Plant Find: A new Gesneriad

Gesneriad is the "common name" for the family Gesneriaceae, like "Aroid" to Araceae.  The Gesneriad family includes some common houseplants like African Violets (Saintpaulia genus), Lipstick Plants (Aeschynanthus genus), Goldfish Plant (Columnea genus) and others.  There are quite a few people that collect Gesneriads.  They are admired for their colorful flowers, as well as the foliage of some species.  Many of the Gesneriads have common names that include "violet" in them, like African Violet and Flame Violet.  One of my Gesneriads is the "False African Violet" (Streptocarpus saxorum).

When I was at Lowe's recently there were two Gesneriads in hanging baskets that I had not seen before and both were really neat plants.  One was Alsobia dianthiflora and the other was Codonanthe devosiana.

Codonanthe devosiana

I left the Alsobia behind, but purchased the Codonanthe.  This hanging basket is very full and has lots of buds (like the picture below).  With my greenhouse heating problems a couple of weeks ago, I kept this plant inside.  I hope that the lack of light for a couple of weeks didn't prohibit these buds from eventually opening.

Codonanthe bud

Codonanthe devosiana bloom

I hope to see a lot more of these little white blooms all over my plant in another week or so.

True blooms of the Squirrel's Tail

The little purple buds encased in the white blooming bracts of my Justicia betonica have opened.

Squirrel's Tail (Justicia betonica) blooming bract with true blooms emerging near the base.  Other buds can be seen inside the bract.

Do you see the 3 lower petals and the throat?  They are actually pretty neat blooms, although they are small.

The single blooming stalk has gotten heavy and is laying on its side now.  I wonder what the chances are of the blooms pollinating...

Close calls with brutal weather

It has been untypically cold in Oklahoma over the last couple of weeks.  Oklahomans are used to some severe weather in all seasons - hot summers (sometimes humid, sometimes dry) with temperatures above 100 F, and cold winters with temperatures in the teens and snow and ice on the ground.  But it is pretty rare for us to get into the single digits or near zero.  I live in USDA hardiness zone 7a, which is a winter minimum temperature between 0 and 5 Fahrenheit.  However, it has been a good 6-8 years since we have dipped near 10F.  This year we have been hit pretty hard.

We have actually reached 0 F on two different nights over the last 2 weeks.  And we have gotten some real snow on the ground, in three different events!  Last week the all-time low temperature record for the state was broken when a temperature of -31 Fahrenheit was recorded in Nowata, Oklahoma.  At the same time, it was +16 Fahrenheit at the North Pole.  That's just hard for me to believe.  The previous low was -27, set in Watts, Oklahoma in 1930.

My electric space heaters have done remarkably well keeping the temperature in the 60s in the greenhouse.  But the electric load has been trying for a single circuit.  Last week I woke up and checked the greenhouse temperature from the warm confines inside the house to find that it had dropped to 38 overnight in my greenhouse!  Prior to this my greenhouse had only gotten into the low 50s on one or two occasions.  I ran out to the greenhouse to find that the heaters were not on and would not respond to me hitting the power buttons.  The fuse had finally given out and the heaters had been off all night long, letting the temperature plummet (actually, it was more of a gradual decline) to a temperature that I can only imagine my plants didn't like.

I found that having two space heaters plugged into the same outlet was not wise and since I didn't have them plugged into a modern surge protector, they were drawing a higher load than the wiring could really  provide.  Thankfully our old screw-in fuse when out.  I replaced the fuse and plugged my main heater into a modern surge protected power strip, which will flip off when a large load is being drawn.  For the following nights, I ran an extension cord from another outlet out to the greenhouse to supply power to my extra heater.

It looks like I might have come through this debacle with only minor damage to some of my plants.  I don't think I lost any plants outright, but some have lost leaves and will have to slowly recoup.

Squirrel Tail in bloom

I have been growing my "White Shrimp Plant" or "Squirrel's Tail" (Justicia betonica) for a year and a half now.  Since I got to see this plant growing in its natural habitat in Hawaii, I knew the conditions that it prefers, so I figured that it would bloom fairly regularly for me.

It has been growing steadily, but no blooms.  It's not the most attractive plant when it is not blooming, so I've been kind of annoyed with it.  It just gets these really long, lanky stems with few leaves on them, except for the tips.  I prop up the stems so that they don't break off under the weight or get broken off by me moving around in the greenhouse.  I have wondered whether I should cut the plant back to encourage new growth that might be more full and bushy, so that it at least doesn't look so silly, but I have decided to let it be.  It is potted with a couple of other Shrimp plants (Justicia), so I get those to bloom on occasion and get to enjoy them.

Every time my White Shrimp produces a new set of leaves, I think "This it is!  It's finally a bloom!"  They just start so small and look just like the beginning of the blooming bract.  After all, the white blooming bract is just a bunch of modified leaves.   But then a couple of days later the leaves get larger and stay green and I realize that it's not a bract, just another set of leaves.  Well, a couple of weeks ago I had my normal realization that this could be the first blooming bract when a new set of green "leaves" began to grow from the tip of one of the longest stems.  A couple of days later the two little leaves had turned white and the green veins were showing.  I could tell this was finally it!

Beginning of the bloom bract - Justicia betonica - Jan 16, 2011

The bract continues to grow longer with more pairs of white petals, making it look like a shrimp or a long squirrel's tail - although not the right color to look much like either.  Eventually, the actual flowers will stick out between the white petals that make up the bract.  The blooms are light purple or pink and look like most other flowers from the Acanthaceae family.

Justicia betonica - Jan 28, 2011

For now, it just continues to grow longer and a new bract is beginning to form next to the first.

Justicia betonica - Feb 8, 2011

Just to further show that the bract is a bunch of modified leaves, you can see that the set of leaves just below the bract is half colored the same as the bract itself.

Justicia betonica - Feb 8, 2011

I'll post a photo update when the actual blooms peak out of the bract.

Plant Find: Cercestis mirabilis

Cercestis mirabilis

Cercestis mirabilis is a tropical African species from the Aroid family.  Although there are 13 species in the Cercestis genus, only this one is commonly grown in cultivation.  The juvenile plant has very attractive markings of silver marbling on the leaves.  If the plant is given an opportunity to climb, the marbling will diminish and the leaves will divide into 3 lobes, and sometimes even fenestrations.  As I have mentioned before, this quality of changing form as a plant matures is called heteroblasty.  There are some pictures of adult specimens on the ExoticRainforest website.

I got my plant from the "plant and cuttings swap" at the 3rd meeting of the MidAmerica chapter of the International Aroid Society, held at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens.

Plant Find: Anthurium scandens

About six months ago I saw my first pictures of Anthurium scandens.  This plant has many different features compared with all other Anthuriums I have known.  First of all, it grows as a vine, while most other Anthuriums grow as rosettes.  Also, this Anthurium is easily distinguishable by its profuse flowering (inflorescences) and the distinct white berries which form when the inflorescence is pollinated.

Anthurium scandens with single inflorescence

A couple of months ago I saw a small plant of Anthurium scandens listed for sale on eBay and I couldn't pass it up.  I purchased it, along with another unique Aroid.  Just a week later, at the plant swap of our aroid meeting at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens, there were about 10 ziplock bags with cuttings of Anthurium scandens.  On the one hand, I was kicking myself for having purchased one of these plants just weeks before when I could get one for free at our plant swap.  On the other hand, I was happy to have duplicates of this beautiful plant and knew that there was no way I could have known ahead of time that these would be available.

Anthurium scandens with two inflorescences

So now I have a couple of Anthurium scandens in my plant collection.  The cutting I brought home from the Fort Worth Botanic Garden even had a couple of inflorescences that had pollinated and formed berries (infructescence).  The smaller plant that I bought on eBay is doing well and producing a new inflorescence every couple weeks.  I have the larger plant hanging in a pot near the ceiling of my greenhouse, with my Anthurium paraguayensis, also from the FWBG meeting.  Eventually I would like to have some sort of tree branch arching across the top of my greenhouse that my Anthurium scandens can creep across.

Some members of the Pea family

The botanical family Fabaceae is commonly called the Pea family, because it contains the edible peas, among many other plants.  Several of the plants of this family are grown for their flowers and several have common names that include "pea."  One example is the Sweet Pea (Lathyrus odoratus).  I have grown a couple of different plants from this family - Purple Hyacinth Vine (Lablab purpureus) and Blue False Indigo (Baptisia australis v. minor).

I have also seen some neat plants growing wild over the last year, including the following plants.

Blooms of wild pea plant at Chickasaw Recreation Area near Sulphur, OK.

Blooms of another wild pea plant near Sulphur, OK.

We came across the plants pictured above while walking through a national park in southern Oklahoma.  I don't know the identity of either plant, but I liked them both.  We were actually hoping to see some orchids, but these little flowers were about the only thing we found in bloom.  Ironically, the blooms of the purple pea looked similar to an Encyclia cochleata, with it's squid legs dangling.

Pea blooming on Grand Cayman Island.

The plant pictured above was growing on a beach on Grand Cayman island, about 15 feet from the water.  The blooms of the Fabaceae family are distinctly shaped and the resulting seed pods are unmistakable, as well - the pea pod.

Pea pods on Grand Cayman Island.

If anyone knows the genus or species of any of these plants, please comment.