Introduction

This post commences my plant blog. In the last year or two I have become a very avid hobbyist of all things plants. Maybe not all things plants, but many things plants, including some tangent hobbies. In fact, one of these tangent hobbies is how I made my way towards “plant-geek.”
I have kind of liked plants for a long time. When I was younger I used to help my mom water all of her plants. I was pretty good at remembering all of the names and identifying them when I saw them away from our home. My grandmothers were both fond of flowers and plants, too.
So, when I had my own house I naturally had a couple of houseplants to make the place feel “like home.”
Oddly enough, I think my current obsession with plants (yes, it is an obsession: ask Christie!) grew out of my aquarium hobby, which I just started at the beginning of 2005. After setting up my 29 gallon aquarium I was excited and spent quite a bit of time watching my newly-acquired fish swim around my fully-stocked tank. But soon, I became a little less interested in my aquarium, which would change little with time. All of my time of planning the perfect fish and decorations had allowed me to constantly change my mind and redesign. However, after the aquarium was set up there were few changes I could make (usually just when I lost a fish). Anyway, I soon found that there were some aquatic plants that could be added to my aquarium – and some of the fish I had in my tank actually prefer a planted tank! So I slowly started collecting plants for my aquarium and making my aquarium more suitable for their growth. I even went through a tedious process of emptying my tank and starting the whole setup again, using a richer plant substrate, rather than large gravel pebbles. I quickly became a huge fan of the aquatic genus Anubias. I now own the following Anubias species:

· A. afzelli var. lanceolata
· A. barteri
· A. barteri var. nana
· A. barteri var. nana ‘petite’
· A. barteri var. nana ‘marble leaf’
· A. coffeefolia
· A. gracilis

So, you might notice that one of those tangent hobbies that I have taken on is plant taxonomy. Not that I am a taxonomist, or anything. But I really like to know what varieties of each plant that I have. And I like to try to collect as many different types that I can. It’s especially a challenge for aquatic plants, since there are relatively few locations to buy them.

The analogous houseplant genus that I collect like anubias is called aglaonema. It is a very common and popular foliage plant used in office buildings and malls, etc. It’s common name is ‘Chinese Evergreen.’ There are a ton of varieties of this plant, both natural and cultivars. I just have 5 of them as of right now, but I am planning on collecting quite a few more. I currently have:

· A. ‘Silver King’ (nitidum x. pictum ‘Tricolor’)
· A. ‘B.J. Freeman’
· A. Minima
· A. ‘Maria’
· A. unknown

But hey! I'm getting a little too specific for my introductory post. Maybe you're wondering why I named my blog site what I did (or maybe not). Being a connoisseur of fine foliage plants, I like variegation, so rather than naming my site after the common phrase “The Green Thumb,” I chose this fun variation - or maybe I should say variegation! :)   For now, I will leave you with a picture of a beautiful scindapsus pictus: