Art Exhibition!

Congratulations to one of our own!

Gilvanete S. has an art exhibit at the Oakdale Nature Center from now through the end of June.

 The address is Oakdale Discovery Center and Nature Preserve 4444 Hadley Ave. N. Oakdale, MN 55128.




Stop on by and ENJOY! A great way to spend an afternoon!

Thanks to Gil for sharing!!!!!

Drymonia mortoniana and Other Cool Plants!

Here's something you don't get to see every day! This is a Drymonia mortoniana brought for show and tell at our monthly Gesneriad Society club meeting by Clay A.

It's got multiple blooms open at the same time, and look at the size of them!

The flowers are quite large and bright white. I'm always curious about what pollinator is attracted by the brightly colored throat markings.

It's unusual to have so many flowers open at the same time on this plant and they are only open for a couple of days before fading so it was a great coinincedence that it happened for a meeting so everyone could enjoy it!

Tom R. brought in this carnivorous Pitcher Plant that, if you'll notice, is in bloom. I'm a fan of all things interesting and weird in the plant world and this is really quite stunning!

Just look at the flowers! It looks a little like the flower from "A Little Shop of Horrors"! What a spectacular thing to have blooming. 

The Twin Cities hosts a relatively new Carnivorous Plant Society too for those interested!

We also had some lovely orchids brought in for show and tell! Members bring in what's blooming in their collections for the enjoyment of the club. These are putting on quite the show!

The photography this time was generously shared by Mike B. and please remember to give him a shout-out and thank him!

Questions??
Comments???

A Strep Killer's Interesting Experimental Find....

I've killed more Streps than most people have owned. I don't try to, mind you... they just exist for a while and then decline.

I'd given up on growing them for a year or so, except for the leftover straggler. But then I had a notion to try something very weird with three plants that were literally going to be thrown out in the compost. They were "dead" anyway, so why not try the experiment? The first pic shows my recovered plant on the left looking very dark green and lush. The plant on the right is a brand new, healthy, lovely baby I just got in the mail two days prior to the photo. I know it's completely well grown and disease free.

 The new plant is "Gisele". And, I think it's going to be pretty lovely when grow out.

 I decided that all I hear on Gphiles and such is that a large bunch of Gesneriads grow on limestone rocks. Everything I'd been reading about from Central and South America comes from a mossy waterfall with the plant clinging to limestone rocks. Well.... limestone it will be then. Streptocarpus are Old World, but they must have lots of limestone in Africa too.

I got some crushed limestone at the landscape center and asked them about 10 times if it was really limestone. They assured me that it was. I took the rocks and mixed it right in with the soil.

The plant(s) in question were limp, rotting and as I mentioned literally going to be thrown out as "dead".

I put in the rock and put the test plants on the lowest light-level shelf I had (because why waste a good light stand on trash?) And in about four months, all three of the dying plants had a great green color and were firm and growing like I would expect a healthy plant to grow.

This is the gravel I was using. I understood it to be that some "class 5" gravel is recycled and could contain dirt and other stuff, but this looks to me to be fresh crushed rock and only one type of rock... the limestone.

An opinion expressed about the experiment thought that it was the additional air space added by the chunky rocks, another thought that it was the "lime" in the limestone adjusting the pH that might be doing it, or, perhaps it was that the move to a different stand had something to do with it and it has nothing to do with rocks good or bad.

Don't know, but I am going to transplant my Streps with this method and see what happens. Can't be any worse than the abuse I've handed out to my plants over the years and if it works, I'll have the greenest Streps I've ever had. Hope that doesn't translate into all green and no flowers. Hmmmm.

Questions???
Comments???

Look at the Cool Thing This Plant Does, Aeschynanthus splendidus, Sinvana 'Heartland's Mavrick' and Sinningia guttata

 Ok, this was a really interesting accidental happening. I was taking the Aeschynanthus splendidus down from the hook so I could water it. The flower clusters you can see opened between the last time I took the flower down for a thorough watering and when they were just getting to be good size buds.

The photos can't show this incident well at all, but I found that the tubes of the flowers were all filled with liquid!

I accidently spilled most of it out the day prior to taking this photo, and to take a picture of your own hand with sticky water dripping down is a bit of a trick, but here it is!

The flowers didn't just have a drop or two in them, they were full of nectar. It tasted very good too. A humming bird would have been very thrilled and excited.

 Here are some pictures of something I was interested in for a long time. This is xSinvana 'Heartland's Mavrick'. It's a cross between another xSinvana 'Mount Magazine" and a mini Sinningia 'Los Angeles".

 A xSinvana is a cross between a Sinningia and a Paliavana.

The flowers are big and held up well by the stem. My little plant started out about 6 months ago from a small cutting that, after being sent in the mail, was pretty limp and sad.

 The tube is nice and long and has the Gesneriad fuzzy flower thing going, as you can see.

 And I have found with a few Gesneriad flowers that the very bottom will have a stripe of a different shade or color. The bottom of this one has the white stripe. A curious thing...

And this is Sinningia guttata. I love the spots! I also am very interested that the flower has the spotting at the base by the calyx and then goes pretty solid-color until you get to the flower's face. It's a very nice contrast in color.

Now.... what if you crossed a Sinvana with a guttata? Would you get a Sinvanatta?

Questions? Comments????

Sinningia speciosa 'Cabo Frio'

 Well, how's this for brightening a rainy day? This is Sinningia speciosa 'Cabo Frio'.

What a spectacular plant. The leaves span over 17" across and the flowers themselves are 1  7/8" long.

 Grower Terry K. got the seed from a place you (as gesneriad enthusiast) will want to support: Mauro Peixots's Brazil Plants.  http://www.brazilplants.com/ Congratulations on the lovely plant Terry!

 Another site to interest the Sinningia lover is http://www.burwur.net/sinns/sinns.htm

Sinningias are tuber forming plants that will grow under fluorescent lights, even from seed.  And as you can see from the photos, make a spectacular display. If you haven't tried these out yet, it's something that should be on your list. If you don't have room for a plant that gets 17 inches across, there are hundreds if not thousands of smaller Sinningias both miniature and micro-miniature too.

This is a goose looking for an appropriate nesting site for himself and his mate. It's nice to note that it's April 14th, 2013 and the average high temperatres for the day should be well into the upper 50's.

What happened to spring?

Surprise! It's booming! S. sellovii, Seemannia purpurascens

It was a surprising day in the plant room today. Not only did flowers just show up in bloom, I found enough rhizomes to stock a flower store!

This is Seemannia purpurascens. I've been waiting for such a long time and all of a sudden I was looking at the back of the terrarium that this has grown out of and *poof, I have a bud.

Apparently, they grow out of containers and off your shelf even with some judicious pruning.

 I think it's a quite handsome bud and I can't wait till it opens a little more!

The plant also makes cool rhizomes and ariel rhizomes. Worth the price of admission just to see the dark, dark foliage and all the fun stuff it produces!

 This was a total shock! I had a very, very scraggly plant that I recently staked and groomed and stuck in the back of a shelf with some larger Sinnigias.

Now, not only do the leaves look nice, the thing is in bloom! Yay!

I'm pretty pleased with this flower. I went online and couldn't find one that has the two tone colors like this one. I'm wondering if they start out two tone or I have an interesting one.

It might just get crossed with something to see if that two-tone color and multiple bloom will combine with a plant with large blooms.

 Compared to ones that have been grown outdoors, this is pretty tiny, but it's still in bloom and it counts!

I'm going to summer it out here in MN when the appropriate weather comes in another few months.

 This is a Nematanthus crassifolius that also sort of sneaked up on me with a flower. This one I knew about for a couple of weeks, but it's pretty exciting when you see it.

The flowers are quite large and waxy looking and as you can sort of tell the flowers dangle down on about a four inch pedicle. I would bet a hummingbird might find this pretty exciting too!

These plants seem to take quite a long while to grow into something interesting. Also, while they don't want to be soaking wet, they also don't really want to be too dry either, or you will lose leaves. They do seem to root cuttings well though.









This is a Eucodonia 'Adele' being shown off by Winston, who is thoroughly disgusted with having to pose with a flower on his very manly head.

He prefers to be left to his napping undisturbed.

Questions???

Comments????

Streps 'Noreen', 'Neil's Freckles', 'Alissa', 'Pink Sunrise and Col. 'Firebird'

Welcome! Today you're in for a treat. Here are some very nicely shot photos of "What's Doin' the Bloomin' Today" sent over to us by guest blogger Janice!

This is  one of my favorites, 'Noreen'. I like the bright yellow and the fact that some of the upper petals show the yellow instead of only the lower three.

 Jealousy is a bad thing, right? This plant never seems to quit blooming for Janice. It's Columnea "Firebird".  I've visited on several occasions and this plant is always doing this. I'm pretty sure if I bought one it wouldn't look quite like this, but if Columneas like growing in your home, try this one out!

 Pretty in pink..... 'Pink Sunrise' has a lot of the bright yellow showing in the throat and nice big flowers.  Now if someone could get either a very, very ruffled edge or a frilled edge like Alsobia show, this would be just about perfect, right?

I think that 'Alissa' was one of the first all-yellow Streps. The flowers are nicely presented with just a hint of purplish white around the edges. 

Here's an offering from (yes, I'm going to BRAG a lot) one of our very own club members!!!! From Miller of Neil's Streps comes 'Freckles'. Love the distinct two-tone and the contrasting colors. I don't think it could get any better with any other color combination. When I figure out how to grow a decent Strep., this is going to be on the top of the list.

Thanks again to Janice. Please leave a little kudos for such nice pix.

Questions????
Comments?????