Random plant event: Neoregelia 'Gazpacho'

Hi again.

Efforts to bring the outdoor plants back indoors have kind of stalled; out of about 130-140 that were outside at the peak of summer, I've managed to find spaces for all but about 30-40 of those, mostly Agaves that may or may not have scale. So that's kind of both good and bad. And the scale situation inside the house hasn't really improved either; it's still confined to certain spots, as far as I can tell, but it's hit a few plants that I didn't think were scaleable. So I'm finding plants more depressing than interesting right now. What's ultimately going to have to happen, I'm afraid, is another purge,¹ but that will take some working up to. (All the plants that would be easy to throw out already have been.)

So the post isn't a complete bummer (if I'm only going to post once every three days, I should try to make it pleasant enough to show up for), here's a Neoregelia 'Gazpacho' that's surprised me by blooming this month.

I knew it was old enough to bloom -- the parent plant flowered almost five years ago, and its offspring are now larger than the parent was then --

-- but it's been large enough to bloom for at least a year, maybe two, so the only reason I can think of why it would have chosen now is, I repotted it in May, along with the other two of the original plant's offspring. I also gave them a partly-obstructed south window, instead of a pretty wide-open east window, this summer, which may or may not have had something to do with it. (That still wasn't enough to give it full color: had I been able to grow it outside like it would have preferred, it would all have been red with green spots, instead of mostly green with a red-and-green center.)

The original 'Gazpacho' lived for another year and nine months after blooming, and about half to a third of the offsets survived. It would probably have had a higher survival rate if I'd let the offsets get a little larger before giving them their own pot. In any case, all three plants currently have at least one offset already, and the one from this post is going to start pumping them out now that it's bloomed, so I suppose I should brace myself for a Neoregelia population boom in the next year or two.

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¹ (I can't afford to buy the amount of imidacloprid it would take to dose every plant in the collection, never mind the amount of time and extra effort that would require. And there's no guarantee that, if I did spend the money, time, and energy, it would even be effective.)

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Maudiae x Paphiopedilum Stone Lovely

Random plant event: Anthurium "hookeri"

And now for something way less pretty than Thursday's Ananas post.

Which is not to say it's ugly, exactly. As Anthurium spadices go, the color is an interesting choice. There are more ornamental Anthurium hybrids with purple spadices -- my NOID purple-blooming plant has them -- but in those cases, the spathe is also purple, and there's an overall purple thing happening. With A. "hookeri,"¹ only the spadix is purple. The spathe is dull green and narrow, and then the pollen is orange, which was surprising to me -- I'd expected white, powdery pollen like from the blooming andreanum / scherzerianum hybrids I mostly grow.

Granted, this isn't the best picture of the pollen. But it's there, and it's orange.
Anthuriums which are receptive to pollen produce small droplets of a sticky liquid (the better to hold onto any pollen that gets dropped on them, I suppose). It's a pretty minor thing with most of my Anthuriums, and in a lot of cases, I can't even tell when they're receptive, so tiny is the amount of fluid involved. Not so with "hookeri." Once it started producing fluid, it went a little nuts about it -- it's not been dripping on the floor or anything, but there's so much that if I try to dust the spadix with a paintbrush now, the brush gets all gunked up with what can only be described as an orange pollen-based mud.

It'd certainly be awesome if the plant were self-fertile. I don't have any room for more Anthurium seedlings -- there are already, as of last Friday morning, 225 of them here, and I suspect that "hookeri" seedlings would probably get big really fast. As it is, I'm already throwing out or selling off some of my plants to try to make room for everything coming in from outside. But you know I wouldn't be able to resist starting "hookeri" seeds anyway, were any berries to form.

As to how I got it to bloom in the first place, the only thing I did differently than usual involved watering: I had previously been watering it the same way as everything else. Take it off the shelf, plop it in the tub, water water water, splash of fertilizer, drain, back on the shelf. A few weeks before this happened, I got tired of lifting it on and off the shelf, which is difficult because of all the huge, fragile leaves. So I poured some water in, splash of fertilizer, and left it, without draining. I don't know why that would make the difference, and it's possible that this is coincidental and the blooming was going to happen anyway, but the change in watering sure seems related to the bloom. We'll have to try again in a few months and see what happens.

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¹ "Hookeri" is in quotes because this plant is probably not the actual A. hookeri. It is my understanding that the actual species is pretty hard to find, so clever and evil plant-sellers have just taken to calling whatever old Anthurium they have lying around A. hookeri, the logic apparently being that by the time you find out that you didn't get the species you wanted, they'll already have your money and so who cares. That said, when one takes into account the distortions in form (floppy habit, bigger leaves, longer petioles) caused by my plant having been grown indoors, there does seem to be a decent chance that my plant might actually be A. hookeri. The spadix is the right color, the leaf margins are sort of ambiguously wavy, and the internodes are short (especially for a plant that should be stretching toward the light).

On the other hand, I haven't seen the black glandular punctates described at the link, and my plant's yet to produce berries, so I have no idea if the berries are red or white. (It's probably not going to produce berries, either -- I've tried smearing the pollen around just to see if something cool will happen, and I've also taken the pollen to the Anthuriums I'm breeding, same reason, but Anthuriums are not universally interfertile or self-fertile, so the odds are that nothing is going to come of that.) But at this point, I don't think I can rule out that I might have the real thing, even if the odds are still against it.

Random plant event: Ananas 'Mongo'

September 2013.
I've had Ananas 'Mongo'¹ since November 2008, when we got some in at the ex-job. This is long enough ago that I don't remember much about the event, but I blogged about it at the time, so you can read that if you're interested.

It's grown pretty reliably ever since, and this year I put it outside for the summer. This was at least partly because it had gotten so big, and I wanted it out of my way, which is counterproductive because that only made it grow faster, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Depending on how much sun it was getting, it fluctuated between brown, green, and brown-and-green striped, and it got big, and it attracted frogs, and so on, and then at some point in mid-September, I noticed that it was getting really red in the center. Which was confusing, because I was pretty sure all the plants were getting less light, as we approached the equinox, but I took some photos and went on, as you do.

And then it got more intense. And then I started to see a bunch of little tiny bracts emerging from the center of the plant, and I clued in to the fact that this was the beginning of an inflorescence.

Since then, things have gone pretty much how you'd expect. First the inflorescence appeared --

-- and then the true flowers (lavender) began popping out.

Though they never pop out in focus. Dunno what that means.

This is easily the Big Plant Event of the Summer, like last summer's one-two punch of Epiphyllum and Clivia. I mean, other things have happened, some of which were also very exciting, but this is the most dramatic and unexpected. Like with the Clivia, I'd pretty much assumed that my conditions weren't going to be suitable for a bloom, and it was just going to be a foliage plant for me forever, and I was fine with that. So blooming is a huge bonus.

This is my favorite picture of the plant so far. I feel like it ought to be on top of a Christmas tree or something.
Next up: offsets. And the inevitable attempt to root all of them, no matter how little room I have.

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¹ Has probably been referred to previously as Ananas comosus 'Mongo' on the blog before, but the most recent web-surfing I've done on the subject suggests that it is not in fact a cultivar of A. comosus, but is instead a hybrid. Nobody will say what species are involved in making the hybrid, but there are only about eight or nine possibilities.^a If I were being forced to guess, I'd guess that there's probably some A. nanus in there, because nanus has the small, bright pink fruit, and because many of the websites talking about 'Mongo' make reference to how small it is. (The smallness, in my opinion, is overstated. If smallness can be overstated. My plant is a solid 3 or 4 feet^b across, which is medium to large for plants in my collection.) The color suggests some A. lucidus genes are in there too. But that's totally a guess.
     ^a Wikipedia says eight; Plant List says nine. The two sources agree on A. ananassoides, A. bracteata, A. comosus, A. fritzmuelleri, A. lucidus, A. nanus, and A. parguazensis. Wikipedia adds A. erectifolius, which Plant List claims is a synonym of A. lucidus, and Plant List includes two species not on Wikipedia's list: A. monstrosus and A. sagenaria. We will leave the question of which of these, if any, is a legitimate species to the pineapple taxonomists to fight out among themselves in tequila-fueled motorcycle cage matches, as is the pineapple taxonomist custom.
     ^b (0.9 to 1.2 m)

Pretty picture: Enanthleya Joseph Romans

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.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

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.

Random plant events: more Anthurium seedlings

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.

#59 - Bijoux TuitMother:² 'Gemini'Date started: 1 February 2012

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 TradingMother: White GeminiDate 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 HumbugMother: GeminiDate 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 MonellaMother: White GeminiDate 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 DayMother: White GeminiDate 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 SequinsMother: noid purpleDate 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.
³ Anthuriums 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?

Pretty picture: Robiquetia cerina

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.)