Columnea 'Red Skelton', Sinningia 'Miriam G.", Chrysothemis pulchella

Now, do you want something that puts on a show? This is Columnea 'Red Skelton'. Mine is still a young plant that's living in the same little pot it got shipped in. It requires very little fussing and the blooms are, like some Columneas, very long and bright.

As you can see by the ruler the flowers are over three inches long.

Typical for gesneriads you will notice the four joined stamen holding the pollen. Columneas have an intriguingly shaped flower probably designed to attract a specific pollinator... could it be a humming bird? The color would certainly attract them.

The hairs on the flower tube also show up... another thing gesneriads have in common... lots of hair!

This is a cool miniature Sinningia named 'Miriam G.'.

The splash of uneven darker magenta really highlights the flower's face. If you look to the top left at the back flower in the photo you see that the blossom curves sharply up resembling a pipe for smoking tobacco. Another adaptation to attract a specific pollinator?
 The plant seems to grow reasonably compactly and keeps its shape. A really nice variety.

 I can't resist putting these up on the blog. This is of course a Chrysothemis pulchella.

There are a few things that make this a really cool plant. First, the calyx are so bright orange. They come out before the yellow flower appears and they stay even after the yellow petals are all done and gone.

Another thing about the Chrysothemis is that they are one of the gesneriads that make TUBERS!!! So, even when you goof up, break it off, neglect it and dry it out.... chances are that it will resprout from its tuber like a Sinningia. It's also one of the very brightest yellow/orange gesneriads I can think of .... and being as those are my favorite colors I would suggest you will really have to try one too!

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Drymonia 'First Peach', Sin. 'Zillinova and Nematanthus 'Bijou' are more of What's Blooming Today!

 This is Drymonia 'First Peach' and it's the first time it's bloomed for me!

Woo hooo, it's a pretty flower and it sure "looks like a gesneriad" from the shape and fringes on the petals etc.

 It is a sturdy plant that has stiff leathery leaves and I would imagine that it could grow pretty large. It's blooming with two blooms in a 4" pot right now. Maybe it will be the sort that likes growing in dappled shade outside in the MN summer. It would be lovely!

 Here is our friend and vexing plant Sinningia tubiflora. It doesn't seem to bloom indoors all that often but when it does it has a sweet fragrance and those super long flowers are pretty interesting to look at.

 A poor shot of Sinningia reitzii but it's still decked out in Christmas colors and no matter how mean you are to it and how dry and wilted it becomes and how many leaves you kill off, it will come back from almost anything and still bloom consistantly.

Just think if you were to actually do a good job caring for it.... Nice plant IF you keep hacking it off, otherwise it gets too tall for the lights.

 One of the mid-size Sinningias called 'Zillinova'. I think it's from Kartuz Greenhouse. Nice textured leaves and really nice blooms with some interesting patterning on the petals. The flower has lightish lines on the petals and they are similar on all the flowers, sort of like you creased the petals but you didn't.

 Here's a first for the collection... I finally got a Nematanthus brasiliensis 
to bloom with a second flower coming. These are pretty cool and they hang down on a long pedicle.

 Here's something else new to the collection!

This is Nematanthus Bijou. It started out as a very sickly little cutting that was graciously given to me from an Ebay order that sat in a hot box wayyyyy toooo long. Most all of the leaves were mushy and many fell off but this one came back and rooted.

Now it's a very pretty little starter plant.

The leaves are very dark green and shiny and the flowers seem to come on a young-ish plant. The petals are a nice bright yellow with orange while the tube is a bright orange with the characteristic "goldfish" lump.

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Streptocarpus candidus abscission lines on the leaves

This is a photo of Streptocarpus candidus from the gesneriphiles list on the Internet. It's a group that chats about all things gesneriad using email. People can ask questions or post photos, answer questions or make comments. If you aren't already signed up for this, you probably should be!

Look here for more info: "gesneriphiles@lists.ibiblio.org" <gesneriphiles@lists.ibiblio.org>

Anyway, I saw this photo posted by Bob Stewart and had to ask permission to put this on our blog because it's so cool. This is Streptocarpus candidus. If you will look carefully at the photo you will see that the leaves are lighter green on the top and there is a defined line and then the regular green on the bottom. These leaves are doing what our trees do in the fall and making an abscission layer and they are planning to shed the upper parts of the leaf to conserve on water.

Bob explained a bit more for me and I'll quote him: "What is happening in the picture is roughly the same thing that happens to an oak tree. In both cases the plant is preparing for winter. In winter, water is in short supply, either because not much
falls or because the water is frozen so the plant cannot get at it.

The plant needs to reduce its water loss, and the way to do this is to
reduce the leaf area. The oak tree forms a layer of waterproof corky
cells at the base of the each leaf petiole, cutting the whole leaf off
from the rest of the tree. The leaf will eventually fall, although in
oaks it may not fall until spring.

The streptocarpus forms a layer of waterproof corky cells part way
down the body of the leaf, cutting the far end of the leaf off from
the rest of the plant. The far end of the leaf will gradually die and
dry or rot away, though in mild situations this may take months.

In spring the oak tree grows whole new leaves from buds along the
stem.

In spring the streptocarpus starts extending the old leaf from a layer
of generative cells near the base. This is the same layer of cells
that produced the leaf in the first place, and the leaf simply gets
longer from the base."

I would very much like to thank Bob for the use and description of the photo and also encourage people to go see about the gesneriphile list. There is a LOT of useful info on it.

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Seemannia purpurascens up close and personal looking for vascular tissue

This is a slice of Seemannia purpurascens. It's really fun to look at different plant materials under the microscope!

You will note that it's got the bright purple outer layer because the plant looks purple when you observe it.

The majority of the stuff in the middle is the pith. What I'm trying to find are the vascular bundles.

 This is a diagram that is copyrighted and property of Pearson Education Inc. I don't quite know how to site their work except to say that it is theirs and they are excellent.

You will observe that the phloem (food conducting ducts) and the xylem (water conducting ducts) are grouped in "bundles" around the outer rings of the stem. Let's see if we can see them in our unstained but pretty clear cross cutting of the Seemannia stem.


Moving from the outside to the very center, you see the outer hairs, then the pink outermost layer. It touches the yellow layer next and then we get to the what we're looking for. You see a darker thin yellowish line with some clearer bundles of stuff next. Hopefully, we've found vascular bundles of tissue.

Lastly comes the clear middle, or pith which functions mostly to support the stem.

When I was looking at the outer surface of a leaf I was absolutely stunned to find that the hair are STRIPED! Look closely at some of the lower ones in the photo. It goes purple stripe, white, purple stripe, white, etc.

It's the completely unexpected and wonderful stuff that you find that really makes this fun!

This is the leaf surface where the stripy hairs come from. You can sort of get the gist from the real-size view but it's the upper photo and the magnification that shows the very cool patterning in the 'hairs'. What on earth does this do to be advantageous for the plant? It must do something or it would be like this.

 I took the leaf pictured above and cut a thin slice through the petiole and leaf blade. The bigger lump over on the left is the petiole and you see thin leaf surface and secondary lumps where the veins got cut.

Note in the middle of the main leaf petiole you can see two lines of darker color... I'm thinking it is more vascular tissue like the main stem.

 This is the same bit of leaf magnified more. The lines in the middle show up better.

Anyway... pretty cool what's inside the gesneriads eh? Almost as cool as what we appreciate them for on the outside. I might have to slice up a flower from this Seemannia when it blooms and see what's inside it too.

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Gloxinia 'Dragon Song' up close and personal

 This is a single flower from a Gloxinia 'Dragon Song'. It's got the neat pouch-shaped bottom to the flower.

These bloom on an inflorescence that is tall and holds many small flowers above the foliage. Cool looking plant with nice shiny dark colored foliage.

 I'm intrigued by what else you can see if you go beyond just looking at the obvious... the color and shape of the flower.

I can see that like most gesneriads it has the anthers joined in the middle.

I had to include an outside shot too because the gesneriad flowers are also almost always covered, like the rest of the plant, in 'hair'.

 A good part of the petals are cut off in this shot to make it easier to see the pistal and stamen of the plant.

If you look closely you see the top of the pollen sacs, and towards the front of the photo you see it is brighter white and that is some of the pollen breaking it's way out of the pollen sac almost ready to pollinate another flower.

 The 'top' side of the pollen sacs, nicely joined. Even the filaments (the tall things that hold up the anthers) have hair on them!

 A little closer look which, let's face it, is cool looking.

 The front white object is the female part, the pistil, of which you can see the top knob part (the stigma) and just a little of the style.

It appears to have some pollen clinging to it. It might also be contamination from beating up the blossom and cutting away some of the petals to get the view.

 This is the 'bottom' side view of the pollen sacs with some of the pollen ready to be released out into the world.

If a pollinator like a bee or a fly comes along and investigates the interior of the blossom, some of this pollen will likely stick to the insect and it will be transported over to the next flower visited.

Every type of flower has a distinct type of pollen. Sometimes pollen from prehistoric times is also found in fossils and scientists can identify what sorts of plants were present when that flower was alive thousands and thousands of years ago.

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Commets???

Mail Ordering from Rob's Violet Barn

 I want to give a big KUDOS to the fine folks at Rob's who are offering some really cool and very interesting gesneriads lately!

It's one of the few places that you can get the truly "unusual" varieties and expand your collection of genera!

I've been mail-ordering a lot this past year, including orders which are 'winter shipped' and I have to report that I've not lost any plant material to shipping problems - even in the cold. The top picture was one of the recent orders with such lovely plants such as the little Diastema luteolumined (shown in the lower photo).

I also want to mention that I've received some very excellent plant materials from other vendors also.... (and I'm not trying to leave anyone out) such as Lyon's, Kartuz and Neil's Streps. I've gotten some really fine things from Ebay too.

The point here is that I encourage everyone to support their gesneriad vendors and order up some new and interesting plants!

For myself personally, I get bored seeing the same 'Lipstick' vines over and over with nothing else to choose from. That being said, the argument can be made that until you master that type of plant you don't need to go looking for something else.... BUT, I don't agree with that line of thinking at all.

I'm very interested in seeing as many and as diverse of plant choices as possible! If we are to interest the public in GESNERIADS then we need to have something to impress, excite, and wow people so that they want to learn more.

Think of some of the environmental campaigns to save certain endangered animals. Sometimes it's the 'cute' factor that first stimulates interest in the animal, such as baby tigers. Who doesn't love them???? But after getting people on board and educating  them as to the importance of the specific animal other things like the animal's environment become important too and also get the attention - AND hopefully the conservation efforts.

I feel we MUST get the gesneriads out into the public's eye. This will make our hobby clubs more exciting by hopefully getting more new members to join us, but it will also draw attention to the fact that we MUST have more study of some of these types of plants and their wild habitats.

Some of these plants are becoming extinct literally before they've even been discovered. There are new and previously UNIDENTIFIED GESNERIADS being discovered for the first time ever each year. Imagine finding a brand new species never before described in 2012? It should amaze and excite everyone that this is even possible! And to think that many are already gone due to habitat destruction before we can even see what is out there we're destroying.

Please... think of ordering some gesneriads! Vendors will supply what people are willing to buy, so please think of trying out some of the new and unusual, they are very rewarding to grow and have bloom! I'm excited.... I hope you are too!

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Hangin' Around: Aeschynanthus 'Purple Star' and Nematanthus 'Tropicana'

 So.... what do you do with the hanging baskets you put outside during the summer season? You can bring them in and make them feel like they are back in the wild by hanging them in their own tree.

Actually, this works pretty well if you keep any of the larger potted plants in your house. You don't have to hang them, you can arrange them around the bottom of the taller plant's pot and use them as a soil cover to make the pot look good. It's also easy to water everything this way too.

It seems that there is enough light by a patio door to get most of the "Lipstick" type vines to bloom.

Nice to see a little color in the colder months too!

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