Sinningia 'Diva', xPhinastema 'California Dreaming', African violet 'Neverfloris', Kohleria 'Tom Thumb', S. 'Magic Moment', xSinvana 'Mt. Magazine', S. 'Amizade', Strep. 'Watermellon Wine', rhizomes, S. 'Stone's Yulia'

HELLO! 
Now that I'm not quite so busy with other club stuff for the Twin Cities Chapter of the Gesneriad Society, I can post more fun stuff on the blog.

Here are some pix of what's blooming right now in the ole' plant room.

 This handsome thing is Sinningia 'Diva'. It's an example of a corola that has changed into "extra petals" to give the flower a double look. You will not see the sepals at the base of the flower. The flowers are large and it's quite showy!

 This year I finally got xPhinastema 'California Dreaming' to grow into something! Mine is still small but it's got big plans.

The plant is rhizomatous and comes back year to year from its rhizomes. You will like the very dark, almost black leaves with the electric pink flowers. This plant stays petite and grows great under lights. You want it!

African violet 'Neverfloris' just gets buds and no flowers open. Weird. It does indeed have the charm of growing into a nicely shaped show plant (not that you can tell from my violet efforts) but you can believe me. LOL

 Kohleria 'Tom Thumb' does stay smaller than the 3 foot cousins that I seem to get off of ebay. Nice flowers and a more reasonable size.

 The flash (which wasn't supposed to flash) highlighted the white hair on the outside of the Sinningia 'Magic Moment' blooms so nicely I let it happen.

What a nice plant this is... You want one of these too.

 Ok, I'm in love!

This is xSinvana 'Mount Magazine'. The xSinvanas are awesome! The flowers are large and pretty and stay on the plant a long time.

I was unlucky and lost xSin. 'Mt. Nebo' but hope to find it again this fall on ebay. The are pretty cool plants!

This is a gift. It's labeled Sinningia 'Amizade'. The foliage is a different color from the description but it's beautiful and it's healthy. I'm excited to see it flower.

 Streptocarpus 'Watermelon Wine' is a stunning flower. It's really this red and stays nicely on the plant. My plant is only a baby but I'm looking forward to seeing multiple flowers on the plant. I got this from an auction on eBay from plant_maniac in Iowa. Nice stufffffff!

 I got a lovely Smithiantha 'Jimi Hendrix' from Gary's and it bloomed and then died back. I was hoping I hadn't done anything awful to it, but it was healthy and had rhizomes in the pot! All of the rhizomes from two different plants of 'Jimi' have pink on one end and the light green on the other. Curious!

 I started a baby plant of Vanhouttea lanata. I can't seem to get the big one to routinely flower, but the foot long baby is happily making flowers. 

The are about an inch long and very pretty with their spots.

 Ok, YOU WANT THIS ONE. This is a Sinningia 'Stone's Yulia'.

it's got the sexy stripe on the bottom of the flower and it's a very compact, polite and lovely plant with the dark foliage.

This one is a keeper! I've recently switched to keeping Sinningias in bonsai soil mix. 1-1-1 poultry grit, NAPA floor dry (DE in just the right size) and bark chips/bits.

I am surely loosing less tubers to rot now. You do have to water relatively consistantly, but it seems to be worth it!

Comments??? 
Questions????

What's Doin' the Bloomin': Sinningia 'Zillanova'

Meet Sinningia 'Zillanova' This is a really nicely indestructible hybrid of Sinningia bullata crossed with something I can't track down today.

The Kartuz catalog describes the plant as, "Showy deep salmon pink flowers above attractive bubbly textured leaves. Large, easy grower. New Sinningia hybrid by Jim Steuerlein." 

I was curious about the white line patterns in the flowers. I thought I was doing something to the buds. But, the only other photo I could find on the internet of this plant also shows the interesting line pattern.

This plant went through very hot conditions and still kept nice looking leaves. It seems to be a winner!

Sinningia 'Apricot Bouquet' and Friend

Although the photo shows 'Apricot Bouquet' pinker than it might look in natural light outside, I was surprised to find this little friend sitting on the leaf.

Here in Minnesota we don't have many exotic looking pollinators ... and not all that many find their way inside a home and onto a plant that perfectly complements their handsome coloration! If magnified enough you can see pollen sticking to the feet of this little fly. I was sort of hoping to see if any of the flowers would form a pod.

Sinningia 'Gabriel's Horn', S. 'Polka Punch', Nemomortonia mummularia, Columnea lehmannii, Streptocarpus 'Alissa', Chirita linearis, and Columnea schiediana are BLOOMING!!!

This has to be one of my very favorite Sinningias. It's Gabriel's Horn. This is an easy to grow plant that has been in bloom for months.

This is a little gem called Nemomortonia mummularia. It's pouch-like flowers are a pleasant surprise on a humidity loving small-growing plant. (At least it's small growing for now...)

This isn't quite IN bloom, but it's close. I'm quite anxious to see what Columnea lehmannii is going to look like. I'm a fan of fuzzy flowers, and this one looks like it could be a winner!

This is Sinningia 'Polka Punch'. It grows a bit like a Smithiantha with the nice spike of flowers at the top. This one also seems to be happy to be multiplied... it has four or five "offspring" already.

Ok, now this is a little different, for those that like "weird". This is one of the relatively few (so far) yellow Streptocarpus named 'Alissa'. The yellow is spread throughout and there is only a bit of purple on the upper lobes.

Now this is also lovely, small and pretty cool. This is a Chirita linearis. Pretty pinkish flowers are held above the narrow foliage. A nice plant that doesn't take up too much space either.

And this isn't blooming, but the result of blooming. This is a little Columnea schiediana berry. Even the berry is fuzzy. Now there isn't anything to not love about that! This plant had another berry but sometimes the caretaker doesn't know just when berries are ripe. This one will be ripened a little more and the seeds hopefully sent to the Seed Fund. Please consider saving and sending in seeds to the fund. That's one way everyone has an opportunity to try out new and unusual varieties for a very reasonable price. Comments??? Questions??? It is very easy to leave either if you just click on the word below this and type your message.

Sinningia leucotricha

This is Sinningia leucotricha showing the tuber filling a 5" pot. The clear pot allowed us to see the roots growing. The seedlings are growing all around the edges of the tuber.
I've been putting off repotting this one and now I broke the plastic pot trying to get the tuber out.
The plant is more valuable than the pot.

Had to carefully cut the pot off the tuber. The mix is very free draining, as the plants are watered heavily several times a week. The greenhouse uses RO water, with a dilute fertilizer made for RO water added once or twice a week.

As the tuber fills the pot, it limits the amount of water that gets into the mix. This is likely similar to what happens in nature, as the tubers fill cracks in the rocks.

The roots held the mix in a block. Great drainage is essential where the watering is heavy. The roots filled this pot in a few months after transplanting. This one got high light in the greenhouse most of the year, sitting at the south end of the bench. Whitewash in the spring and summer reduces the light by about half, to around 5,000 footcandles in the middle of a sunny day. S. leucotricha loves the sunshine. Dense silver hairs protect the developing leaves as the plants grow in full sun.

A few seedlings, showing the tiny tubers that have developed over several months. The seedlings have well developed tubers for the size of the plants. These came up in the pot in the spring; it's now December 15. We will be repotting these about every two weeks for maybe 5 times. Dale Martens taught us this method, and it works. See posts over the next 3 months or so updating their progress.

Most of the seedlings have been pried off, gently, to leave most of their roots. Then they just fell apart. A good look at the tuber. And the solid block of roots. The first 2 or 3 cycles of growth on seedlings of this, and many other sinningia species, do not look like the mature plant. There may be several pairs of leave on the stem, and the leaves may not be as silver. And there may be surprises, as there were other sinningias blooming near this pot.


Repotting a large sinningia tuber with a good root system is easy. I like a pot about 1 inch larger in diameter than the old one. Today, we had some clay pots, and chose an orchid pot with slots in the sides for extra drainage. It is a little bigger than the square clear pot this was in.

I mixed some peat,small wood chips and rice hulls mix [about half] with some small perlite, coarse perlite and turkey grit for great drainage. And a little horticultural charcoal for good luck. And put the solid block of roots in the pot, filling around it with new mix.
The clay pot will allow the soil to dry out faster than a plastic pot. Here at the greenhouse, the risk of too much water and root rot is a major concern when repotting sinningias. As the roots fill the new soil, they will dry the soil faster.
Better to repot twice than rot once.
The choice of clay or plastic pots, how heavy a soil to mix and how often to water depends on your conditions and methods of watering. I like very good drainage for larger sinningias. Seedlings and smaller or mini-sinningias get a mix that stays moist but not wet longer [at home].
Check back for more photos of the seedlings and the big tuber repotted.

Co-authored by Jinean and Chas
after a very good December day at the greenhouse

Interesting Stuff Continued or Sinningia Tubers, and 'Prudence Risley"

 On November 27th, 2010 the post for that day was showing the progress of some of the Sinningias and other things that were being propagated.

You will note the tuber and the roots forming on this Sinningia.

 Here is another Sinningia that is doing something just a bit different than the first. It's putting out some leaves as well as roots. I think that there is a tuber forming but it's smaller than the tuber in the first photo.

Now this is a tuber being formed! Here is 'Playful Porpoise' making a rather large and robust tuber after only 32 days in a small starter pot filled with perlite and vermiculite. It's been watered with a urea-free orchid fertilizer periodically also.

And lest we haven't praised the Sinningia 'Prudence Risley' enough, it decided to BLOOM in it's starter pot, while forming the tuber you can see at the base (surrounded by the new and rather extensive root system.)


Any comments to share with the gang today???

Chautemsia calcicola, Sinningia 'Gabriel's Horn' and other cool stuff.

This is Siningia 'Gabriel's Horn'. Now this is a cool Sinningia. The calyx is modified so that it appears to have a double set of petals. As you can see the color is quite spectacular.

This is the Chautemsia calcicola. It was mentioned in the last post but here is another look at this extremely cute gesneriad that seems to do very will in a high humidity environment (think under a dome) but blooms quickly from a small seedling. Rumor has it that it also produces rhizomes??

This is a shot of the flower with a dime for comparison. You'll notice that the flowers are very small but showy!

The 'tiny twins....' Here is Sinningia 'White Sprite' and it's pal, Sinningia 'Moon Ray'. Both are very tiny plants with very tiny blooms. Look how small the flowers are in comparison to the plant label in the photo. This is the adult, full size plant..... even if you live in a closet, you probably have room for a few of these Sinningias.

How about this Nematanthus corticola? The blooms hang down off of long red structures that will make the flowers look like they were hung off a holiday tree. They are almost ready to show the flower which you can see in the photo still tightly compressed in the center of the calyxes.

This is Sinningia 'Piglet'. It is just about to open, probably within the day. It's a sweet light pink color, which is probably why it is named as it is. The interesting thing about this plant, at least for me, is that it went from sprouted (microscopic) tuber to blooming plant in two months. Who knew that Sinningias were so quick and easy to grow???

I just like this flower. It's a Columnea linearis. The long narrow leaves give it a distinctive look from many of the other Columneas and the pink color of the flower is a bit different also.


Comments?? Hit the comment link directly below, or you may write to the blog's address as found on the top right of the blog.

November 23, 2010 Meeting

The meeting started off with some interesting 'show and tell' plants. The first one here is a Petrocosmea minor grown by J.N. It's wonderful symmetry and shiny leaves (not to mention it's abundant blooms) make it a really attractive plant.

 There were two Sinningia iarae plants brought in for display. One was an older plant that has been growing for many years and produced the seeds that the bottom  plant was grown from. The S. iarae is a nice, easy to bloom Sinningia that is not necessarily considered a 'compact' plant but stays a nice size and will grow and bloom either under lights or in a sunny window. If growing the Sinningias in the window, it is helpful to remember to turn them frequently to ensure even growth.

This is a rather new and interesting Charutemsia calcicola. One of only a few to be in cultivation so far, it's a charming small plant that seems to like high humidity. It grows quickly and has lovely little flowers that have some yellow color to them.

 This is another Petrocosmea. it's being grown with a 'double pot' to ensure excellent drainage but to keep the moisture and humidity around the plant so it doesn't dry too much.

This is a bowl of Sinningia pusilla. Because of the wide spread of the greenery, is this one plant with a tuber, or seedlings that have sprouted and are all growing in a tiny colony?

 After the 'show and tell' portion of the evening there was the annual "Night of the Dead and Nearly Dying" competition. It is a fiercely competitive event with contestants preparing for months to prepare just the right entry! Some of the best entries for one of the three categories - (Closest to Dead Without Actually Going Over, Most Unusual, and Most Artistic) are shown here.

A 'Spin Art' Strep presented by S. J. was the most nearly dead, as seen in the small black, square pot in the photo to the right.

The most unusual was that trailing brain (uh, sorry violet) to the right and the most artistic entry of the evening was the Alsobia punctata you can see sprawling all over the table. Thanks to all the contestants who labored and trained for nearly a year to prepare these marvelous entries! Prizes of delicious chocolates were awarded.



More of the meeting followed with a presentation of a book from C. A. by MacKinlay Kantor called Spirit Lake to long-time club member J. M. in part in appreciation for service to the Society. This book reflects some directly related ancestors of J. M. and has a historical perspective to Minnesota's early years.

Long time grower, J. N. gave a presentation about growing Petrocosmeas. The main points about growing Petrocosmeas were that you should not water them in excess and make sure that the soil mix you use is considered very light. They enjoy excellent drainage, like many gesneriads do. The plants themselves can be grown out in the open without use of domes or humidity trays, but when you are propagating and starting the suckers, it's helpful to put them in an enclosed environment with more humitidy.

The Petrocosmeas do bloom in the winter, as we can see from one of the first 'show and tell' photos at the beginning of this post. They will do well in west windows that have strong, but not burning light. J. N. doesn't wick water these plants, but some club members commented that they do.

Other discussion was about where to purchase various fertilizers for the plants. A formerly popular brand called Peter's was purchased by the Scott's company and is no longer formulated like it was in the past. The grandson of the original Peter's company started a smaller company and went back to producing the original urea-free formula that is now sold under the name of Jack's. Apparently, the orchid mix is urea-free, but the African violet mix is not.

The meeting ended after everyone enjoyed really awesome homemade treats brought by C. H. and A. M's wife! Those members can feel free to bring those treats anytime in the future.