A couple Huernia blooms

Without a doubt, Huernia is my favorite succulent genus. This genus is in the Stapeliaceae family, closely related to the common carrion flower/starfish plant, Stapelia gigantea. I have amassed a pretty good collection of these plants and always seek them out at the Central Oklahoma Cacti and Succulent Show. This year I purchased a new one that was labeled Huernia sp. The petals of the flower reflex after a day or two, resulting in a different appearance (shown in second photo).

It bloomed not long after the show and I was able to get some help identifying it as either Huernia procumbens or a hybrid of that species.

Another Huernia that I picked up recently is Huernia zebrina, which has very distinct yellow and red flowers. This plant is sometimes called the Lifesaver Plant, due to the red ring that forms in the center of the flower, similar to the plant above, but more pronounced and much more colorful. I was delighted when the first flower opened on my plant and have been pleasantly surprised to see this plant flower constantly all summer for me. There have been as many as 5 flowers open on the plant at one time.

Year of Encyclia

2018 has been a banner year for my Encyclia collection. I have never had so many species bloom before. I just wanted to post a bunch of photos of their beautiful flowers here together to share the variety.

In all, I had at least 16 Encyclia plants bloom this year, as well as about 8 other orchids.

• Encyclia alata (syn. belizensis)
• Encyclia angustiloba
• Encyclia atrorubens
• Encyclia 'Belize 82'
• Encyclia hanburyi
• Encyclia phoenicea
• Encyclia plicata
• Encyclia ramonense
• Encyclia seidelii
• Encyclia tampensis
• Encyclia tampensis v. alba
• Encyclia unaensis
• Encyclia Faerie Glen
• Encyclia Gay Rabbit
• Encyclia Grand Bahama
• Encyclia Orchid Jungle

Butterfly Vine from seed

I have long-since admired a particular plant growing in the Butterfly Garden on the bay side of Moody Gardens in Galveston. I'm actually amazed that I've never blogged about it before. This plant is a creeping and mounding vine, and I suppose it would climb if it had something to climb. In the summer it produces many small yellow flowers in clusters.

After those flowers are pollinated the seed pods form and things start getting interesting. The seed pods begin green and sort of blend in with the foliage, but they have a very interesting shape. Like many other seeds they have wings that help them disperse in the wind. It just so happens that these wings make them look a lot like butterflies. As the season progresses the seed pods dry out and become a more conspicuous brown. I collected some of these seed pods a few years ago and my mother-in-law was using them as decorations.

This summer I decided to dissect a few of these to get to the seeds. The seeds are smaller than I was expecting. I planted them in some moist soil and let time do its thing. Just a few of these germinated for me, not surprising considering the amount of time since they had been harvested. I planted one of these along the fence line at the house in Galveston and I'm hoping it will do well there without any special care. I have kept the other one at home, in a community pot with other seedlings I started this summer. It is slow growing so far. Perhaps I need to provide more sunlight.

Butterfly Vine (Mascagnia macroptera) seedling,

growing in a community pot with Cockspur Coral Tree (Erythrina crista-galli) seedlings.

I found a story from Birds & Blooms magazine about a woman who painted the seed pods as real butterflies. Pretty neat.

Cactus and Succulent Show 2017

I have attended the annual show of the Central Oklahoma Cactus and Succulent Society (COCSS) for the last several years.  Although I don't spend a lot of time thinking about these plants or actively collecting them throughout the year, I always enjoy the show and find some really good deals on interesting plants.

Some nice plants that received ribbons in the show area.

Matucana madisoniorum - the most striking flowers at the show.

I only took a few photos of show and sale plants this year other than the ones I purchased.

Euphorbia neorubella

This year I purchased 7 plants: Kalanchoe tomentosa, an unlabeled Huernia species, Huernia keniensis, Caralluma europea, Opuntia violacea, Tillandsia tricolor v. melanocrater, and Tillandsia schiedeana.

Kalanchoe tomentosa

Huernia sp., Huernia keniensis, and Caralluma europea

The unidentified Huernia

Tillandsias aren't truly cacti or succulents, but the term "succulents" is already rather broad and is not taxonomically linked, like "cacti" is to the family Cactaceae.  I guess cacti and succulent people just like Tillandsias and brought some to sell.  I'm excited because one of them is on the verge of blooming.

Tillandsia schiedeana and Tillandsia tricolor v. melanocrater

As I've mentioned before, my favorite succulents are the Stapeliads.  I have found that I can grow them pretty well, so I try to focus my money on those plants.  With my recent purchases my Stapeliad collection now includes 10 species:

• Caralluma europea
• Huernia sp (unknown species)
• Huernia confusa
• Huernia keniensis
• Huernia penzigii
• Huernia schneideriana
• Stapelia ambigua
• Stapelia flavopurpurea
• Stapelia gigantea
• Stapelia hirsuta

I've had some others in the past, but have lost some over the years.

A recent bloom on my Huernia penzigii

A friend from northwest Arkansas came over for the show. I met him and his wife there and we exchanged a few plants and visited for a short time.  He brought me a neat Sinningia tubiflora, which was bred for hardiness in our region, as well as Kalanchoe beauverdii and Bryophyllum fedtschenkoi. Hopefully the Sinningia will flower for me soon and I'll share some photos.

Sansevieria in bloom

Sansevieria are pretty common houseplants, office plants, or "mall plants" as I sometimes say.  As with many other plants that grow well in these conditions, there are a few species or varieties that have been propagated far and wide and are most commonly seen, while the genera themselves are much larger.

A few years ago I got a Sansevieria from my friend, Russ.  He had it labeled "Sansevieria sp. Chahinian 549" at the time.  It was the collection number of a botanist by the name of Juan Chahinian from his first trip to Kenya.  Russ obtained the plant from the Huntington Botanic Garden in California.  Russ believes this is actually Sansevieria parva.

Sansevieria parva?

The plant has grown slowly but steadily (as Sansevieria do) for me in the intervening years.  And this year, for the first time, it has bloomed!  The flowers are strongly fragrant.  When I stepped into the greenhouse it was a very pleasant smell, but when I stuck my nose right up to the flowers it was a little too much for me.

Sansevieria flowers

Trip Report: Gulele Botanic Garden in Ethiopia

Christie and I spent the month of July last year in Ethiopia, while we were finalizing the adoption of our son, Merek.

Yep, he's adorable!

A while back I heard about a botanic garden in Addis Ababa and I was excited about visiting during our time in Ethiopia.  There is very little information on the internet about this place and no one seems to know about it around town.  (There is a new website that has some good information here.)  At the time the best I could do was find a phone number and called and talked to someone, who seemed a little surprised that we wanted to come and visit.

Cute little flower growing on the grounds of Gulele

We hired a taxi to drive us to the area near the garden and when we got close the driver started asking people along the street if they knew where we should go.  I brought the phone number with me and had the taxi driver call and talk to the people at the garden.  He brought me to an office building and Christie, Merek, and I went inside to meet some of the garden staff.

We visited for a short time in their office and then the Director of Education (I think his name was Solomon) got in a separate car and asked us to follow him to the garden in our taxi.  We drove up the mountain a little distance and pulled in the gate, where a staff of 5 or 6 people were tending to the garden.

Director of Education standing in front of the greenhouses

Solomon was very happy to show me around the garden.  He told me about their vision for the place, which has been developing slowly over the last 5 years.  They envision this being a place where people come to go walking or jogging or just to enjoy nature.  (It was a good area for birding!  I recorded my 500th life bird while here: Rufous-breasted Sparrowhawk)  They aim to collect plant species from throughout the country and grow them on site, as well as to sponsor conservation efforts throughout Ethiopia.  They have rows of plants arranged almost like crops and two nice greenhouses.
The greenhouses are sectioned into rooms coming off of a main corridor that runs down the middle.  We ventured inside and talked about the various plants they are growing.  Many of the plants are native to Ethiopia, but not all.  Solomon said it is challenging to meet the growing conditions of all of these plants from the many different climates across Ethiopia, so they are trying to simulate different climates in different rooms. Most of the plants are growing in plastic bags.  It wasn't clear to me if these are temporary or long-term.

Euphorbia bisellenbeckii

I told Solomon that I grow a lot of tropical plants, primarily Aroids and Orchids.  He wasn't very familiar with the Aroid (Araceae) family, so I tried to give him some examples.  Finally we came across one aroid in his greenhouses, which looked like a Sauromatum.  He showed me a group of native orchids, but they were not in bloom and I would have never guessed they were orchids.  Their leaves looked similar to the leaves of a day lily.  The orchid family is quite diverse and I remembered that my Field Guide to Ethiopian Orchids had a lot of genera that I was not familiar with before reading that book.

Boys swimming in an artificial pool formed around a natural waterfall flowing by the side of the path up the mountain.

After touring the greenhouses we went outside and found Christie, who had been walking around with Merek, taking pictures of birds for me.  We walked even farther up the steep hill and ventured to some other parts of the garden that I would not have guessed were the same property.  Along the way we passed several different habitats that the staff has been working to create, including a marshy area formed by damming up a natural creek that flows down the hillside.

Solomon pointing out the rough property line of the botanic garden

Near the top of the hill there was a flatter area and a path that led to a lookout tower.  We stood on top and took in the view of the countryside and city below us.  Merek slept in his carrier for a little bit, but when he woke up he was kind of ready to get out and do something else.

I regret that I didn't get a good picture of the garden as a whole, showing the rows of plants and such.  I was focused on individual birds and plants.  We really enjoyed our outing and will visit again on one of our return trips to see how the garden matures.

Click above to see the complete album.

Drunkard's Dream in bloom

Sometimes common names can be comical names.  (Sansevieria = Mother-in-law's Tongue?)  There is a little cactus whose stem segments look like tiny bottles connected end-to-end.  If you picture them as beer bottles then you can imagine where the name "Drunkard's Dream" came from.

Hatiora salicornioides

I got my plant via a little stem cutting from a roadside rock store we stopped at somewhere in SW Missouri or NE Oklahoma several years ago.  I had seen pictures of the plant online but not seen one in person before.  When I saw it in the store I was exclaiming over it and the shop owner was kind enough to offer me a cutting.  It rooted easily and has grown slowly but steadily in the years since.

Hatiora salicornioides

I noticed it blooming for the first time last year in the month of February, and it is doing the same again this year.  The blooms are small and bright yellow.

The misunderstood Poinsettia

It's been AGES since I last posted!  Sorry about that, loyal followers.   Life has been busy and I have added some new hobbies, which have diverted my attention and time away from the blog.  Now, let's talk about poinsettias!



I'm not entirely sure why I typed that title for the post.  Now that I have, I have a lot to discuss.  My inspiration for the post was when I visited the good old Myriad Botanic Gardens in Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago.  To be honest, I have been a little disheartened with the direction of the gardens since the garden ownership changed a few years ago.  There is a lot more marketing (good) but a lot of it seems to have nothing to do with plants (sad).





Anyway, that being said, when we were at the gardens a couple of weeks ago they had the whole placed decked out for the holidays and the conservatory was lit up with Christmas lights.  (All normal lighting was turned off, so you couldn't really see the plants.)  In the lobby area they had tons of Poinsettias.  At first I walked by them, not realizing there was something special about this temporary splash of holiday color.  There were SIGNS by each of these plants.  (I can't tell you how many times I have been in botanic gardens and seen a plant or tree that I didn't know and I couldn't find a label for it anywhere.)  The signs caught my attention and then I noticed these Poinsettias were not all the same.  And I don't mean they were just different colors.  There were striking differences.





I was really delighted to see that the Myriad had gone out of their way to track down some named varieties that were different from the norm. They were only lacking a bit more signage to call people's attention to the understated exhibit. It could be pretty educational, describing what a cultivar is, how they are selected and bred, and how the horticulture industry works. It's all in my head.



Now back to my title, I think the Poinsettia is misunderstood. First, the Poinsettia is Euphorbia pulcherrima, belonging to the huge Eurphorbia genus, which mostly consists of succulent plants that the average person would call "cacti." You wouldn't know it with a quick look at the Poinsettia, but it's true. Now maybe the Poinsettia is saying "Hey, that's just my crazy family.  I'm nothing like those spiky beasts."  But they are closely related. Second, those colorful "flowers" that everyone loves at Christmas time... well, they're not really flowers. Those are colored leaves, called bracts. The flowers are the small yellow bits in the middle.  Third, they just don't look like that in the wild.  The compact potted plants sold all over the place between Thanksgiving and Christmas have been grafted and bred for those traits.  The natural species is much more lanky and with less prominent colorful bracts.  Fourth, the rumors of their toxicity are hyperbolic.  Most people will have little to no reaction from the sap.  Others could have some skin irritation.  If you were to each a leaf,  you might puke.  You would have to eat a lot of Poinsettias to have anything close to a fatal dose.



Finally, I will leave you with some photos of a favorite relative of mine.  It is the Jamaican Poinsettia Tree (Euphorbia punicea). There is a large specimen at the Myriad Botanic Gardens and I have also seen this tree growing outdoors at a botanic garden in Florida.

Euphorbia punicea (Jamaican Poinsettia tree) at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens, Miami, Florida.

Jamaican Poinsettia Tree - macro view of flower. Myriad Botanic Gardens, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.