The Variegated Thumb

While on vacation in Hawaii this May, my wife and I visited the Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu.  In Oklahoma, a tropical botanical garden would necessarily reside in an enclosed structure.  Not so in Hawaii.  The only enclosed structure on the grounds of the Foster garden is to keep a group of hybrid orchids in a pristine environment, where they will not spread into the wild or cross with naturally occurring species.

The Foster Botanical Garden has a long history, dating back to 1853.  [You can read about the history here.]  The garden includes areas dedicated to orchids, hybrid orchids, Cycads, palms, bromeliads, Aroids, gingers, and Heliconias.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see the Hybrid Orchid greenhouse because I took too long in other parts of the garden and the garden closed before I got there.

I would like to just give a run down of the specific sections of the garden and then point you to my photo album, which I’m sure you will enjoy!

Exceptional Trees

The Foster Botanical Garden has a wonderful collection of 24 “Exceptional Trees.”  Exceptional Trees are those that have been designated as trees which are to be protected and cannot be cut down.  According to the legend, one of these trees is the offspring of the tree under which Buddha sat when he gained his knowledge.  You can see pictures of many of the very large trees in my photo album.  A couple of the exceptional trees are palms, of which the Foster BG has more than 100 different species.

Palms

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of palm trees in this relatively small botanical garden.  Not being a connoisseur of palm trees, many of them look the same to me.  However, there were about 10 different species that really stuck out, including the Double Coconut Palm and the Grugru Palm.  The palm trees ranged in size from about 8 feet tall to well over 80 feet tall.  Their trunks varied from smooth to covered in spines (the Grugru palm).

Christie standing in front of a huge palm tree with spreading fronds.

Cycads

On first glance, many cycads look like members of the palm family.  But they are a very different family of plants, and can grown into the subtropical and temperate zones, including Oklahoma.  These plants are displayed in the “Prehistoric Glen” of the Foster Botanical Garden.  Cycads are among the oldest trees in the world.  The individual trees themselves are not the oldest plants, but the species have been found in the fossil records dating back to the age of the dinosaurs!

Heliconias, Gingers and Marantas

The botanical order Zingiberales contains the families Heliconiaceae, Zingiberaceae and Marantaceae - which were all featured in the center terraces of the Foster BG.  Of course, I am a huge fan of plants from the Marantaceae family.  I was surprised to find many plants from this family were labeled with incomplete signs, such as “Calathea plant, Calathea sp.”  It was as if they had tried to determine the species and had been unable.  I have had this problem quite often with this family of plants.  It is surprising to me that for such a beautiful group of plants, the names are not more widely known.

Calathea picturata inflorescence

There was a beautiful flowering specimen of Calathea picturata and many flowering Heliconias.  Unfortunately, many of the Gingers were not in bloom while I was there.  I did see them blooming in other parts of Hawaii though - and I brought back 5 different varieties to grow at home.

Orchids

There is a great collection of orchids, mounted on stumps and tree trunks and planted in the ground.  One of them is appropriately named “The Giant Orchid” (Grammatophyllum speciosum).  It has long, wandering stems that arch towards the ground and was probably a good 8-10 feet in diameter!

Giant orchid (Grammatophyllum speciosum)

It’s simply amazing to see these plants growing outdoors.  I would never think of putting one of mine outdoors.

Odds and Ends

There are certainly some oddball plants at the Foster BG.  One of these was the Cannonball Tree (Couroupita guianensis), which has tendrils growing down it’s trunk that are covered in blooms that look like orchids.  Later, very large nuts form on these tendrils that look like a large, round coconut (or a cannonball).  As they mature, they begin falling from the tree.  Weighing somewhere around 20 pounds, these large nuts can be dangerous to someone not paying attention!

Warning sign under the Cannonball Tree (Couroupita guianensis).

Another odd specimen at the garden was the Buddha’s hand citrus tree (Citrus medica var. sarcodactylus).  I had seen pictures of these truly odd fruits before, but not seen one in person until I was here.

Fruit of the Buddha's-hand Citron (Citrus medica var. sarcodactylus)

All of my pictures from the garden (289 of them) are available in this photo album.  Enjoy!

Last weekend my wife and I drove down to Fort Worth, Texas to visit the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens for their annual Spring Festival.  The festival is held in one of their prized gardens: The Japanese Gardens.

Bridge in the Japanese Gardens

For this post, I have chosen just a small selection of 21 pictures from the 300 photographs that I took on Saturday.  There is a link at the bottom of this post to my full photo album, which I hope you’ll view, whenever you have time.

One of about 8 Japanese structures in the Japanese gardens

The FWBG is a large complex of gardens, including a conservatory of tropical plants, rose gardens, tree groves, Texas natives, production and exhibition greenhouses, water gardens, a cactus garden and many others.  The Japanese Garden alone is 7 acres, while only being a small portion of the grounds.

Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum) with pink seeds above branches

Rock Garden in the Japanese Gardens

The Japanese Gardens are kept by only 3 gardens and a host of volunteers.  I simply can’t believe the amount of work that lies in front of those 3 workers everyday.  The grounds are well manicured and a wonderful place to stroll and relax.  I have to admit I spent the whole time snapping pictures, though.  I guess I’ll have to go back for another visit.

Striking foliage and berries of Japanese Mahonia in the Japanese Gardens

Traditional Japanese dancers performing at the Spring Festival

For the Spring Festival, there are events throughout the day, including traditional Japanese dancers, Japanese flower arranging, bonsai exhibits and other crafts (such as origami).

Dutch Iris Ikebana - the art of Japanese flower arranging

Drooping Bonsai tree on exhibit at the Spring Festival

I was most excited about seeing the Japanese Gardens, the Conservatory and one of the greenhouses - the Begonia Species Bank.

Curator and collection of the Begonia Species Bank at FW Botanic Gardens

The Begonia Species Bank was created to prevent the loss of Begonia species.  Since Begonias are very common houseplants, the true, natural species are at risk of being lost to all of the hybrids that have been created for our viewing pleasure.  The FWBG Begonia Bank is a large collection of Begonias as well as a library and source of information on this very popular plant genus.

Rex Begonia hybrids in the Begonia Bank collection

We timed our trip to the FW Botanical Gardens perfectly, arriving on the weekend of the Spring Festival, as well as the annual Forth Worth Orchid Society’s Orchid Show and Sale!

Prize-winning orchid at the annual Orchid Show and Sale

This event was held in the Garden Center, which is a very nice building in the center of the grounds, with rooms for meetings and events like this one.  There was one room setup with nice displays of orchids, including ribbons on those which had won prizes.  The range of sizes, colors, shapes and growth habits is just astounding.  I will never get over the diversity of the orchid family.

Another Orchid on display

In a larger neighboring room there were long rows of tables crowded full with orchids for sale.  The growers had come from as far as the Chicago-area and the plants were reasonably priced.  I found myself walking away with 4 plants - 1 full grown miniature and 3 seedlings.  I’ll have to post on those orchids in the next week or so.

I love the tall petals of this orchid bloom. It looks horned.

Attached to the Garden Center is a tropical Conservatory.  It is about 2/3 the size of the OKC Myriad Gardens, which I have visited several times and blogged about here, here and here.  The collection contains quite a few plants from the Marantaceae (Prayer Plant) and Araceae (Aroid) families, which made me very happy.

One of the many Calathea zebrinas housed in the tropical Conservatory

An Aroid that might be Epipremnum pinnatum 'Cebu Blue'

Most of the FW Botanic Gardens are free and open to the public during daylight hours.  The admission price for the Conservatory is only $1!  The Japanese Garden ordinarily costs $2 admission and the other gardens are free.

Iceland Poppies (Papaver nudicaule) in one of the outdoor gardens

Overflowing container in the outdoor gardens

Waterfalls in one of the outdoor gardens

You could easily spend a full day exploring the outdoor gardens, or 2-3 days if you really wanted to be thorough.  We spent 6 hours at the FWBG on Saturday and most of that time was spent in the Japanese Gardens and the Conservatory.  We also enjoyed walking around the Perennial gardens and Rose gardens.  The Rose gardens are the oldest part of the FW Botanical Gardens, established by day workers during the Great Depression.

The Rose Ramp at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens

Many different Iris in bloom in the Four Seasons Garden

Lupine were one of my favorite displays of color in the outdoor gardens

I would highly recommend a trip to the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens if you are within driving distance or happen to be in the area for other reasons.  It is a wonderful place to explore and there are so many different things to see.

To see many more pictures from my trip to the FWBG, go to the photo album.

In December I visited the OKC Myriad Gardens and wrote 2 different posts about my trip, along with a photo album.  Last weekend I went back to the garden and was surprised to see that there were lots of different plants in bloom from 2 months ago.

I have added another photo album of my pictures from this trip.  This time I took more pictures of blooms than the previous trip.  I tried not to take a lot of duplicate pictures from my last trip.  If you would like to see the pictures from the first trip, you can that photo album here.

Here are some of the blooming highlights:

Stromanthe sanguinea 'Triostar' in bloom

Hoya blooms

Heliconia inflorescence

Anthurium veitchii (King Anthurium) with inflorescence

Anthurium warocqueanum (Queen Anthurium) inflorescence - the dark leaves with prominent veins belong to Anthurium, the plant in the foreground is a different Aroid

Solandra maxima in bloom

Paphilopedilum orchid in bloom

There are a lot more great plants to see, and quite a few more orchids in blooms, so I suggest you look at my photo album.

I have already written about the MyFolia website, which is a wonderful plant networking community.  The single most enjoyable aspect of MyFolia was one that I initially underestimated - the photos of my plantings.

When I first started building my catalog on MyFolia, I found that most of the plants I have in my collection were not in the database of MyFolia.  Since the MyFolia database of plants is created by the users, I attribute the missing plants to the group of people who have used MyFolia so far.  I would gander that many of them are traditional “gardeners,” which (to me) means that they grow vegetables and flowers and things in their yards.  I consider myself more of a “plant enthusiast” and “plant collector.”  For me, the gardening side is a small fraction of my plant hobby.  Most of my plants reside in pots and most must live half the year indoors.  Another portion of my plants reside in my aquariums.  So far not a single one of my aquatic plants was already in the MyFolia database.

So from the get-go, I was having to add each one of my plants to the database, as well as to my list of plantings.  I give great credit to the developers of MyFolia, because this was an easy and quick task.  But as I was focused on adding the correct genus and species names for all of my 160+ plants, I neglected to invest any time in uploading pictures.  Besides, MyFolia requires you to upload pictures to a photo-sharing community (Flickr, PicasaWeb or a couple of other options).  Since I didn’t already have an account, I put that task on the back burner.

It was just a couple of days later before I decided I should probably open a Flickr account so that I could post some of my plant pictures to MyFolia.  Boy, am I glad I did.  My “Plantings” (what MyFolia calls your list of plants) is now a wonderful photo directory of the plant list that I also have listed here on The Variegated Thumb.  The MyFolia developers were pretty smart in using an existing photo sharing community, because they can just show a snapshot from Flickr, without having to store the pictures on their own servers.  The only downside is that to see the full picture, you must click the link and go to the Flickr website.

On LibraryThing (a website for book lovers - very similar to MyFolia), you can look at your “Library” (book collection) in list form or cover form.  I found that it was really fun to look at all the books I have read in cover form.  I thought this would also be a really cool feature for my plant collection, to see the little uploaded snapshots of my “plantings” (analogous to my “library” on LibraryThing).  I have written the developers to suggest this feature for MyFolia, so we’ll see what happens.

So, the cool thing is that I have been thinking about taking a picture of every plant in my collection and building a photo album of my plants, to accompany the My Plant List page on this blog.  But the problem with that method is updating the photo album would be a hassle.  Using MyFolia will be much easier to add a new plant and a new picture, so the work is done for me already.  Check out my plantings on MyFolia here.

My Plantings on MyFolia

Also, MyFolia has a Wish List, which is just like my “Plant Wants” page.  So I have started transferring my Plant Wants list to MyFolia, as well.

I recently visited the Myriad Botanical Gardens of Oklahoma City with my family for the holidays.  I have been there a couple of times before, but not since I became a plant nut.

I was really excited about going to the Myriad Gardens, only having vague memories of the place.  The Gardens far exceeded my expectations.  I saw so many different plants, I can’t begin to name them.  And the identifying placards were about 1 for every 15 plants, so there were many I had not seen before and still don’t know what they are.  Currently the gardens are strung up in Christmas lights, which were lit and visible for about the last 30 minutes that we were there.

I took over 200 pictures - probably about half of the plants present - and put together a photo album here.  I will go through this photo album and add names as I identify them all, but for now it’s just the pictures.  I’m sure I will dedicate several future posts to plants I saw there, as well.  The pictures are nothing special and a number of them are out of focus.  But for the most part you can tell what I was trying to take a picture of.

Here is a quick list of some of the highlights (all should be pictured in the photo album):

• pale purple Anthurium in bloom
• HUGE Philodendron bloom
• unknown Aroid shingler (possibly Rhaphidophora cryptantha) climbing rocks - most appressed plant I’ve ever seen
• Jamaican poinsettia tree (Euphorbia punicea) in bloom
• many different varieties of Heliconia (False Bird of Paradise) in bloom
• Yellow Neomarica (Walking Iris/Apostle Plant) in bloom
• TONS of orchids (Phaelenopsis, Dendrobium, Oncidium and others I can’t name)
• lots of bromeliads, lots of ginger, lots of palm trees
• couple of large staghorn ferns

Enjoy the photo album!  (and check back for picture captions)