What's in a Name?

This plant assures me it is called 'Lono'. It argued with me about it.... it  showed me it's birth certificate (stake) but when I compared this (whose color is pretty true to actual) it doesn't LOOK like any 'Lono' I see photos of.

Make me happy and identify the suspicious character in my yard please.

Kohleria 'Lono' or ???

Gesneriad Gleenings

Did you know that the Gesneriad Society is now producing a monthly e-zine that is posted free to members AND non-members alike? It's on the Gesneriad Society website and it is available as a free subscription also.

You might want to click here to get right to it! Check it out. http://www.gesneriadsociety.org/gleanings/index.htm

Perry!

 Perry the Titan opened up for a spectacular weekend of amazingness at Gustavus. The Titan arum (which can be seen on live webcam here at) http://gustavus.edu/biology/titanarum/ opened to crowds of expectant onlookers!

Sometimes things are just too interesting to sleep through. This was Perry at about one in the morning.

 Perry should have really been opening at the seams, but as it would happen, Perry didn't do what was ordinary.

 Perry is now getting rather open and interesting.

 Still noting with the seam.

 As the hours go by, it's growing more open.

Dr. Obrien from the Gustavus Linnaeus Arboretum is giving a little scientific measurement to Perry. You can see that it's not overstated when you hear that Titans produce  the world's largest flower bloom.



Ok club.... tune into the web cast and also leave a comment at the bottom here....

PS: Did we say that when they bloom they have an odor of roadkill left in the sun a few days? This is to entice the pollinators to Perry so that there will be future generations of little Perrys. Perry is a proud pollen producer at only age 17. 

More about macrostachya

This Sinningia is at the CBS greenhouse in a bright spot, the whitewash on the glass roof filtering the light to about half of full sun. The first photo shows the whole plant. Hard to get into a single photo, it always has leaves- thick, slightly fuzzy with strong petioles. Can be quite a mound. Sometimes you can't see the tuber. This summer it is a bit thin. It was in too much shade in May until sometime in June. That's its best growing leaves season. This species needs lots of light to grow short stems and flower well.
The orange flowers in the background are an Aeschynanthus- more on that one in another post.

The flowers are small, about an inch long, and screaming orange. A spike can have more than a dozen open at once, and blooms for a month or so.
A great specimen for a greenhouse. Don't do this at home. In the house, it puts out one or two long weak stems that grow all the way to a window in a desperate search for full sun. In nature, it becomes a great mound of leaves.

This plant has had 20 or more spikes open at once, and well over 200 flowers open.

The last photo shows the 11 inch tuber, which almost fills the pot. Forgot to rotate the photo, so its on its side. May fix this later.
It is at least 10 years old. The tuber will grow rapidly when outdoors or in a bright greenhouse. I have summered this one outside, and another about the same size.
The stems do not dry up and fall off, like most sinningias, but remain for several years and become woody on the outside [still green inside]. They are rather brittle, like many sinningias. I trim the back as needed to keep the plant to about 3 feet across. The new shoots from the tuber can be seen in this photo.
Strong sunlight is needed to get a large tuber. This one grew 3 pot sizes, from 4 to 6 to 8 inch pots in about 4 years, going outside a couple of those summers. It was shaded there during the middle of the day.
This was grown by several members of the local GS. I got them when their owners sought a brighter home for them. Lots of gesneriads at the greenhouse came from the GS members.

Some other species of Sinningias need a lot of light to produce a large tuber- leucotricha, iarae, insularis, curtiflora, leopoldii, calcaria and many others take full sun in nature. Thick, dark leaves suggests tolerance of strong light and heat. A very bright spot will help them grow rapidly.
Others like bright light but shelter from the mid-day sun- cardinalis, speciosa, eumorpha, guttata, conspicua, richii and reitzii- a thinner leaf suggests less light, less heat tolerance.

A little of this Sinningia and a little of that!

 Here is a S. macrostachya (probably) that is trying to make a tuber further up it's stem?

It has a relatively good size tuber from where the stem emerges. Where the branching starts (for the main stems), it's getting a swollen base that doesn't touch the soil. This type of Sinningia is reported to get a "perennial" woody base", but this looks a little diffrent.

 Here are all the reproductive parts from the flower below. It's supposed to be a Sinningia cardinalis 'Innocent'. Some of the pure whites didn't turn out really all that white. This is a lovely delicate shade of the lightest pinkie color. It's certainly not it's red parent's color!

I am going to guess it shows it's albinism partially, like my backyard squirrels do. Not all of them are "all white" although they aren't the regular gray and brown either.

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Puzzle This Out!

Try the puzzle out to see what is "wrong" with the picture. Be the first one to tell us at: Gesneriads@gmail.com

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