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.