houseplants

Haemanthus Deformis

I like growing South African and Namibian bulbs. There are some commonly grown ones you’ve almost certainly encountered - amaryllis, clivia, ledebouria, oxalis - and types that are rarer. The genus haemanthus is one of my favorite of these geophytes, though I keep a variety and am quite drawn to ledebouria as well.

Within the genus of haemanthus, I started with the moderately common Haemanthus pauculifolius a few years ago (though I ordered Haemanthus albiflos from Glasshouse Works, but they’re very similar and easily confused so they must have mislabeled their specimens), and I was pretty quickly charmed. I added three rarer species from Shire Bulbs to my roster last year: Haemanthus crispus, Haemanthus humilis subsp. hirsutus, and Haemanthus deformis.

This winter, all four of my haemanthus species are doing well, but my two Haemanthus deformis bulbs have been a particular delight to watch as they’ve settled in and are now growing mature leaves for the first time with me. H. deformis leaves are showstoppers! They have a kind of alien quality to their size and growth habit - you can already see the appeal in the photos below, but the leaves should get even bigger and more tightly flush to the surface with age. The first image is how the bulbs arrived in December 2021 after I’d potted them, and the second two images are of them this winter - with some surrounding plants included to provide a sense of scale in the second photo. (The white marks on the leaves are just mineral deposits from watering.) You can see that I already needed to pot them up again this fall.

The Curious Case of the Antenna Fern

I’ve been keeping houseplants for over fifteen years, and fairly early in that timespan I became a serious hobbyist. At this point, it’s not that common for me to find a species of plant for sale in a nursery I’ve never seen before. I wish it happened more often! However, recently I bought a fern that was completely new to me.

Some context: I keep what I would consider to be a small number of ferns; many ferns require a level of watering or humidity that can be hard for me to consistently supply. I was previously holding stable at four species of ferns which have proven pretty resilient - Nephrolepis exaltata 'Mini Russells' (a miniature Boston fern cultivar), Nephrolepis exaltata ‘Green Fantasy’ (another miniature Boston fern cultivar), Polypodium formosanum 'Cristatum' (ET Fern), and Davallia fejeensis (Rabbit's Foot Fern). However, due to my branching out into carnivorous plants, I’ve become more accustomed to daily watering. As such, I am willing to give more fern species a go and brought three new ferns into my collection this summer. Two of them I’ve either seen before even if I haven’t acquired them or at the very least have seen similar versions, and then there’s this third…

The tag called it the “Antenna Fern” and provided the scientific name Doryopteris cordata. When I purchased it, it had a soft groundcover of rounded, verdant, gently hairy leaves and I found it very attractive.

My Doryopteris pilosa var. gemmifera “Antenna Fern.”

My Doryopteris pilosa var. gemmifera “Antenna Fern.”

A few weeks after it had come into my collection, it appeared to be growing a very errant new leaf. Instead of unfurling at ground level, it grew taller and taller until it loomed eight inches over the rest and after unfurling, it looked to be a completely different fern. I assumed a spore or very small plantlet from another fern species had gotten mixed up in my plant, and figured that was that.

As a couple more weeks passed, I grew even more curious as I assumed that if it was a second fern, another leaf or two would begin to appear in a central crown formation. This hadn’t yet happened.

As I was studying my main plant while trying to see how the interloper was doing, I decided I wanted to know more about the “Antenna Fern.”

Upon researching the fern, the provided scientific name of Doryopteris cordata does not actually exist. This is not that surprising; plant nurseries often mislabel their stock. The actual scientific name is Doryopteris pilosa var. gemmifera. But here’s the real shocker: I discovered in my research that the second fern is in fact the first fern; Doryopteris pilosa var. gemmifera is an extremely dimorphic fern, but apparently as many as one in five fern species exhibit some degree of leaf dimorphism (this also surprised me). In this case, the dimorphism results in a sterile groundcover and a fertile canopy that is better able to disperse spores into the wind. The colloquial name “Antenna Fern” is in fact a nod to the fertile fronds.

My research also confirmed that this is a rare plant in both cultivation and in the wild; however, if you’re interested in it there do appear to be some online vendors offering it up! Just a note of caution, though - from my own experience, this fern does need moisture at all times; I went on a three-day trip and upon my return it was desiccated and crisping, whilst all my other ferns were doing just fine. A good drink did refresh it, however, and aside from a couple crisp spots it’s fully bounced back as you can see in the photo above! I do wonder if this is my fern’s first ever antenna, or if the nursery also thought that the fertile fronds were hitchhikers and cut them off…

African Violets

My pink-flowered variegated NOID African violet from a plant society sale in Baton Rouge, LA.  I’ve owned and created multiples of this plant since approximately 2010.

My pink-flowered variegated NOID African violet from a plant society sale in Baton Rouge, LA. I’ve owned and created multiples of this plant since approximately 2010. (January 2023 edit: I believe it might be ‘Precious Pink’.)

We all know I keep a large number of plants. Some genera never do well for me; others do well pretty much across the board, and then there are those that can be hit or miss. African violets, or Saintpaulia spp., are in the last category for me. (I know some of that is due to my unwillingness to adapt my own tending processes - I’m not super into wick watering, for instance, and I often top-water which can easily result in crown rot.) The first AV I remember keeping well enough to be notable is a NOID I picked up from a plant society sale in Baton Rouge, LA, around 2010. It’s a variegated dusty-pink-and-green standard AV, with pink flowers. It’s my most tried-and-true and therefore my favorite. (January 2023 edit: I believe it might be ‘Precious Pink’.)

The same pink-flowered variegated NOID African violet pictured above, but a few months later after it upped its variegation intensity.  Variegation is dependent on environmental factors including fertilization, light levels, soil type and age, and so on.

The same pink-flowered variegated NOID African violet pictured above, but a few months later after it upped its variegation intensity. Variegation is dependent on environmental factors including fertilization, light levels, soil type and age, and so on. (January 2023 edit: I believe it might be ‘Precious Pink’.)

After this NOID variegated standard was clearly sticking around, I bought a couple other standard green-leafed types from grocery stores. Either quickly or slowly, those all passed away. Time ticked onward.

I picked up a cute miniature AV with blue-violet flowers from Family Tree Nursery in Kansas City, and it seemed to be doing OK. I tried out a couple Primulina species, a very close relative in the Gesneriad family - one died quickly but the other thrived for a time, but then ended up deteriorating as well. I bought a gorgeous lime-flowering dark-green-ruffled-leaf standard and another AV I can’t remember well from the KC Gesneriad Society that both quickly went downhill. The mini kept doing all right, so I was up to two AVs that seemed to be able to handle the care and setup I provided. Time continued to pass.

The blue-flowered mini from Family Tree Nursery in Kansas City.

The blue-flowered mini from Family Tree Nursery in Kansas City.

I attended another KC Gesneriad Society sale. I was a bit wary given all the other deaths, but figured I’d try a few more out. I bought one AV with a beautiful set of flowers already growing that flowered but then croaked pretty soon thereafter, a cupped-leaf and a “girl-leaf” mini AV, and a trailing Russian hybrid called ‘Zimniy Tsvetok‘ (I distinctly remember a society member trying to persuade me it wasn’t worth getting, but I liked the look of it so I went ahead anyway) as well as a few Episcia species (another relative in the Gesneriad family). I also picked up another miniature, this time with a sort of white/yellow/pink variegation, from Family Tree Nursery. Around this time I also branched out into Sinningia species (yet another Gesneriad), and had middling levels of success and failure there too.

My girl-leaf mini that’s doing the best of its clones and even proffered a couple flowers recently!

My girl-leaf mini that’s doing the best of its clones and even proffered a couple flowers recently!

The “girl-leaf” mini AV began to fall apart, but some harvested leaves managed to grow pups. Those plants have matured into their own issues, and I’d categorize this plant as just barely managing to stay afloat in my AV collection. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s eventually - or even rather soon - another goner. However, the most stable girl-leaf mini has just begun to bloom, which is a positive turn! It has put off a couple of light pink flowers.

The cupped-leaf mini has also continually struggled, though I’d say it seems to have stabilized a bit more than the girl-leaf mini has even though I don’t think I’ve seen it flower yet (or if I have, it was sufficiently long ago for my memory to fail me). I didn’t take a photo of it for this post as I was documenting the rest, due to a combination of its currently underwhelming stature and lack of flowers. All the Episcias have done just fine, though I have learned I dislike how often they have to be restarted in order to look nice. However, they do make good gifts since I am forced to propagate them so frequently!

The variegated mini that’s getting relatively large but which I believe has yet to flower for me.

The variegated mini that’s getting relatively large but which I believe has yet to flower for me.

The variegated mini has been doing better, and I have one plant of it that is actually looking pretty adult though I’ve yet to see it flower either. The first and mother to all of my blue-violet-flowering minis had a very weird crown situation set in, but it had been so prolific and stable in pupping beforehand that I have several replacement plants solidly in the ranks. I think it’s nearing the tried-and-true category, though I’ll still need a couple more years to be sure.

My RS ‘Zimniy Tsvetok’ trailing violet, which is one of my current favorites but seems to have peaks and valleys in vitality and has yet to propagate successfully.

My RS ‘Zimniy Tsvetok’ trailing violet, which is one of my current favorites but seems to have peaks and valleys in vitality and has yet to propagate successfully.

However, the real surprise for me is the RS ‘Zimniy Tsvetok’ trailing violet. It took a while to settle in when I brought it home, and it was touch-and-go for a time. Then it started to flourish, and it did very well for over a year, but eventually its leaves began to bleach and I thought it might not be salvageable. I pulled it out from its fluorescent light stand, repotted it, and put it in a shaded southern window (an oxymoron, I know) in an attempt at rehab. Its color slowly restored and it started growing again. It is now my biggest AV and - at least currently - my most consistent flowerer. The one propagation I’ve tried of it hasn’t done well at all, which does worry me in an “heirs and spares” sense, but the main clump (it’s a trailer, so it’s the only one in my collection that is meant to have multiple heads) is beautiful.

So at present, I keep six varieties of AV. Three are doing well: the tried-and-true NOID variegated AV from Baton Rouge, the blue-violet-flowering mini from Family Tree Nursery, and the RS ‘Zimniy Tsvetok’ trailing violet from the KC Gesneriad Society sale. Three are in various stages of surviving: the girl-leaf mini and the cupped-leaf mini (not pictured) from the KC Gesneriad Society sale, and the variegated mini from Family Tree Nursery. We’ll see how it continues to go!

Scandals in the Houseplant Hobby Part II

If you haven’t read my blog post titled “Scandals in the Houseplant Hobby,” I recommend you do that first, as this is a follow-up!

To recap: plants, notably the Philodendron ‘Pink Congo,’ that have been gassed (or occasionally painted) with ethylene to induce a temporary discoloration that may appear to unsuspecting buyers as a permanent variegation have begun to enter the houseplant trade. At the time of my first post, ‘Pink Congo’ was the only affected type I could list with specificity, but I mentioned that others were out there.

This spring, I’ve so far noticed two more pop up on one of the Facebook groups for houseplants - and this time, they’re both succulents. The first is Crassula ‘Buddha’s Temple’ and the second is Sinocrassula yunnanensis. Here are a couple screenshots I took of the plants for sale - in the second picture, it’s the middle row of plants that are impacted. Both were advertised as being Korean imports.

With the Crassula ‘Buddha’s Temple,’ people challenged the seller who initially defended these plants as untreated, natural variegation, but then a day later returned and admitted that upon follow-up, her importer confirmed that they were fakes. However, at least when I saw it, the Sinocrassula yunnanensis sales post made by a different seller hadn’t attracted any questions or consternation.

To me, both plants look really unnatural and kind of diseased or wrong, but then again I am deep in the hobby and know what plants ought to look like - I also think painted succulents and dyed and fake flowers look bad, so clearly my taste isn’t everyone’s as those treatments do have a ready audience in more amateur growers! I do wholeheartedly believe that any altered plant - whether it be gassed with ethylene, painted, dyed, glued with false flowers, etc. - should come with a clear label that lays out what has been done, the lifespan of the manipulation, and the impact to the health of the plant.

For The Birds: A Story of Lowes' Clearance Plants

I had a few items I needed to pick up at Lowes recently, so I stopped in. As you might suspect of a person who has over 200 plants, if I go to a place for any reason that happens to sell plants, I will also look over the plants. You might be surprised to learn that despite being a person who has over 200 plants, I still sometimes not only look over but also buy plants from Lowes and Home Depot. This is really to their garden sections’ credit; these two big box stores do not just offer the same tried-and-true suite of plants year in and year out but rather - a bit belatedly due to the scale of the endeavor - follow houseplant trends and occasionally offer exciting and somewhat hard-to-find options. (Though if a plant is for sale at Lowes or Home Depot, it isn’t going to be rare for too much longer.)

On this day they had some new-to-me begonias in stock. For the longest time, I wouldn’t grow any begonias because the first time I tried - probably over a decade ago by now - the begonia died extremely quickly and I held a grudge against the whole genus. However, this past summer in quick succession I bought a cane begonia I liked the look of on extreme clearance and obtained a free cutting of another; both did relatively well for me and then I acquired a small Rex begonia a little later. Over this winter, that Rex begonia has begun to flourish and charm me and the two cane begonias have continued to do relatively well. As this nascent collection of begonias was forming, I also began to research more about begonias and now… well, I’m giving them a real try. It’s too early to say whether they’ll be suited for me or I for them in the long term, but I’m enjoying the discovery process.

So, I walk into Lowes’ plant area - which is fully indoors due to the winter - and spot two interesting new begonia cultivars for sale: ‘Linda Dawn’ and ‘Benigo.’ I begin to investigate them closely. The price point is on the high side - $20 each - because they are relatively rare, of medium size, and come with ceramic cache pots. I hem and haw as I look them over about whether I want to pay this much, but I grow more and more inclined not to because the begonias are very clearly partially eaten. In fact, as I really examine the plants, all the young and mature leaves are damaged and missing parts. Only the very newest growth looks whole. It looks quite a bit like caterpillar damage, so I start to think that the greenhouse these were grown in prior to being shipped out had a caterpillar infestation. I don’t see any current caterpillars, though, but I assume the plants were probably fogged as they were shipped out. I decide to walk away, but I’m sad because I would enjoy trying these plants out in my collection if I didn’t feel like the price was unfair for the quality of the plant on offer.

I double back and make my way to a garden center employee I spotted earlier. I ask if there’s any chance I could buy a small cutting or if they might offer a discount on the plants because they are all partially eaten.

The garden center employee knows exactly what I am talking about, and shares with me how the plants are being damaged, which is a genuine surprise to me.

The birds are eating them.

You see, all big box stores with garden centers have become little urbanized ecosystems of their own, complete with wildlife. Pigeons, sparrows, finches, the occasional hawk - there are some animals who spend their whole lives living at a big box store. And this Lowes’ indoor birds have been eating birdseed for sale supplemented with plants they enjoy munching on. Hemigraphis alternata is a very enjoyable snack, and so are these begonias in question.

My new begonias - ‘Benigo’ is on the left and ‘Linda Dawn’ is on the right.

My new begonias - ‘Benigo’ is on the left and ‘Linda Dawn’ is on the right.

(Apparently this Lowes had for a period of time in the past put kill traps out to catch the birds, but they have since switched to catch and release at a nearby nature center which is a much more humane policy.)

In terms of pest identification, the birds are good news for me in that I am pretty confident I won’t accidentally and unknowingly introduce one of their birds into my collection - which does happen sometimes with insect, fungal, or mildew infestations.

The garden center employee adds that they were considering clearancing these begonias anyway because the plants have been around since Christmas without selling and now there is all the accumulating bird damage, so I am given clearance prices and happily walk away to give both begonia ‘Linda Dawn’ and ‘Benigo’ a try!

Finished Ceramics Are Finally Here!

Back in January, I began to try to learn about the discipline of ceramics for professional development as an administrator and artist (and maybe even further down the line it’ll be a course I feel capable of teaching, too)! Of course, the pandemic descended right after we had begun to kiln fire and we went remote mid-spring so then there was no more firing for a time which was a barrier to progress.

You may remember my blog post titled Pandemic Productivity which I wrote toward the end of March discussing this topic, and over the spring and summer I generated a number of pinch pot raw ware from home - and an end-of-summer bisque firing was done, so all of those pieces were ready for glazing in early August.

(If you’re unfamiliar with how to make ceramics, you take clay and shape it which when ready is called raw ware. That raw ware is then bisque fired in a kiln. Once bisqued, you typically glaze your pieces and fire them again at a higher temperature. The pieces that come out of that second firing are usually finished, though you can do additional treatments beyond that as well.)

My very limited previous ceramics glazing (I believe one finished cycle only?) had been with Cone 9 glazes, which our gas kiln is theoretically capable of… but the first set of pieces that came out were not only experimental in terms of learning how to glaze but also very underfired due to the gas kiln needing repairs. The underfiring negatively affected their watertightness and texture. We have since fixed the gas kiln, and I do have some pieces from January through March that had been prepared with Cone 9 glazes for my second glazing attempt and are presently still waiting for whenever we next fire the gas kiln.

This fall we reopened Morningside College in person, and our ceramics course began again. It takes several weeks of creation before class bisque firing begins, and then once a decent stockpile of bisque pieces build up students begin glazing. Midway through this fall, I was able to rejoin the cycle by beginning to glaze my pandemic pinchware! The instructor teaching now prefers to fire at Cone 6 with our electric kilns. This meant any color mixing knowledge I had about our existing Cone 9 glazes - minimal anyway - was out the window, and I was starting from square one with the new Cone 6 glazes, many of which didn’t even have sample swatches yet. Again, there was a lot of experimentation and not a lot of control - but in only a few cycles I’m starting to develop some preferences! It’s also nice that these finished pieces have reached the proper temperature and their surfaces are, in contrast to the underfired pieces I’d done before, behaving as intended.

So, here are the first of my finished ceramics after almost a full year of work! All of these are planters with drainage holes, as the last three photos demonstrate. A couple are wheel thrown, and the rest are pinchware. They vary in size but most are relatively small - they’re all approximately 2-5” in diameter. Bigger pots are more time- and material-consuming to make and take up more room in the kiln so I’ve been sticking with smaller ones for now. I’ve made a few bowls (with no drainage holes) and vases, too, which I’ll share in a later post!

As you might imagine, making planters brings my interest in art and plants together nicely in that I can start to house my plants in my own pots! Transplanting during winter isn’t optimal so I’ve only done so where necessary, but here you can see a young Chlorophytum comosum - colloquially referred to as a spider plant - who desperately needed more space and has therefore been upgraded into a Shelby Prindaville planter with a top dressing to complement!

An Amusing Student Interaction

I give propagations of plants out to students as gifts, and sometimes as prizes for answering art questions correctly (if more than one student is interested in adopting the plant). So far, students this semester have received Cyanotis kewensis, Zamioculcas zamiifolia, Tripogandra serrulata, Kalanchoe daigremontiana, and Kalanchoe beauverdii. Then this showed up in my inbox a few weeks ago:

plant request.JPG

If you’re wondering, I said yes.

Have You Heard of Cryptic Species?

I was recently introduced to the concept of “cryptic species” - a term for when there are two or more species being accidentally harbored under one scientific name due to having very similar characteristics. So for instance we humans are all Homo sapiens, but if there did happen to be a mistake and two different species are currently being labelled as Homo sapiens, the non-Homo-sapiens one that got lumped in would be a cryptic species. Furthermore, sometimes there are several species that are so similar-yet-variable that they end up getting tossed all together into a relatively intentional “species complex,” meaning that we’ve understood multiple species exist but also acknowledged we’re not going to be able to reliably distinguish between each individual species in a species complex other than through advanced techniques like lab-based genetic differentiation.

My Aloe bowiea beginning to grow a flower spike.

My Aloe bowiea beginning to grow a flower spike.

How did this come up, you might ask? I have been charmed by my grass aloe, Aloe bowiea, of late and decided to read up a bit on it and in fact its whole category of grass aloes (and every time I say, think, or type “grass aloes” I am reminded of grass-type Pokémon, which is perhaps part of their appeal to me).

Grass aloes are aptly named aloes that are small, thin-leaved, and easily mistaken for grass in habitat - particularly when not in flower. They are not showy plants; they are in fact often considered too plain and small to merit growing as a houseplant. This means that they are rare, but the kind of rare that comes from being overlooked rather than in demand or particularly difficult to grow. And this quality of being overlooked, small, and plain brings me back around to cryptic species, because apparently there are grass aloes that had been cryptic and potentially more still to discover. There’s not a ton of information about grass aloes online presumably at least in part due to their lack of popularity, but I have put in an inter-library loan request for the book Grass Aloes in the South African Veld which I imagine will more than satisfy any remaining curiosity once it arrives!

Summer Plant Highlights

This is the first summer in at least six years that I have been present to witness and tend to my plants throughout. (Usually I do at least one artist residency, which typically takes me away for anywhere from five weeks to two-and-a-half months, but the pandemic put a pause on that practice.) I’ve been using the opportunity to try my hand at growing a tomato plant as well as attempting to hand-pollinate compatible flowers from my collection. Here are some photos from the past couple months!

Here we have, in slideshow order: A blooming Hoya kerrii, a Dyckia spp. flower spike, two flower buds almost about to open on an Echinopsis subdenudata 'Domino,' my Haworthia parksiana growing several flower stalks, several different images of my blooming Ledebouria spp., my Mammillaria karwinskiana ssp. nejapensis flower crowns, an Ibervillea lindheimeri flower, Rhipsalis mesembryanthemoides with a couple flowers, a blooming Uncarina roeoesliana, an Episcia spp. in flower, a Phalaenopsis flower spike that lasted for about six months (!), a Sinningia spp. flowering in a cloche for greater humidity, my tomato plant with a few green tomatoes in progress, a lush top-view of my Pelargonium dasyphyllum, an evening look at a reflective Haworthia spp., and an errant Phalaenopsis orchid root that grew through a neighboring plant’s felt coaster which I removed post-photo.

Scandals in the Houseplant Hobby

There have always been scandals in the world of houseplants. Big box stores selling dyed and painted plants, cacti and succulents with dried and dyed strawflowers glued on, injected orchid spikes (spoiler - there are no naturally blue Phalaenopsis), doomed plants in glass baubles, and glued-down top dressing are some common ones. Though more specialized nurseries tend not to commit those no-nos, many do sell tinted tillandsia and single Hoya kerrii leaves without stem cuttings that will never grow without any disclaimers. Some online sellers will purposefully mislabel or sell inert seeds or parts of a plant for propagation that will never be able to grow as well, relying on time, relative cost, and the ever-present risk inherent in attempting to grow seeds or propagate to erase any blame. And now there’s a new scandal rocking the houseplant world, the full scope is still in the process of being uncovered!

Let me first set the stage. If you, like me, have been in the houseplant hobby for decades, you might have noticed that it’s become quite the fad lately. There were (and still are!) some good online forums and blogs fifteen years ago, but recently I’ve witnessed the rise of “plantubers” aka YouTube stars who do surprisingly well discussing plants, Facebook groups, and - though I’m not that active on the platform - I’ve heard tell of Instagram plant influencers, aka plantfluencers. The rise of these various social media houseplant stars and societies has helped shape what is the must-have plant and drives demand for large swathes of new hobbyists. For whatever reason, right now monstera, philodendron, rarer pothos, and calathea are all hot commodities but the variegated and atypically colored ones are by far the most sought after. I actually don’t grow any of those types of plants aside from a small Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ at the moment; I had an early experience killing a calathea and have never felt called to try again, pothos to me seem common as dirt so while I don’t mind them I also don’t prioritize them, and while I like philodendrons including monstera a lot, they’re often large plants and I’d prefer to be able to have ten or twenty plants in the space where one philodendron might live. My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ is a pretty plant though; its new growth comes in reddish orange and then over time it ages to a green. I think it cost either $3 or $4 because I bought it as a baby.

My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ plunked behind several other plants on my outside shade table this summer.

My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ plunked behind several other plants on my outside shade table this summer.

I have joined or been added to quite a few of the Facebook plant groups over the years, and many are for buying and selling. I’ve always found most of the pricing on Facebook for plants to be overly high, so I think I’ve only purchased maybe three plants total from such listings. It turns out that even bearing that in mind, I was still apparently only in the more reasonably priced groups until a few weeks ago. At that time, I was invited to join two “plant purge” Facebook groups. The biggest is nuts, though I dislike the format and atmosphere of both. These groups structure their sales to be very small quantity buy-now-or-you-miss-it opportunities and build up excitement by dangling the most coveted plants ahead of time without prices and then “opening up” the sale hours to days later. This very intentionally is not meant to encourage calm research and reflection but rather hype, panic, and instant gratification; it’s basically gambling. People are buying individual plants for hundreds of dollars, regularly, in a flurry of adrenaline and a heady sense of exclusivity that rarely is accurate. Enter Philodendron ‘Pink Princess.’ It’s a variegated philodendron that has the same general shape, growth, size, and habit as my ‘Prince of Orange’ but it has green-base leaves with splashes of pink and sometimes cream variegation. It used to be sold for approximately the same price point as other philodendrons - typically somewhere between $6-20 per plant depending on size and store. Its explosion in popularity due to plant influencers means it now typically costs between $100-300 per plant, and that’s when you can find one at all. Pink is a very “in” coloration for the Instagram and Youtube plant crowd.

You now have the backstory. Recently a newcomer variegated philodendron arrived on the scene: Philodendron ‘Pink Congo’. (Newcomers do arrive sometimes - there are hybridizers and tissue culture cloners that introduce interesting new plants to the industry.) ‘Pink Congo’ was positioned and understood to be much like my ‘Prince of Orange’ in its growth habit but with pink leaves instead of orange. However, photos of ‘Pink Congo’ differed from ‘Prince of Orange.’ There were just dark green outer leaves and bright pink inner leaves. A few pictures appeared to show a different type of transition, where green patches started developing on some of the older pink leaves as opposed to the slow and total hue change on the entire leaf as per ‘Prince of Orange.'

From what I’ve read, people started paying $70-100 for ‘Pink Congo’ - mostly on these rabid Facebook groups but also occasionally on nursery websites, Instagram, eBay, and Etsy - and prices escalated from there. Then a knowledgeable hobbyist dropped a bomb on Facebook - the ‘Pink Congo’ was a fake and he had source material from an Indian vendor to prove it. He showed that the pink central leaf coloration was a temporary reaction to being gassed by ethylene and the plant would revert back to its standard green coloration in several months to a year or two and never grow more pink again. The base plant would typically sell in a $4-20 range.

Apparently some houseplant sellers knew it all along and were fine with it. Others didn’t, and decided to eat their own loss in having purchased the plants for resale so as not to lose credibility and trust. Many continue to sell them but added vaguely worded disclaimers that can be easily misinterpreted to give false hope. Meanwhile, a lot of buyers are upset that they dropped triple digits on temporary variegation, but some claim they don’t mind and plan to continue to buy ‘Pink Congo.’ A few have shared a belief that the scandal itself is the hoax, and that if anyone’s plant is reverting that it’s just an unstable variegation rather than a systemic fake.

And that’s the current scandal!

Wait… I did say it was still unfolding, so what’s that about? Apparently, philodendrons are not going to be the only ethylene-treated plants coming out of the import market! (Dun dun dun!) As far as I know, no one’s listed any other implicated plant varieties with specificity yet, but it’s a new ploy to be aware of across the hobby. I don’t know what other plants’ responses to being gassed with ethylene might look like, so any very unusual and new coloration might warrant a critical eye these days.

Sansevieria Has Been Subsumed!

I know we’ve had a lot of craziness of late, but I have another world-altering piece of information for you plant lovers out there who haven’t heard about it yet, so get ready: the genus Sansevieria has been contested for years and it has now been subsumed into Dracaena. Officially, taxonomically, there is no more Sansevieria! Below are a few images of some of my (formerly Sansevieria) species and and flowers if you need a visual aid. They’re colloquially called “snake plants” and “mother-in-law’s tongue.”

In my houseplant-growing years, I’ve been aware of plants switching genera before, but all of those switches only affected a small amount of plants and were relatively easy to swallow. Gloxinia speciosa and Rechsteineria leuchotricha both moving to the genus Sinningia, Philodendron bipinnatifidum changing to Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum, Cotyledon splitting into at least five different genera, and so on.

This switch, though, affects over seventy species that have visual and habit-related signifiers that seem to more narrowly identify them as a subgroup within their new genus compared to the rest of the Dracaena species that are typically grown as houseplants, so I don’t even know if I want to start calling them by their new taxonomic names!

For me and perhaps for most serious houseplant keepers, this is going to be much more of a challenge than Pluto’s downgrade to dwarf planet.

Houseplant Hobbyist Checking In!

I haven’t done a houseplant post in a while - so here are a few for you to admire from a recent small photo shoot I did! They are, in order: Aloe jucunda, Aloe cv. ‘Snowstorm’, Deuterocohnia brevifolia, Gasteria cv. ‘Little Warty’, Pinguicula gigantea, and Sarracenia purpurea.

My New Dyckia!

I get new plants fairly often, but whether it’s due to this never-ending winter we’re experiencing or the rarity of the plant, I’m especially excited about this new dyckia I recently acquired!

My first dyckia for comparison: Dyckia marnier-lapostollei

My first dyckia for comparison: Dyckia marnier-lapostollei

First, a little background. A terrestrial bromeliad genus from South America, dyckias have very sharp teeth and are rather drought and cold tolerant though they do like frequent watering when kept in warm temperatures. Unlike many other bromeliads, they are not monocarpic (meaning flowering once and then dying). They are easily hybridized, so it can be hard to tell exactly what cultivar you’re growing if it doesn’t come with an ID. Somewhat surprisingly, they are nevertheless not commonly sold - at least in the nurseries and plant sales I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot in a number of different regions across the US - but they can be more easily found online.

Even when I do spot them for sale, I don’t typically scramble to get dyckias. Many of the cultivars I have seen for sale are, for my taste, not the prettiest while being too sharp, too expensive, and often too big (I have a finite amount of space so I generally prefer plants that start small and stay small). This has meant that I have had only one in my collection until recently: a small Dyckia marnier-lapostollei. I like the look of Dyckia marnier-lapostollei, particularly as it ages, and I am quite fond of my little one. (I do know I need to repot it but I’m waiting until spring actually arrives to do so.)

I was, however, extremely taken by my new dyckia when I laid eyes on it. I’ve never seen such a white, trichome-heavy dyckia available before, and its overall proportions and coloration are very striking. Even though its teeth are quite wicked, the overall size and shape of the plant make me less nervous that I’ll hurt myself on it than the threat a couple of my agaves and sansevierias present.

I’ve tried to ID this new one, but I haven’t reached a definitive conclusion. It might be Dyckia ‘White Fang’ but it also might not be - about two-thirds of the images that come up with that as the search term have no trichomes on the leaves, whereas mine is thick with them. The trichomes can be worn off by overhead watering and touching, though, so that’s not 100% indicative, and the other third of the image results do look like my new plant. (I love the thick trichomes, so I’m going to be actively trying to not knock them off.) Other ID options might be some relative to Dyckia ‘Silver Back’, Dyckia ‘Ice’, or Dyckia ‘Grey Ops’.

So without further ado, below is my new NOID dyckia!

Some Houseplant Flowers!

I haven’t shared any of my houseplant flower photos in a while, so let’s rectify that! Here we have, in order from left to right and top to bottom: Ariocarpus trigonus, Epiphyllum monstrosa ‘Curly Locks’ in fruit, Sansevieria cylindrica, Sinningia cardinalis, Huernia verekeri, Mammillaria plumosa, Pleiospilos nelii ‘Royal Flush’, Mammillaria schiedeana, Dischidia platyphylla, my most loyal Saintpaulia spp. (acquired without ID from a botanical garden associates sale), an area shot of several Saintpaulia spp. and a Phalaenopsis orchid in bloom, and a Euphorbia francoisii.

Lacewing Eggs!

I noticed these odd little eggs laid in a row on my Neoregelia 'Fireball' bromeliad, and wondered what they might be.  Fortunately, they were simple to google and it turns out they are lacewing eggs!  Lacewings are beneficial insects in their larval form and are pretty much neutral in their adult stage, so I'm very happy they want to reproduce in my space and protect my plants from aphids, mealybugs, and hopefully even scale.  I've been fighting with mealybugs in several of my stapeliads and a couple other plants and scale on one of my haworthias - I think due in part to stress and lowered immunity from spending so long indoors thanks to the unusually cold April we had (the coldest in 20 years!), so this might be just the ticket to getting rid of the rest of the pests.  The Neoregelia 'Fireball' spends the summer on my front porch, but when I went to my back porch I also saw a lone lacewing egg on an Adromischus (A. rupicola is my guess, but there are a number of similar species within Adromischus and my plant supplier didn't have this one labeled and is wrong on labels around 15% of the time anyway!).  So that bodes well for lacewings frequenting both sides of my plant collection!

Some people even purchase bulk lacewing eggs (or adult lacewings with the goal of having them stick around to reproduce) as pest control, much like they do with ladybugs and other beneficial insects.  This practice of purchasing insects for natural pest control is more complicated than it might seem, though, since it can negatively disrupt the local ecosystem, and often disregards seasonal timing needs for the purchased insects and the insects' preferred habitats.  It's better if you can just encourage the beneficial insects already living in your area to feel welcome in your spaces.

Overwintering Houseplant Setups

I have a few different areas in which I keep my plants over the winter, and I thought I'd share my home ones with you (I also have an office setup) from before I moved them back outside!

A Few Random Leftover Winter Flower Photos

I kind of trailed off on my monthly flower photos towards the end of winter, so here are a few leftover ones I haven't posted yet!  They are: two pictures of Gymnocalycium damsii var. rotundulum, an almost-blooming Tillandsia seleriana, and a blooming Tillandsia ionantha.

December Houseplant Happenings

Here are the photos from the final month of 2017!  We've got fewer flowers for sure this December - just this Copiapoa hypogaeaGymnocalycium pfanzii var albipulpa, Sansevieria cylindrica, and Sansevieria phillipsiae, respectively.  This fruit on my Gymnocalycium mihanovichii has also been around since at least November, but it really started becoming eye-catching in December.  It is now in the process of drying out.

November Houseplant Flowers!

And here is the next set of houseplant happenings, from November!  I'm at the point now where I always have at least one or two plants in bloom at any given moment; I often neglect to photograph my orchid and African Violet (Saintpaulia spp.) flowers not because I don't appreciate them - I do! - but because they're quite common.  Here, we have in order from left to right and top down: Crassula perforata, Crassula ovata, Mammillaria elegans, Quaqua incarnata, Echeveria shaviana 'Neon Breakers', Rhipsalis mesembryanthemoides, Rhipsalis pilocarpa, Senecio jacobsenii, Duvalia sulcata, Anomalluma dodsiana, Stapelia sticula, and Matucana madisoniorum.  

The Crassulas are particularly surprising because Crassula hate me (and in return, I don't much care for them) but on both plants the blooms seem like they could be a last gasp, so... it's damning with faint praise, I suppose.  Also, my Anomalluma dodsiana revealed a mealybug infestation post blooming, so it's currently in round two of diatomaceous earth dusting.  The Quaqua incarnata has been blooming non-stop since November and is still in flower today, and the Stapelia sticula has also been quite prolific.

Remember that if you want to, you can click on any of the photos to see them in more detail!

...And Another One!

Well, let's start the new year the same as we ended the old!

Some prefacing information: I've heard that one should set water out for at least 24 hours to let the chlorine dissipate out before watering plants.  This presumes there is chlorine in the tap water, which is not always true, but it's easy to do and possibly helpful so I do it.

This morning, I was greeted by a bold jumping spider (Phidippus audax) floating in my watering can full of de-gassed water.  He did not appear to be able to get back out.  I took a couple photos, rescued him with a screwdriver, and put him on my Dischidia platyphylla to dry off and get his bearings.  I do have a limit to how many spider friends can stay indoors with me, and already removed another jumping spider who got a little too adventurous to the outdoors, but since this little fellow was soaked and it is presently -6°F or -21°C, he would not have survived.  So he'll join Audrey's territory and I'll hope they get along.

I know he isn't Audrey because his spot coloration is different (hers is a light yellowish tan, his is a saturated orange), and he has bushier eyebrows - thus leading me to suspect he's a he.  I have christened him Brooks, due to his rather wet arrival.