Gesneriads and Poison Dart Frogs!

 I almost never see gesneriads outside of club meetings and fellow enthusiast's collections. I was pleasantly surprised when I was going through Como Conservatory's display for children about various types of frogs. This display highlighted the colorful frogs which are listed with their photos above the display case in the top photo.

When I was looking for the frogs I saw a familiar looking blossom and sure enough it was a little blooming Kohleria of some sort!

I just thought other gesneriad "people" should know and be on the lookout for other uses for the world's best family of plants!

Kohleria 'Lemon Demon'

 This is a rather interesting flower. Kohleria 'Lemon Demon' is what this plant was labeled and there is some question to it's validity. But whatever the name, the picture is pretty curious.

There is a plant at the CBS greenhouse that should be in bloom again soon and a nice photo of fresh blossoms will follow.

Strep Seedling Siblings

These are just two of the seedlings that grew out of a selfing of an unnamed peloric flower on a Streptocarpus. The color is a bit bolder than the parent and as you can see the left flower is quite nicely star shaped and ruffled with an even distribution of lines and color throughout all five petals. The right hand flower is more traditional with the upper two petals one color and the bottom three showing the patterning.

Columnea purpureovittata berries

Here's a photo of my Columnea purpureovittata berries. Let's hope it will provide a plant for everyone that wants one!
Sue

Columnea purpureovittata blooming!

My Columnea purpureovittata flowers have finally opened!

I purchased the plant on eBay, and noticed that there was one on July 2nd that sold for $112.50! Hopefully this plant will provide cuttings in the future.
Sue

The June Meeting, Kohleria 'Lemon Demon' and Other Awesome Things

The June meeting was full of great 'show and tell' plants brought in by members!!! This is Sinningia micans! The big leaves and striking color of the flowers are impressive!
The flower stem was much more upright when Sue put it in her car. This is a 6 inch pot.

Because of the bright background light this Columnea purpurevittata doesn't show up to it's potential at all. With apologies, it will be properly photographed for everyone's enjoyment soon!

This is a delightful Achimenes 'Emma Lawn' named after the hybridizer's mother. What striking flowers!

This is an unnamed seedling Strep. that comes from a self of a cross of Iceberg Blues x Guidelines. Most of the offspring were purple, but this little one showed off and came up with lots of bright white flowers!

Again with the photo not showing off the plant well, this is not Sylvia but a very distinct bright and rich colored Russian hybrid called Versace.

How about this?? The flower didn't fade after the usual few days but has stayed fresh while the pollination took place and the seed pod formed. The flower is approximately three months old already? Weird!

The program for the evening was really excellent. Mauro Peixoto of Mauro Peixoto's Brazilian Plants put together a PowerPoint presentation on Sinningia species. The photos were excellent.

This is a Kohleria 'Lemon Demon' showing off the yellow on the face of the flower, with purple spots and a vibrant violet tube. The plants makes lots of flower.

This was hybridized by Jon Dixon, past president of the Gesneriad Society. He gav e me a plant when I visited him a couple of years ago, and we have been getting just violet flowers. Time to ask Jon if this is the real Lemon Demon.
And we have great news! Patrick Worley joined us last night. We had lots of fun and we are delighted to meet him at last. Patrick was a member of the Twin Cities chapter back in the 70's. He is looking for gesneriads plants, especially rhizomatous ones. Janice brought in a large rambling xSmithicodonia "Heartland's Joy' hybridized by Dale Martens, in bloom with lovely large growing purple flowers. It went home with Patrick.
Welcome back.

Paliavana and Drymonia BLOOMING at last!!!

Hello..... this is a Paliavana!!!!! I"m told it's a Paliavana gracillis, but then again the pictures of it look like a Paliavana tenuiflora. Either way it is a Paliavana and it is mine and it is BLOOMING!!!!!!!!

 Now you have to admit, this is a pretty good looking flower!

The plant is finally happy after being tormented under low-light conditions. Now, that this cutting lives at a proper greenhouse, (it took about 4 months) *poof, it bursts into bloom... and what a lot of bloom it will have too.

 The flowers are in part bat pollinated. I don't have any bats handy to test out this claim, but it seems that it's certainly big enough for a bat to try to put it's little head in there.....

 The plant will have quite a lot of blooms. I'm hoping to see if it will either set some seed, or it can be crossed with a Sinningia or two and make something interesting!

This is something different, it's a Drymonia oinochrophylla. These are really cool little shiny plants that make the nicest rosy purple flowers! An outstanding small gesneriad that does nothing but grow pleasantly and did I mention that the leaves were shiny??? More pix of this one when it opens.