012; turns out there were no posts in October or November that require follow-ups.


Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture, with bonus Question for the Hive Mind (1 Sep 2012)

Nothing ever came of the Canna seed. Not really surprised by this, though. More surprising: the Begonia 'Tiger Kitten' has more or less completely taken over the terrarium. I think this is mostly because it's more drought-tolerant than the Episcia 'Coco' was. (I have a tough time knowing when to water the terrarium, because it's less convenient to actually touch the soil, and every time I open the lid I'm convinced that Nina is going to take that opportunity to jump out and run into the living room, where Sheba will eat her. So I don't open the top very much.) The Peperomia puteolata is still present, as is the Murraya paniculata seedling, but overall, it's kind of a mess. And I sort of wish that the crickets didn't eat the plants so enthusiastically. I mean, I understand: they're crickets. It's what they do. But it's just depressing, with all the dead leaves, holes, ragged edges, and what have you. Perhaps I am not emotionally stable enough to keep anoles in a planted terrarium.



Random plant event: Sansevieria cylindrica (4 Sep 2012)

It's taken a while, but the third leaf is now slightly bigger than the second.

Sansevieria cylindrica.
Come back in late 2016 and I may have a fourth leaf to show you. CAN YOU HANDLE THE EXCITEMENT.¹


Random plant event: Rhipsalis NOID (12 September 2012)

The Rhipsalis seedlings are still alive, and are slightly larger than they used to be. This is neither unusual nor unexpected, but it's a thing that happened. I wound up potting all the surviving seedlings into two pots together, because it seemed like they were likely to give me a really sparse, uninteresting plant if I didn't put several of them together, and also because it wasn't clear how many of them were going to survive. (As far as I can recall, though, all the seedlings that made it out of the vermiculite have survived in soil, and possibly I should have just started them in soil to begin with.)



Random plant event: Zamioculcas zamiifolia 'Zamicro' (19 Sep 2012)

I wasn't expecting this, but so far, 'Zamicro' actually has turned out to be easier for me to grow than the species. I suspect that this is not actually about the cultivar so much, and has more to do with these getting better watering and light (the species plants I've started from leaflets also did well in similar conditions, until they were transplanted), but who can really say.


For now, they seem to be happy in their little 4-pack cells, and I'm inclined to leave them there for as long as that seems to be working out. Whenever I do have to transplant, I'm going to take the advice of Steve Lucas at Exotic Rainforest and make an especially sandy and fast-draining soil for them. I am more or less convinced that this Zamioculcas-growing secret I've been missing.

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¹ NO YOU CANNOT HANDLE THE EXCITEMENT.

Pretty picture: Cattlianthe Trick or Treat

Tag: Ctt. Trick or Treat

Ten(-ish) Things I Have Mistaken for Scale

So we're in the fifth week of checking all the plants in the basement weekly (on the east and south sides) or every second week (on the west). I'm not finding many actual pests anymore, for two reasons:

The first reason is that there's just not that much to find anymore, since any plants with obvious, easy to see infestations were already thrown in the trash.¹ The second is that I'm not looking as hard, because it's extremely time-consuming and tedious to do, and I'm tired of it.

As a result, almost every scale insect I've seen lately has been a false positive of one kind or another. And there are many kinds. So here is a list of ten things I have managed to mistake for scale in the last five weeks:

1. Scars -- on everything. Oh my god. You've never imagined how many little tan corky spots there are on the leaves, petioles, and stems of your plants until you've had to check each one individually to see whether it rubs off. And of course there's no way to actually remove them, because they're part of the plant, so I wind up checking the same scars over and over, week after week. This is far and away the largest and most irritating category of false positives.

Multiple scars on Epipremnum aureum 'Neon.'
Leaf scar on Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips.'
Not actually sure what this thing on a NOID Cryptanthus is, but I think it's either edema, a scar, or edema that became a scar.
Multiple irregular scars on the back of a Begonia x 'Erythrophylla' leaf.
Scars from thrips (?) on one of the Anthurium seedlings.

2. Dots of dried sap -- they're generally the wrong color to be scale, but the size and shape are close, so they have to get checked out anyway. Arguably a subcategory of scars, though distinct because dried sap rubs off. (Usually.)

Dried sap on Euphorbia trigona.
And on Hoya something. (Sold as H. kentiana, probably actually H. wayetii.)

3. Marginal burn, tip burn -- It doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes when a leaf is burnt in just the right way, the dead spot looks like a scale insect hanging right on the edge or tip of the leaf. Since the actual insects tend to congregate around the spot where the petiole attaches to the leaf, on and along the midrib and other major veins, this isn't terribly confusing, but it happens.

The margin spots on this variegated Yucca guatemalensis didn't make it through the recoloring / cropping process in very good shape, but they're there, along with a more obvious scar in the center of the leaf.

4. Aerial roots -- the shape is often not quite right, but when they're first developing, some aerial roots are small, oval, and tan. Best distinguished from scale by the facts that they don't wipe off and that they're pointy.

Aerial roots on a somewhat unhappy Selenicereus anthonyanus.²
Roots forming on a Stapelia gigantea stem.

5. Dirt -- dirt gets splashed all over when I water, so some of it ends up on the leaves and stems. Because there's no wind in the basement to blow it off, it stays attached. The irregular shape usually gives it away, but some pieces of bark are rounded enough to be momentarily alarming, and vermiculite is about the right color, so this is occasionally a problem.

A tiny fleck of potting mix on an Aglaonema 'Peacock' leaf.
A couple bits of dirt on an Anthurium seedling.

6. The natural coloration of the plant -- some plants just naturally have lots of little bumps or brown spots or whatever. In most of these cases, I've either given up on checking altogether because it's impossible, or the plant got scale a long time ago and has been thrown out. Aerial roots is technically a subdivision of natural coloration, now that I think about it, but it's so common and specific it probably deserves a separate entry anyway.

Close-up of a Ficus microcarpus stem, showing peeling bark, aerial roots, and a bunch of other random stuff.
Some of this Schefflera actinophylla's brown spots, if not all of them, are capable of becoming aerial roots if the air is sufficiently humid, but usually they just expand to form bark.

7. Edema -- again, bumps due to edema are usually irregularly shaped, so I don't have to resort to the squish test, but this has still happened plenty of times.

Surprisingly bad edema on a Billbergia nutans leaf, probably because I moved it into a bigger pot and then set it in front of a cold window.

8. Spiders -- only once, but still.


9. Mineral deposits -- parts of the plants that are in contact with the soil will sometimes get a tan, crusty mineral buildup which can resemble a big infestation of closely-spaced scale. Hatiora salicornioides seems to be especially prone to this, but I also see it on Anthurium quite a lot.

Mineral crust on Hatiora salicornioides.

10. Hallucinations -- and occasionally I just straight-up see things that aren't there. Which is usually a sign that I should take a break.

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¹ The last few scale insects I've found also appeared to be dead already. Or at least they were really, really tired, being flat and dried out and crunchy. One hopes that this has something to do with the imidacloprid.
Although thrips aren't really the focus of the post, for readers who are curious: the thrips are still around, here and there, and when I see them they're generally alive. I'm only finding them in a particular fairly narrow section of the basement shelves, though, and I didn't find any last week, so this is maybe progress. I also got my first thrips photos -- none are very good, but they're an improvement over no photos at all:
The thrips in question was photographed on notebook paper (hence the blue line in the top image), through a tiny magnifying glass lens, if this gives you any sense of the size.
² I have two Selenicereus anthonyanus plants, one in the basement and one in the plant room, and neither one has ever seemed very happy to be here. Mostly they just don't grow very fast, and the new growth is thin. Likely a light issue, but I don't have any better spots available.
It's weird, because Selenicereus chrysocardium is fine in very similar spots. I don't know what's wrong.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Susan Tucker

Tag: PAPH. SUSAN TUCKER (SHALIMAR X F. C. PUDDLE)

Pretty picture: Phalaenopsis Taida King's Caroline 'Little Zebra'

Tag: PHAL. TAIDA KING'S CAROLINE 'LITTLE ZEBRA' AM/AOS