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!

The week before Thanksgiving I added about 15 new plants to my collection.  That’s the mark of a good week, in my opinion!

The smallest of the plants I received - Vanilla planifolia, the vanilla orchid.

Alocasia brancifolia

It started off when I received a box of five very small starter plants I had purchased on eBay: Vanilla planifolia (Vanilla Orchid), Olea europaea (Olive Tree), Alocasia ‘Aurora’ (Pink Stem Elephant Ear), Alocasia brancifolia, and Alocasia ‘Stingray.’  The Vanilla orchid is the actual plant from which the vanilla bean grows and vanilla extract is taken.  I don’t expect to be harvesting from my plant, as I hear it is quite hard to even get them to bloom in cultivation.

Olea europea - common Olive Tree

The same is true for the olive tree I ordered.  I just love the look of the olive tree, though.  I am hoping to grow it to a nice specimen size that I can keep in a large pot.

Alocasia 'Stingray'

Amydrium zippelianum

Next, I received two plants from a friend who collects rare Aroids: Amydrium zippelianum and Philodendron tortum.  These are two really cool plants!  The tortum looks like a palm tree, but what would be a frond of many leaves on a palm tree is actually just one leaf on this Philodendron.  The leaves are just very deeply lobed.

Philodendron tortum

On the Saturday preceding Thanksgiving was the first meeting of the MidAmerica chapter of the International Aroid Society, a group which I have been forming and coordinating.  I’ll post more about that event in the next week.  Two members that came to that meeting brought cuttings and plants to share.  Steve Lucas brought me cuttings of Philodendron camposportoanum, Philodendron billietiae, Philodendron bipennifolium, Philodendron verrucosum, and an unknown Philodendron.

Philodendron camposportoanum

Philodendron bipennifolium

Philodendron verrucosum

Dr. Tom Croat brought small specimens from plants he collected in the wild in Central America: Anthurium holmnielsenii, Anthurium sparreorum and Anthurium verapazense.  These plants are very unique, because they have their assession numbers on the tag, which allows me to search the Tropicos database to see exactly where Dr. Croat collected these plants and what notes he took about the environment where he found them growing.

Philodendron NOID

Dr. Croat looked at the unidentified cutting above, trying to determine at least what genus the plant belonged to.  After tearing the leaf at one point, he noticed what appeared to be fibers at the edges of the tear.  He explained that in Monsteroid plants, there are silicate crystals inside the leaves.  This could mean the plant was from the Monsteroids.  However, after a couple of minutes, the fibers that looked like silicate crystals began to droop, indicating that they were not crystals, but actually just latex.  This indicates that the mystery plant is from the Philodendron genus.

It was a wonderful weekend that resulted in lots of potting!

Earlier this week, I wrote about a plant I was expecting in the mail from Australia.  Well, it arrived yesterday!  Here’s the story:

Back in December I bought a plant at TLC that appeared to be in the Marantaceae family, but I didn’t know the genus.  After doing some research online, I found a match.  My plant was a Ctenanthe lubbersiana (Ctenanthe ‘Brazilian Snow’).  I really like the Maranta family, as I have mentioned recently in a couple of posts, so I did some image searching for other Ctenanthes.  I came across a couple of Ctenanthes with very light white or gray tone leaves with the usual streakings of green and solid red underneath the leaves.  One particular image caught my attention on Flickr.

Ctenanthe setosa 'Grey Star' in Australia - photo courtesy of Flickr user imbala

Going out on a limb, I sent a message to the image owner on Flickr and asked if they owned the plant and were willing to make a plant trade.  It turns out the owner lives in Australia and she was willing to trade with me.  Unfortunately, I didn’t really have any plants that she was wanting, but I did have access to some plants that are a little harder to find in Australia, apparently.  I bought a package of 10 Caladium bulbs of varying colors and she dug up 5 of her Ctenanthe plants, trimmed away the leaves, wrapped the roots and stems in newspaper and boxed them up.  The trade was ready.

Package from Australia

We both carefully packaged our goods and sent them in the mail.  The Australian package arrived at my house yesterday!

The Ctenanthe plants were sent as roots only with a leaf and a bloom included so that I could see the plant in person before mine grows.

Ctenanthe setosa 'Grey Star' leaf. The top of the leaf looks almost grey in person.

I looked up the species name “setosa” in my Gardener’s Latin book and found that setosa means “bristly or hairy.”  I first thought this must be a poor name choice for this plant.  Either that or the word “setosa” must have another meaning.  It turns out the stems of this plant are much furrier than they look in the Flickr picture I had seen.

Ctenanthe setosa 'Grey Star' roots with furry stems

The form of the blooms looks similar to some bromeliad blooms I have seen.  I think other plants in the Marantaceae family have this type of bloom.

Ctenanthe setosa 'Grey Star' dried blooms

I potted three of the five rooted stems in a (unintentionally heavy) hypertufa pot that I made this winter in a mixture of peat moss, rich potting soil and vermiculite.

Three stems of Ctenanthe setosa 'Grey Star' potted in a hypertufa planter I made this winter

I potted the other two stems in a large round planter that was the former home of my Coconut palm tree.  I used a slightly sandier soil mixture in this pot with more potting soil than peat moss.

Two stems of Ctenenthe setosa 'Grey Star' potted separately

I can’t wait to see my stems sprout and produce leaves like the ones in the Flickr picture.

Thanks a bunch Flickr friend!

Someday I’ll have grandkids.  That’s quite a few years down the road, since I hear you have to have kids first.  Anyway, when I have grandkids I’ll be able to say crazy things like “I remember when there wasn’t an internet!”  And my grandkids won’t even believe me.  They’ll think I’m crazy.

The internet has changed so many things.  It has changed the way that most people (in affluent countries) live.  I can take pictures of my plants here in Oklahoma, upload the pictures on my computer, write some notes about them, and mere moments later someone on the other side of the world can read my notes, look at my pictures and comment back to me.

I was just discussing with my parents the other day about how you find deals on the internet on certain objects and pay less for them than you would in any store - even when you include shipping.  And because of the internet, you can read product reviews and feedback from others who have purchased similar items or worked with that seller before.  Certainly the internet falls short in several areas, but it has plenty of functionality that cannot be offered in other ways.

Whenever I have a question - about ANYTHING - I can go to the internet to find answers.  I understand that many times the “answers” are opinions, but it doesn’t take long to know the difference.

Where am I going with this post?

Well, because of the internet, there are tropical plants headed my way from all over the world.  And they weren’t very expensive.  One day I saw a picture of a cool plant on Flickr.  A couple months later and the Australian owner of the plant has put some offsets of it in the mail to me.  I should have them sometime next week.  In exchange, I mailed some bulbs to my new friend in Australia - and the shipping was less than $10!  There’s no way I could find that plant for under $10 here at home.

A fellow plant blogger bought a hard-to-find plant at a local nursery a couple hundred miles away and will be sending it to me for the cost of the plant plus the price of shipping, because he knew that I was trying to find this specific plant.

I have another friend in Massachusetts to whom I will be sending some Aglaonemas as soon as the weather is nicer up in the Northeast US.

And this weekend I bought a plant from someone in Saipan, Mariana Islands on ebay.  Can you believe the shipping is under $6!?!  It’s wonderful.  [The Northern Mariana Islands are located in the Western Pacific Ocean, north of Guam, south of Japan.  The Mariana Islands are a commonwealth of The United States.]

I won’t reveal what all of these greats plants are yet - You’ll just have to wait for pictures.  I should have several new plants in my possession over the next couple of weeks.  Stay tuned!