Streptocarpus 'Noreen' Project Plant Update 2

This is J O's project plant and the photograph doesn't do the plant justice. This, as you can see from the regulation tray it's sitting on is getting to be wonderfully large and long. It threw out quite a few blooms and it going to have two more bloom stems open soon.


The next three pix are of my plants. This is the one plant from the first update. it's out of bloom now but it's definitely filled in with more leaves and it's looking a pretty healthy shade of green although before I repotted it, it got quite dry in it's smaller sized pot and lost a couple of it's baby leaves.

 You might be able to spot it as the second plant on the left hand side. It's sister plant is the front one and it's in bloom as well. I'm mostly posting about just the specific plant I chose to follow through the photos, but curiously enough I was interested in what another of the 'Noreen' plants was doing.

This is a third (separate) 'Noreen' that I got about three weeks before I got the project plants. I crossed 'Guidelines x Emily' long ago (I think) and 'Noreen' is one of the seedlings. Neil's Streps (which you can find on eBay) was growing out some of the plants and agreed to supply the club with the "project plant babies" we started with. Neil's Streps also was a vendor at the AVSM Northtown Fall Show and Sale and this is the plant I acquired earlier in the month. Just those three extra weeks, or the fact that I repotted rather soon after acquiring it might have made the difference but this plant is (judging by the tray size again) getting HUGE!

I'm curious about a couple of things regarding this particular plant. I generally don't have a ton of success with my streps. They frequently are left to get too dry and my growing room is sometimes a bit on the warmish side (especially in summer). As we all know, Streps frequently seem to hate warm conditions. This is a plant that does happen to do well for me. Is it because I'm trying harder and paying more attention to it because it's one of my hybrids? Or because I don't want to be the first to kill off my project plant, with photo evidence and documentation of the crime, so that the club finds out what really happens to some of my plants.... or....

Or, is it because this is one of the seedlings that actually survived in MY conditions and therefore is somewhat adapted to dryer and more harsh conditions than some other hybrids? I'm wondering if there is a way to find out?

Aeschynanthus radicans, Getting a Closer look at the Lipstick Plant: Or, Why Science is Fun!

 Just to start us out... here is a flower from the Aeschynanthus radicans.

Usually most people know this plant as a "Lipstick Plant" because the bloom comes up from the blackish base (calyx) and emerges like a lady's lipstick.

This is the first cut. From here I'll make another cut that's about 1/16th of an inch thick to put under the scope.

 *Not all the photos are all that sharp and clear, this is the best I can do with the equipment I possess.

You can see the brown calyx ring, and then the bright red corolla ring and the start of where the ovary will attach.

 Another cut a bit further along....












And now you can see that we've definitely gotten to the ovary.

I'm not sure what the triangular shape with the empty middle is though....

 This shot shows the layers a little more clearly. If you use a bit of imagination and look very carefully at the center bit, you can see the forming seeds in the ovary. They are the darker marks. You'll notice that everything on a gesneriad has hair! Everything!!! Even the developing ovary.

 We're further along the flower now and up high enough to be getting to the top of the developing ovary.

We should also be getting into where some of the stamen are....

 And LOOKIE here! We don't have the dark calyx ring of tissue anymore, we have only the really pretty dark red corolla (petal) layer.

Do you notice in the upper right hand corner you CAN see the seeds forming in the ovary better but this is the cool part.... In the bottom middle of the photo you can see the lump of greenish tissue connected to the red corolla. It's where the stamen connect to the flower! If we had made the cut up any higher in the flower it will not be connected but be the independent stalk (the filament) that holds up the pollen sacs.

 

 A shot of the tip of the ovary in the bottom middle of the photo and the filaments in the upper mid to left of the photo. The red, hairy corolla is of course to the right.

 Here's a shot of the section on the slide to give you a better notion of how these relate to the magnified photos.

 The last cut was quite high up on the flower and really all that was left to see in cross section was what follows.....

The pollen sacs (anthers) on the cute pink filaments. These pollen sacs aren't quite ready to break all the way open yet, but you can see a little of the pollen sneaking out to the right hand side of the photo.

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Vanhouttea lanata: Not just your average Gesneriad

I had a really wonderful surprise yesterday when I went into the plant room. Look at the bright cheerful little thing that was blooming!!!

Ron Myhr with his incredible Gesneriad Reference Web says this about the Vanhouttea: "This unusual gesneriad grows tall and rangy, and has an unusual calyx form, where the calyx enfolds the flower bud in a manner similar to a bract, opening only to allow the flower to emerge."
 

For those of you who haven't already gotten very used to using the Gesneriad Reference Web as a fantastic(!!!) source of information, click on the words above and it will link you right to it.

I'm very interested to see if this plant will like my conditions of (mostly) benign neglect. It bloomed at quite a small size, although the description says it's a rangy shrub form, and perhaps with pruning and not too much pampering this will thrive for me! YAY! Really nicely colored flowers too. I'm wondering if it will inter-generically cross with anything else??? We might have an experiment here, stay tuned.

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Transplanting Sinningia Seedlings, Sinningia bullata x douglasii x self

Obviously, these seedlings are opening the box for themselves and desperately trying to crawl out. Time to pot them up into a little larger space.

These are from the Gesneriad Society Seed Fund. It's the top label, the natural hybrid of Sinningia bullata x leopoldii x self.

 This is what they look like with the cover off. They are quite crowded but healthy and ready for transplanting.

 Just the usual reminder, always label your work with the plant's name, and any other information you wish to remember. It can't be said enough times that you will (after a couple of months) NOT remember just which of the little pots had the "special" plant you wanted to check on.

 Gently lift the mass of seedlings out of the original pot. Trying to extract them one at a time still in the container seems to damage many and not be very useful.

I like to use a "recycled" party tray for a work space. The bright white plastic makes finding what you're looking for much easier. Before you start ripping and tearing, take a second to really LOOK at what you're about to do. There's usually a better side to start out with than the others.

 A little magnification doesn't hurt and some tools with delicate ends don't hurt either. You don't need tweezers but a nice slim skewer with a pointed end, or a thin object pointed like a pencil helps loosen tangled roots a bit more delicately than a huge set of fingers.

 I was so EXCITED to find that the seedlings had already produced tiny tubers! This is pretty cool if you ask me! It also says that I probably was leaving the seedlings in the seedling-box too long. You can see the little ball and some roots in the center of the photo.

 This was another seedling with a tuber already forming. Some of the seedlings didn't have such handsome tubers yet, but you get the idea.... Sinningias are great! They try to protect themselves from infant-hood onwards with a tuber that will start growing again if something terrible happens to the top, such as being eaten off by livestock.

Here is a shot of the three RED community pots I put the seedlings in so they can continue to grow larger. (The orange are S. douglasii). I got the community pot idea from Patty K!!!! She makes the excellent point that the seedlings need to have some roots growing before they need individual pots. Why waste 20 or 30 two inch pots and all the soil that goes into each of them when a few community pots will allow plenty of space for each of the babies for now and take up much less room under the lights when they are first establishing themselves. After the plants get slightly crowded in these pots and have a healthy root system they can go into an individual pot.

After the community pots have their precious seedlings in them, they need to be modestly watered so that the soil is MOIST but not soaking, soggy and drippy.... then put the seedlings in a tray with a dome on it so that it mimics the closed environment that they just came from in their little closed deli container. You will slowly transition them to open air later.

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Eucodonia 'Adele' Rhizome, A Closer Look

 Here is a Eucodonia rhizome. A rhizome is defined by the fine folks at Wikipedia as "characteristically a horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes."

It's one of the ways that gesneriads reproduce and one of the three types of root systems that are found in the Gesneriad family. The root types include fibrous roots, tuberous roots and our featured rhizomatous roots!

 In the first photo you saw a little thing that looks like a pine cone with a central brownish stem (to the right hand side). Sort of a cute little deal.

A closer look at the side of the 'pine cone' shows that it's made of small scales that are attached at the central brown stem and that each of the scales is simply COVERED with our now seemingly standard gesneriad hair! I was once again surprised to see that these structures had hair too!

Here two scales sit side by side. You don't notice the hairs on the flat surface because of the way the picture is taken but they show up on the edges nicely, along with some remnants of the soil that the rhizome was taken out of.

This is pretty cool. This is a closeup of that little brown central stem that the scales all attach to.... and IT HAS HAIR TOO!

I'm just so impressed that everything is coming up fuzzy.

 Here are more of the scales and because of proper lighting all the translucent hair do show up in better detail. They really do cover the surface of the scales.

And here's one more end on shot with the darkish patch the out-of-focus central stem and some of the topmost scales pictured. Each one of the scales, if detached and planted has the potential to make an entire new plant, sort of like planting a seed. Cool eh???

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Nematanthus (Goldfish Plant) Up Close and Personal

 Meet our little Nematanthus leaf. It's a pretty leaf with a smooth, glossy surface and nice thick, waxy feel, For the most part there isn't much that jumps out to make this leaf stand out in your mind as something really interesting.

But, when looking at the top surface you'll notice that it has some pock marks and you can still see the shine.

The bottom surface is where it gets a little more interesting though. The 'holes' appear to be much deeper. Normally a leaf has stomata (openings for the exchange of gases and water vapor) mostly in the lower surface. These openings should be surrounded by two guard cells that are bean shaped. I'm not sure I see this in the photo, but there are undoubtedly openings.

 When cut in section the leaf shows the wonderful layers of it's outer skin (epidermis) and the little hair on the surface called a trichome. Please note that this is one of the gesneriads that have a seemingly smooth surface and lack of the usual gesneriad fuzziness. I was so excited to find that the Nematanthus have them too!!!

The 'hair' or trichomes are useful for a number of things to benefit the plant and on the above linked page supplied by our friends at Wikipedia, some of them are listed including: "It is likely that in many cases, hairs interfere with the feeding of at least some small herbivores and, depending upon stiffness and irritability to the "palate", large herbivores as well. Hairs on plants growing in areas subject to frost keep the frost away from the living surface cells. In windy locations, hairs break-up the flow of air across the plant surface, reducing evaporation. Dense coatings of hairs reflect solar radiation, protecting the more delicate tissues underneath in hot, dry, open habitats. And in locations where much of the available moisture comes from cloud drip, hairs appear to enhance this process."

This is the leaf edge with the top surface to the right. The pigment is also primarily on the top surface as it was in the Episcia leaf a couple of posts ago. I guess that was a surprise to me.

If you look closely at the very tip and to the right, it has another of it's rather sparse 'hair' or trichomes.
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Cross Section of Chirita tamiana (Primulina tamiana)Ovary

 This is the developing seed pod from a Chirita tamiana.

 Another shot gives you the view of the sepals enclosing the pistil (the female parts collectively) of the flower. It's been pollinated and it was (till cut open) developing seeds.

Now this I think is really, really cool!
Here is that same seed pod cut open and magnified! You can see the extremely interesting spirals which hold the developing seeds. Some of the seed was disrupted when slicing the pod open but they would be laid out in order connected to the placenta.

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