Saturday, December 19, 2009

Saturday morning Nina picture

Shots like this make me appreciate the wisdom of Daffodil Planter's comment from Halloween: Nina is cute because she's so much SMALLER than we are. Imagine if she were eyeing you this way -- and the size of a smallish motorcycle.

Suddenly way less adorable, right?

Friday, December 18, 2009

Question for the Hive Mind: NOID Gesneriad

You know that feeling you get when you spend all day on the 17th working on your blog post for the 21st, and then you realize at 10 PM that you don't have a post ready to go up on the 18th?

Oh. Yeah, me neither. Totally never happens.

But so yeah. Um. Look! It's a NOID gesneriad!

Pretty, right? This picture would probably have gone up several days sooner than this if I had been able to figure out what it was. I actually feel quite strongly that I know what this is, and that the answer is somewhere in one of the dustier corners of my brain, perhaps in a box labeled "surge suppressors & extension cords" instead of "gesneriad IDs." But the ideas I had didn't result in any matching Google image search results, so I'm stumped. I'm sure someone out there must know.

For the record, I don't have any ID at all on it; nobody told me it was a gesneriad. I am oddly positive that it is, but it wouldn't, like, ruin my entire day if it turned out not to be.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Random plant event: Cyanotis kewensis flower buds

This is a really terrible picture of a really interesting event, for me. First the terrible-picture part: I took 25 different shots of this same plant, and this was the one that was best in-focus. I probably should have tried with the flash, I realize as I write this (the blur almost always comes from me not being able to hold the camera steady, not any inherent defect in the camera's auto-focusing; a shorter exposure time gives my hands less time to move around), but I didn't think of it at the time.

As far as it being an interesting event, well, it had never occurred to me that Cyanotis bloomed. I mean, if I'd stopped to think about it, I would have realized that yes, it's a plant, obviously it blooms, but I never stopped to think about it. And even then, it wouldn't probably have occurred to me that it might bloom for me. So this is interesting. I'll post a picture -- a true-color, in-focus picture -- when I see some flowers open.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Walkaways Part 5, plus, Plant Room Panic







I suppose it depends on which plants.


But here's what I didn't buy.




Episcia NOID.





Tuesday, December 15, 2009

List: Plants With a "Fountainy" Habit

You know what I mean. Lots of long and thin, or at least long and strappy, leaves, all going upward and then out and down in a graceful curve. I've never been able to figure out whether I have a particular attraction to this particular habit, or whether there are only a limited number of ways to build a plant and this is one of them so inevitably I would end up with lots of plants that look like this. I lean toward the latter, but it seems significant that a lot of my most favorite plants (Yucca guatemalensis, Pandanus veitchii, Dracaena deremensis 'Lemon-Lime,' etc.) fall into this category.

Also relevant here is that certain entire genera (Dracaena, except for D. surculosa) and families (Bromeliaceae), are basically all like this, so it's potentially a long list. I tried to pick a set of ten diverse plants.

Asplenium antiquum. (Japanese bird's-nest fern)

Beaucarnea recurvata, variegated. (ponytail palm)

Chlorophytum comosum. (spider plant, airplane plant, mala madre)

Clivia miniata 'Aztec Gold,' without flower.

Dracaena deremensis 'Lemon-Lime.'

Dracaena reflexa 'Riki.'

Neoregelia NOID. May be 'Purple Star.'

Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Niger.' (black mondo grass)

Pandanus veitchii, variegated. (screw pine)

Yucca guatemalensis, plain green. (spineless yucca)

I pretty well covered my favorites in the introduction: Yucca guatemalensis, Pandanus veitchii, Dracaena deremensis 'Lemon-Lime.' In truth, though, I'm also very fond of most of the others, and it would probably be easier to talk about the three I don't like, and why.

Asplenium antiquum doesn't do well for me; it doesn't cope well with missed waterings, and humidity may also be an issue. Typically, when I buy an Asplenium, I have about six good months and then it falls into an irreversible decline.

Beaucarnea recurvata is pretty easy to take care of, and it does fairly well for me, but I don't especially like it. Part of this is because it steadily dropped leaves for a long time after I first got it, and stopped only after I gave it more soil and covered its base up a little more (which may or may not have been the reason it stopped). Also it's slightly annoying because the length of the leaves make it inconvenient to move around. I'm warming up to it, though, at least a little.

Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Niger' is also pretty easy, but I'm not a huge fan. It's also very slow-growing indoors, or at least it's been slow for me so far. Not sure if this is natural, or a cultural issue.

Not pictured:
Aechmea 'Del Mar'
Aechmea fasciata (silver vase plant)
Agapanthus spp.
Many Agave spp. (attenuata, geminiflora), at least in a way
Quite a few Aloe spp., particularly those with long leaves (maculata, greatheadii)
Ananas comosus (pineapple)
Callisia fragrans, sort of
Cryptanthus cvv. (some cvv., anyway)
Cymbidium cvv. (plus a fair number of other orchids)
Dracaena deremensis cvv. ('Art,' 'Janet Craig,' 'Janet Craig Compacta,' 'Limelight,' 'Warneckei,' etc.)
Dracaena fragrans cvv. ('Massangeana,' 'Sol') (corn plant)
Dracaena marginata cvv. ('Bicolor,' 'Colorama,' 'Magenta,' 'Tarzan') (Madagascar dragon tree)
Dracaena sanderiana cvv. (lucky bamboo, ribbon dracaena)
Furcraea foetida and F. f. cv. 'Medio-Picta' (false agave)
Guzmania cvv.
Hippeastrum cvv. (amaryllis)
Other Neoregelia cvv. (incl. 'Ardie,' 'Fireball,' 'Gazpacho,' 'Medium Rare,' 'Nuance,' 'Perfection,' 'Victoria,' 'Yang')
Sansevieria trifasciata cvv., sometimes, at least to a first approximation (snake plant, mother-in-law tongue)
Tillandsia cyanea (pink quill)
Other Tillandsia spp. (air plant)
Vriesea imperialis (aka Alcantarea imperialis, giant bromeliad)
Vriesea ospinae var. gruberi
Vriesea splendens (flaming sword)

I know I have to be missing hundreds of plants here, so throw 'em out there as they occur to you. If you want to.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Unfinished business: Pelargonium x hortorum 'Vancouver Centennial'

A couple weeks ago, I posted about (among other things) flower buds on my Pelargonium. Those buds have now opened, so I figured I owed y'all a follow-up.

This doesn't capture the color very well, but there's something about my camera, or maybe something about Pelargonium flowers, that keeps pictures from producing very true-to-life color. It's in the ballpark, though.

The flowers are basically a really bright orange, quite a bit less red than they appear here. There's sometimes a slight hint of coral, depending on the light. It's a pleasant enough color as far as I'm concerned: I've got nothing against orange. Not particularly big and showy, but, you know, whatever. I kind of don't like the big snowballs of flowers the regular varieties produce anyway, and it's not like the plant owes me flowers in the first place, given the leaves it makes. So I'm satisfied.

The plant itself appears to be falling apart a bit: whether this is because the flowers are taking too much energy to produce, or whether I let it go a little too long between waterings, I'm not sure, but if it's the latter, the plant really ought to try to get itself used to that.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Random plant event: Hatiora salicornioides flower bud

This is funny, because somebody just asked me if I'd ever had my Hatiora salicornioides bloom, and I answered no, it's never bloomed, and then a week or two later, bam! We have flower buds.

It doesn't look like much yet (dead center in the photo, if you're having trouble seeing it), and it's my understanding that the flowers aren't amazing either. Plus I only have two buds, so far. But still. I've only ever seen pictures, so I'm excited about the possibility of getting to see the flowers in person. I'll do my best to get pictures, but the reader is warned that I had a hell of a time getting my camera to focus on the buds (I've taken at least fifty photos, trying to get something in focus, and even though this picture is more or less in focus, it doesn't show what's going on well.), so we may or may not manage to document this properly.