The Variegated Thumb

I have been collecting Aroids for about a year now and just recently joined the International Aroid Society.  Upon joined the IAS, I promptly began forming a local chapter.  The MidAmerica chapter of the IAS had our first meeting on November 21 at the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City.

Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City - photo courtesy Dr. Tom Croat

The first meeting was a small gathering, but still included two members from out of state.  Dr. Tom Croat of the Missouri Botanical Gardens attended.  He is one of the premier researchers in the family of Araceae (Aroids).  Steve Lucas is a collector and the creator of www.exoticrainforest.com, a wonderful enclosed “rainforest” in northwestern Arkansas.  Another member of the IAS, Russell Gaines, attended who is a resident of Oklahoma City.

MidAmerica chapter group (Janice Lucas, Brad Lucas, Russell Gaines, guide Kenton Peters, Zach DuFran, Christie DuFran, Cheryl Ponder, Dr. Tom Croat, Ron Ponder, Steve Lucas) - photo courtesy Dr. Tom Croat, taken by innocent bystander.

The meeting consisted of a wonderful tour of the Myriad Garden’s conservatory, which houses thousands of tropical and succulent plants.  The tour was supposed to last an hour but went much longer than that.  Kenton Peters was a very patient and enthusiastic guide, telling us about the many living treasures in the Myriad’s collection and also asking some questions of the group members with expertise in Aroids.

Group surveying the wonderful Anthuriums.

After the tour was complete, we had a short sit down meeting where we exchanged some plants and cuttings that Steve and Dr. Croat had brought to the meeting.  Dr. Croat brought plants from the MOBOT which were collected in the rainforests of Central America.  Each plant is tagged with an accession number, which can be used to look up the collection notes on the Tropicos website.  The notes will include a description of the plant in the wild, a description of the terrain and vegetation where the plant was collected and the latitude and longitude coordinates so that you can look up the exact location on a map.

Discussion and plant trading after the tour.

Steve has a wonderful collection of beautiful tropical plants and brought cuttings of about 8 different plants.  Steve is currently working with Dr. Croat to write the scientific description of a plant which is thought to be a newly discovered species of Philodendron.  Steve bought the plant from a seller (Ecuagenera) at the 2009 IAS Show and Sale in Miami.

The meeting, while small, was a great success.  I think that all attendees really enjoyed the Myriad Gardens and had not even heard of it before.  Clearly, the Myriad Gardens is under-promoted.

Dr. Croat gave some of the plants to our tour guide, Kenton Peters, so that they could be added to the collection of the Myriad Gardens.  We’re hoping that, as a group, we can help boost the collection of Aroids at the Myriad.  Already, there is a nice collection of Aroids, with some very nice specimens of large and beautiful Anthuriums (one pictured above).  However, some plants are mis-marked or not marked at all.  I plan to start volunteering at the Myriad Gardens next week.  Kenton says that I might be able to help him with the bonsai collection and will begin my work by helping to prune away or pick up the dead leaves.  This might sound like menial work, but I can’t wait to spend a day in the gardens, working among the  plants.

More pictures from the trip are posted on the IAS website.  See them here.

The next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 24th at the Missouri Botanical Gardens (MOBOT) in St. Louis, Missouri.  Dr. Tom Croat will give a talk about his research and will also lead a tour of the research collection of Aroids housed at the MOBOT.  We’re aiming to have a much larger gathering at this meeting.  All plant enthusiasts are encouraged to come and enjoy this time of discussion and discovery!

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 week my wife and I went on vacation to Hawaii.  I wrote two posts before leaving and scheduled them to update while we were gone, so you never even knew I was out.

On our vacation, we were on the “Big” Island (Hawaii Island) for one day, in order to enjoy the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.  Being the plant-obsessed person that I am, I did quite a bit of research before we left to find some plant landmarks to see along the way.  Hawaii is beautiful without having to stop by a botanical garden, but I wanted to make sure we visited a greenhouse or two while we there, as well as the natural roadside beauty I knew we would see.

Along the road from Hilo, Hawaii to the national park is a commercial orchid grower, Akatsuka Orchid Gardens.  I was really excited about stopping by this grower on our drive, because the website said that they have a showroom open during the day where you can view many of their orchids, and that they also allow you to wander around their greenhouses on a self-guided tour.  Frankly, I couldn’t wait to do this!

And I was not disappointed.  Christie was pretty tired the morning that we flew into Hilo, so she leaned back the seat in the rental car and took a little nap while I wandered around snapping pictures of orchids for about 30 minutes or so.  Then she came in and walked around with me for another 30 minutes and helped me pick out the coolest and most affordable two plants to take home with me!

Zygonisia Cynosure 'Blue Birds' - one of the plants I brought home with me.

The color of this Zygo really caught Christie and me both.  We picked out a very healthy looking plant that had about 15 buds on it - none of them open.  By the time we got home (6 days later) there were 5 or 6 buds open.  It is a gorgeous orchid.  Like nearly all orchids in captivity, it is a hybrid.  This particular orchid is an intergeneric hybrid, which means it is a cross between two different genera - Zygopetalum and Aganisia.

Group of Masdevallias. I took home a Masdevallia velifera x. deformis, which is one of the plants in the left center, with clumps of smaller and darker leaves.

The other plant I purchased is hard to pick out in this image.  It is one of the smaller plants, with darker leaves in the left half of the image, but near the center.  The blooms are born on shorter stalks than most of the blooms in the image, but they look much the same.  It is an interspecific hybrid, which means that it was created by crossing two species within the same genus - Masdevallia velifera and Masdevallia deformis.

The rest of my pictures can be found in this album.  Enjoy!

You might think I’ve fallen off my rocker with that title, but it’s true!  There is an exotic rainforest in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

Large Alocasia growing in the Exotic Rainforest. Notice the multiple inflorescences in the lower half of the picture.

White Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia nicolai) reaching the upper limits of the atrium.

The “rainforest” is contained in a 24′ by 24′ atrium that is built onto the back of the private home of Aroid collector Steve Lucas.  Steve lived in Florida for a number of years, amassing a large collection of tropical plants which covered the grounds around his house.  When he decided to move to Arkansas, he was determined to continue his hobby of growing tropical plants and take what he could with him.  Others thought he was crazy, but he built a large greenhouse and turned it into a tropical paradise.  It contains somewhere on the order of 300 species of Aroids, a lot of orchids, a blue and gold Macaw, tree frogs, a waterfall and a pond stocked with fish!

Wizard, the blue and gold Macaw

Pond in the rainforest atrium

Tree frog perched on a leaf of the Bird of Paradise.

Our trip to Steve’s house was something I have been looking forward to for about 6 months now.  Steve is an amateur botanist, though only “amateur” in that his professional training is in another subject.  Steve collaborates on a regular basis with many of the leading researchers focused on the Aroid (Araceae) family, and has a working knowledge of Aroids greater than anyone I know.  It was great to finally meet him after seeing lots of his pictures on his website and reading his passionate descriptions and discussions of Aroids.  Steve took me through his collection, telling me about each plant - the botanical name, commonly mistaken identities, key features, locations where it is found in nature and the story of his particular plant.

Steve showing me his Philodendron mexicanum (of which he gave me a cutting)

Steve has some plants in his collection with particularly interesting stories.  The plant pictured below was one of two plants used by Julius Boos and Drs. Tom Croat and Simon Mayo to write the scientific description of Philodendron xanadu.  Julius Boos gave the plant to Steve as a gift.  That’s a pretty special plant!

Philodendron xanadu plant used for formal description

Steve also has a Philodendron that is currently unnamed.  He is carefully documenting all new growth and changes that he sees and communicating that information to one of the world’s leading Aroid experts, Dr. Tom Croat of the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  His hope is to have the plant produce an inflorescence this year and soon the plant will be determined to be a distinct species that had not yet been discovered.

Steve's prize plant, an unidentified (and potentially undocumented) Philodendron species.

I have grown some Aroids for 3 or 4 years, but my collecting of Aroids really just began last Fall.  Steve had loads of information to share with me and was kind enough to give me cuttings of several of his plants.  Any plant that had enough stem to cut away he was willing to share.

Cercestis mirabilis. The big red knife is what Steve used to make cuttings of several of his plants for me.

Because of his generosity, I have added six new Philodendrons, one Alocasia and one Tillandsia (from the Bromeliad family) to my collection: P. atabapoense, P. billietiae, P. erubescens, P. mayoi, P. mexicanum, P. 69686, A. gageana and T. albida.

Steve has installed an artificial log wrapped in growing medium and mounted with epiphytic plants - ferns, Bromeliads, Orchids and Aroids.  As Steve says, in the rainforest, there are more plants growing on the trees than on the ground.

Artificial log mounted with various epiphytic plants - ferns, Orchids, Bromeliads and Aroids.

There is a wealth of information on his website concerning Aroids, orchids and tropical greenhouses.  He also has some wonderful pictures.  Check it out!  www.exoticrainforest.com

My wife and I spent another weekend on the road.  This time we started by driving to the Azalea Festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which is about a 2 and a half hour drive from home.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from this festival.  I had heard that the ice storm from December 2007 had damaged many of the older, well-established Azaleas and that they had been replaced by younger plants, which would not be mature for several more years.  I also wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of Azalea-density.  I was thinking we would just drive around town and see 2 or 3 Azalea bushes in every yard.  I had heard that we should go to Honor Heights Park, but didn’t really know any more than that.

Honor Heights Park, Muskogee Azalea Festival

Boy, were we surprised!  Honor Heights Park is a really beautiful space with a concentrated display of Azaleas.  There are also some really nice water features, including a wandering waterfall that comes down the hillside and pools a couple of times before eventually draining into the huge ponds of the park.  There are giant geese paddleboats that you can ride around the pond, if you are so inclined.

Top half of the waterfall in Honor Heights Park, Muskogee, OK

The park was crowded with locals and visitors alike, all enjoying the nice Spring weather and the beautiful scenery.

Christie with white Azaleas

I was impressed with the number and diversity of Azaleas on display at the park.  I’m pretty sure I had seen all of the color varieties before, but the red variety was my favorite, a less common color for Azaleas.

Pale purple Azaleas

I had never seen an orange Azalea before. The pinks and whites are so popular.

Our weekend ended up being the “Weekend of Festivals.”  We were also in Tahlequah, Oklahoma for the “Red Fern Festival” and in Siloam Springs, Arkansas for the “Dogwood Festival.”  The latter two festivals are simply named after native plants that are in their most spectacular form during this time of year, but the festivals don’t actually have anything to do with the plants, like the Azalea Festival.

Christie beneath the Japanese Maple at the waterfall's edge

Classic Pink Azalea

Most of the Azaleas had the classic blossom like the pink Azalea pictured above.  Others had really long stamens and small petals, like the two pictures below.  They look wispy and remind me of the “Black Bat Plant.”

Orange Azaleas

Pink Azaleas

We could tell that many of the Azaleas were youngsters that were just installed in the last couple of years.  They park will be even more breathtaking in 4 or 5 years, when they have had time to mature into larger bushes.  We had a great time and plan to visit again in the future!

Myself and Christie in front of our favorite red Azalea