The Variegated Thumb

Last week I spent two days at the Myriad Botanical Gardens as a volunteer, and it was great.  There’s really not a better working environment than to be surrounded by tropical plants all day long.

The first day I spent working with the Education Coordinator, who is also in charge of taking care of the Bonsai trees.  The Myriad Gardens’ Bonsai trees are kept in the propagation room, outside of the public view, until there is a special occasion to show them.  This room is packed with hundreds of orchids, which are moved into public view as they come into bloom.  The Bonsai were donated by a grower more than 20 years ago and have been maintained by the same person at the Myriad Gardens since then.

Having never really worked with Bonsai before, I was given a 5 minute introduction and a pair of pruners.  I forgot to take my camera the first day I worked, so the only  pictures I have are after my pruning work.

I went to work, hacking away at four different Bonsai trees: three Ficus (two different species) and one small-leaved Schefflera.  We pruned both the growing shoots and the root ball, before repotting them with new soil and replacing them on the growing benches.  I also had the opportunity to work with the growth angles of several branches, wrapping them in wire and reorienting the growth or weighing the branches down by anchoring wire to the base.

Before the trees were donated to the Myriad, some of them had been neglected due to the owner’s poor health.  Some of the trunks had been wrapped in wire that was not removed soon enough and left scars in the trunks.  Although the trunks have been healing, the scars are still apparent after 20 years.

It will be exciting to see how full these trees become as a result of my pruning and to see how they respond to the wiring.  Unfortunately, this May the gardens will be closing its doors for a year, to go about extensive reconstruction.  Many of the plants (including most or all of the Bonsai) will be sold in a plant sale this Spring.  This might give me the opportunity to buy one of the trees I have been working on.  But the prices might be a little prohibitive, too.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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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:

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.

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Last week I posted a new photo album containing over 200 pictures of the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City.  I posted the album in pre-Christmas haste, without labeling any of them.  But now I have labeled the majority of the pictures.  So, if you haven’t seen them yet, or you already looked and want to know an ID of one of the plants, you can check them out here.

Last week in my Myriad Gardens post I just wrote about a couple of the highlights.  I wanted to give a little more information about the Gardens today.

The Myriad Botanical Gardens is a 17 acre colorfully landscaped plot in downtown Oklahoma City.  In the center is the Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory, which is a big tropical rainforest inside a cylindrical greenhouse on it’s side.  The big greenhouse hovers over a pond, giving it the name “The Crystal Bridge.”

The outdoor gardens are nice, but the real action is inside.  About 2/3 of the inside space is dedicated to a tropical rainforest collection, while the remaining 1/3 is dedicated to a dry tropical zone.  There is no physical boundary between the two collections, so I am partly surprised they coexist so well, sharing the same humid air with one another.  The dry zone is watered less frequently the entire year and is watered sparsely if at all during a certain dormant period of the year.

While many of the plants at the Myriad Gardens are those you would expect to see in a rain forest recreation, the Myriad Gardens has focused on a couple of specific plant groups.

Aroids

This is not one of the collections noted on the official website, but being an Aroid collector, I couldn’t help but notice how many plants were present from this family.  Maybe the website needs a little update.

The collection of Aroids from the genus Anthurium was astounding.  There are two types of Anthurium (in my mind): those with the very colorful blooms and ordinary foliage, and those with the really cool foliage but discrete blooms.  The Myriad Gardens had several color varieties of the first category.  I had never seen a pale purple Anthurium before and unfortunately I didn’t get a very good picture of it.

They also have a number of the unique foliage species of Anthuriums, including the King Anthurium (Anthurium veitchii).  Notice the size of the guard rail in comparison.

I also saw a cool shingler Aroid that I had never seen before.  This little climber was so appressed to the rock wall that the leaves were conforming to the contours of the rocks.

Really there were tons more Aroids that I noticed (and photographed) but I won’t waste any more space here.  If you’re interested, go to my photo album to see them.

Marantaceae (Prayer Plants)

This category was also not mentioned on the official website, but I noticed quite a few unique species from this family that I had never seen before, and several that I had.  Two particular varieties from the same species caught my attention.  I had seen the Stromanthe ‘Triostar’ before, but never this large.

I have not quite identified the other variety, but I think it is also from Stromanthe sanguinea.

Of course, there were also several very large Zebra Plants (Calathea zebrina), of which I have a small one of my own at home.  It was fun to see these plants waist high or higher.

Palms

According to their website, there are supposedly 100 species of palms in the Myriad Gardens.  If I had to count, I would probably tell you there were about 10.  The only palm I could correctly identify was the Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera).  They also have the palm species which has some of the largest leaves in the world - the Bismarckia nobilis.

Cycads

The Myriad Gardens also has a nice collection of cycads scattered throughout their rainforest collection.  Cycads are pretty much the oldest plants on the planet, having shared time with dinosaurs.  They are often mistaken as palms and have similar characteristics, but are usually shorter.  I don’t know that I got any good pictures of the Cycads.

Gingers

Ah, one of my favorites!  The collection of gingers may just seem large, but not very diverse, whenever the plants are out of bloom.  But when they are in bloom, it is easier to see that the Myriad Gardens has a number of different species of Gingers.  These are beautiful, tall plants with very colorful blooms.  I am still waiting for my own personal shell ginger to bloom.  Maybe next summer.

One closely related plant to the family of gingers is the genus Heliconia.  Heliconias are commonly called “False Bird of Paradise” because of their resemblance to the Bird of Paradise inflorescence.  The Myriad Gardens had a couple of different Heliconias in their collection.

Bromeliads

No one would call this collection of bromeliads small.  And it seems they are always in bloom.  The botanical family Bromeliaceae contains the genera Aechmea (the most common Bromeliad), Ananas (which includes the Pineapple plant), Billbergia, Bromelia, Cryptanthus, Tillandsia (commonly called “Air plant”) and more than 50 others.  Many of the Bromeliads (Aechmeas, Ananas) are planted in the ground, while others (Tillandsia) are growing attached to trees or rock.  I didn’t take too many pictures of the bromeliads, but there are several in my photo album.

And here is a picture of just one of the many bromeliads in bloom.

Orchids

The Myriad Gardens actually has a fantastic display of orchids.  At one location there is a concentrated wall of orchids.  But elsewhere in the rain forest collection you can see them attached to trees and rocks and walls.  It is simply amazing how many orchids are in bloom at any one time.  More than 1200 of the orchids in the collection were bequeathed to the Gardens in 2002 by a local collector named Fred Strothmann.  My photo album has quite a few pictures of the orchid collection.  Even though I have had some experience raising orchids, I didn’t try to tackle identifying any of them.  I could tell a couple of the genera, but nothing beyond that.

Begonias

To be honest, I only noticed 3 or 4 begonias in the Gardens, but the website states that there are over 100 species present.  I’m not denying that they were there, because I was kind of being overstimulated by the place.  If I worked there everyday it would probably take a good month before my head stopped spinning each time I walked in the Gardens.  One particular (large) begonia did catch my eye, the Begonia ‘Black Taffeta.’

Euphorbias

Euphorbias are a bit of mystery to me.  Why?  Well, because the most common Euphorbia I know is Euphorbia pulcherrima - The Poinsettia.  Most of the other Euphorbias with which I am familiar all have spines and are what I would call in a very general sense - cacti.  Now I know that technically Euphorbias are not cacti, and I’m okay with that.  But what I don’t understand is what is the Poinsettia doing in the same genus as Euphorbia lactea?

The Myriad Gardens collection of Euphorbias resides in the dry tropical zone.  Do you know the difference between a cactus and a Euphorbia?  Euphorbias grow in the Eastern Hemisphere while cacti grown in the Western Hemisphere.  Both plant groupings are filled with succulent plants with thick stems that store a milky sap and require very little moisture in their natural environments.  The Myriad Gardens collection of Euphorbias contains 40 species and if I had to guess, I would have told you it contained more than that.  There are quite a few pictures of Euphorbias in my photo album.

My favorite Euphorbia in the building was probably Euphorbia punicea - The Jamaican Poinsettia tree.  Here is one picture and there are a couple more pictures in my photo album.

The Myriad Gardens are a really great place to visit, with a small admission for the time that you can spend inside (if you’re a plant lover).  If you haven’t yet clicked on any of the dozens of links I provided to my photo album, I suggest you do so now.  You can get a better feel for the wonderful collection on hand.

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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)

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