The Variegated Thumb

I was driving home from work a couple weeks ago when I noticed a huge piece of bark on the side of the road.  It had fallen off the side of a large tree that had been cut down.  The tree had been chopped off at the height of the fence (about 6′) and the bark slid off the tree several years later

Like a football scout (it is that season), I looked at it and all I could see was potential.  I came back that evening and loaded it up in my wife’s SUV.  Now it’s sitting on my back porch waiting to be put to good use.  The bark measures about 6 feet x 2.5 feet.  You should be able to see from the picture how big it is.  It also has really good character.

Me holding up the prized piece of bark. Look how big!

The only problem is deciding what to do with it.  I have a couple of ideas, but haven’t acted on anything yet.  Mainly my ideas focus on climbing plants.

1. I could construct a sort of stand and mount the bark on it, holding it upright.  Then I could start to train some of my climbers to attach to it.  I have a lot of good plant candidates (mostly Aroids) for this.  I have just begun to train a couple of my Aroids to climb up some stakes I made.  These are Philodendron microstictum and Scindapsus pictus (one of my favorite plants).

Clippings of Scindapsus pictus that I have staked for climbing.

2. One of the most common uses for bark among “planty” people is for mounting orchids.  However, I am kind of out of my orchid swing right now.  I have had as many as 5 orchids in the past, but I only have one right now and it has moved to my mother-in-law’s house because it wasn’t doing very well under my care.  This huge piece of bark would look amazing covered in orchids, but if I decide to use it in that manner I’ll be putting it on hold for now.  I’m also not sure if this bark would be most appropriate for mounting orchids.  I suppose it couldn’t hurt.  But orchid-mounting bark usually is more porous and can be soaked in water.  This piece of bark would not be a good fit for that kind of use due to its size, as well as its texture.

Do you have any ideas about how this great piece of bark could be used?

Recently I sat down and brainstormed about all of the things I could write about on The Variegated Thumb.  One of the topics that came to mind was a sort of “field trip report.”  I have a list of places that I want to visit – be it a local nursery, botanical garden in a neighboring state, or something even more far-fetched.  I thought a report about my trip with some pictures and information would make a very appropriate blog post.  So I have plans to release a trip report about once a month.  [Other recurring topics I have planned are book reviews, plant finds, genera profiles, aquatic posts, and projects.]

My first trip report is unfortunately not from a trip I took myself, hence the word “virtual” in the title.  I’m going to have to live through pictures and some seeds that were brought back to me.  My parents just returned from a week-long cruise to the Caribbean.  They left from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and landed in Grand Turks, Tortola, St. Marten, and Half Moon Cay (Bahamas).

At one point on the trip my mom noticed some seeds hanging off of a plant and commented about it to my dad.  My dad, wearing cargo shorts, decided to carry a couple home in his pocket.  The seeds of two other mystery plants caught their attention on the trip and so now I have seeds from three unknown plants.

The Seeds of Mystery

Mystery seeds from the Caribbean

The first seed is like a large nut.  It seems to have the most distinct appearance of the three seeds, so I  hoped someone would know what this one is.

The second seed is the pit of a small fruit.  The fruit was not much larger than the pit and was shriveled and brown when I first saw it.  I peeled it away easily and washed the seed by hand.  My mom remembers seeing a lot of Fiddle leaf fig trees (Ficus pandurata) on their trip and I suspect that the fruit that I removed from this pit might have been a fig.

The third seed was also inside of a fruit, but the fruit layer around the seed was much thinner in this case.  My mom remarked about how much this one looks like a large lemon seed.  I agree.

Identifying the Mystery Seeds

The only clues I had for determining the plants from which these seeds came is the appearance, their departure port location and the four cruise stops.

I posted the picture above to one of my favorite forums on the internet – the Name that Plant forum on GardenWeb.  That forum is sort of my Watson, if you will.  Within 20 minutes(!) I had already received a positive identification on the first seed.  The first seed seems to have come from a Christmas Palm (Veitchia merrillii).  I looked around and found some other pictures of these seeds, as well some important information – they are commonly planted in southern Florida.  The good news continues – apparently they are fairly easy to grow from seed and make decent container plants!

One down, two to go…

If you have any information on the remaining two seeds or think you might know what one of them is, please let me know.  I can try to germinate them, but I’m not sure how much luck I will have without knowing what they are.

For some reason I want to say this is my first plant book review of a Fiction book.  However, Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is not fiction.  I guess it’s just that it’s the first non-reference book I’ve reviewed on my blog.

Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan is more of an historical account of nature’s interaction with plants – and specifically human kind’s interaction with plants.  It chronicles the influences of man on “natural” selection.  It also conjectures about the influence of plants on humans! No, that wasn’t a typo.

Plants have natural variations in their offspring.  Some of those offspring are more successful than others.  The variations that succeed are more likely to reproduce than those that fail.  This is natural selection, of course.  Well, you might have heard someone say that since humans are so all-powerful, we have begun to trump nature’s selection by choosing ourselves what species we want to live, etc.  For instance, it might be that the prettiest rose survives, rather than the rose most immune to certain diseases.

We know that plants have generated natural variations that take advantage of other living beings to profit themselves.  For instance, many plants produce beautiful flowers that appeal to pollinators (bees and birds).  Why do the plants do this?  They do it for their own benefit – so that the plant gets pollinated and reproduces.

The premise of The Botany of Desire is this:

Maybe plants have been using us humans just like they do bees and birds.  Maybe plants have been specifically creating variations that appeal to humans in order to sustain their own populations.

It sounds kind of science fictiony and far-fetched, but on the most basic level you almost have to agree that it is true.  In many cases, the variations of plants that have been promoted by humans have not been for the betterment of the plant.  For instance, the apples we buy in the grocery store today are thickly coated with insecticides (more than ever before in history) for one specific reason.  Because we found an apple that we liked and have been spreading it forward by grafting (rather than allowing natural variation through seedlings), the apple tree has not adapted to the insects that feed on it.  If mankind were to have left the apple alone, it would have adapted to it’s natural predators.  Therefore, it only makes sense that some plants would begin to make the best of a bad situation and start to produce variations that are appealing to humans, who have begun to more or less control the spread of plant life.

In the end, the premise is not so much that plants are using us, but that there is a reciprocal relationship.  Plants have merely begun to notice that we have desires and that by meeting our desires, they can benefit, as well.

Michael Pollan elegantly weaves his story, following four separate plant species which have appealed to different human desires:  the apple (sweetness), the rose (beauty), marijuana (intoxicant), and the potato (control).  The story is well-written, following Johnny Appleseed on his journey across the frontier, and recounting the quest for the perfect black tulip in Amsterdam.  Pollan also talks about his own experiences of growing marijuana and the genetic engineering that has been performed on the potato in recent decades.  The four plants are selected well in terms of highlighting four different desires, as well as progressing his story forward in time.  This is an entertaining and insightful book that I would recommend to any gardener.

Let me start with a caveat: This post has nothing to do with onions – at least nothing to do with edible onions (plants of the Allium genus, most notably Allium cepa).  However, this post has everything to do with plants that look like onions.  Coming from someone who is usually kind of picky about using the binomial (genus and species) taxonomy as much as possible and ignoring the confusing common names, I’ll admit this is an odd classification.  But hopefully you’ll see the same striking similarities between these plants that made me combine them in one post.  As it turns out, the plants I describe below do fall within the same family – Hyacinthaceae.  So I guess if I were a botanist who classified plants as a career, I would have at least gotten these two guys right by placing them in the same family.

Pregnant Onion (Ornithogalum longibracteatum)

Beyond the very familiar tulip bulb, there are a number of plants that have distinctly onion-like appearances.  Some of them show off their onion appearance above ground.  Many of these plants have been given common names which pay tribute to the onion similarity.  It is easy to see where Ornithogalum longibracteatum gets it’s common name – the pregnant onion.  This is a really fun houseplant to keep:

My pregnant onion (Ornithogalum longibracteatum)

New plant bulbs are produced under a skin on the “mother” bulb and they fall off as they grow large enough.  These little bulbs are self-maintained, not requiring support from the mother plant, once they become detached.  Sometimes the “babies” sit on the soil surface for months before sprouting from the top and subsequently growing roots.  That unique behavior alone is reason enough to keep these little plants, in my opinion.  The root system seems almost to be an afterthought for this plant.

Pregnant onion. Notice the "babies" at various stages of growth - some just beginning to bulge under the skin of the "mother."

My plant has not bloomed, but the inflorescence of this plant is a long bloom stalk containing up to 100 tiny star shaped blooms, similar in appearance to the blooms of the plant below.

The pregnant onion is a very easy plant to keep.  I water mine whenever the soil is thoroughly dry.  The bulbs store a lot of energy and the plant can survive on little water.  The pregnant onion thrives in bright, indirect light, but will survive in lower light conditions.  With time, the bulb can grow to be quite large, but in the two years I’ve had mine, the bulb has only grown to a little less than the size of my fist.

Silver Squill (Ledebouria socialis)

Another “onion-like” plant that I have is called Silver Squill.  I have two plants that can go by this common name, and I have not been able to determine yet whether they are in fact the same species, or not.  I purchased the first plant for it’s unique foliage, but it has the same onion-shaped above ground bulb as the pregnant onion.  The beautiful variegated foliage is dappled in a dark green and a lighter silvery green.  The undersides of the leaves have a purple tint.

Silver Squill, Leopard Lily - Ledebouria/Scilla socialis

I originally thought this plant was Ledebouria socialis.  However, I discovered that my plant actually might be from the genus Scilla, when I came across this smaller-leaved variety below:

My other Silver Squill, Leopard Lily - Ledebouria/Scilla socialis?

This smaller plant is tagged as Scilla socialis ‘Violacea’ and looks very similar to my first Silver Squill.  However, the leaves are shorter, lighter in color and have a little bit different looking variegation.

Foliage of my other Silver Squill

Just like the pregnant onion, these plants propagate by producing “baby” bulblets underneath the skin, which fall off and grow separately once matured.  You can see the bulblets in the picture below.

Silver squill babies

As I understand, there are many varieties and cultivars available of this plant and the inflorescence is one of the best identifying traits.  I believe that my two plants are different varieties (maybe both are cultivars).  My first Silver Squill had just finished flowering when I bought it and has not flowered since.  But I have seen my smaller Squill flower once.  The flowers are not showy, but mainly because they are so small.

Silver squill inflorescence

A close-up photograph reveals a lot of character.  I didn’t get a good close-up myself, but here is one that I found for Scilla socialis ‘Violacea’ which matches my own plant.

Scilla socialis 'Violacea' inflorescence

Hopefully I will get to see my larger Silver Squill flower in the next year and will be able to identify it more specifically.

New buds on Aeschynanthus longicaulis (lipstick plant) 'Black Pagoda'. Also, notice the foliage on top and bottom of leaves.

I was pretty excited, not having seen my plant flower before.  I knew that some species of Lipstick plant have bright red blooms (see some here), hence the common name.  My particular species of Aeschynanthus is A. longicaulis ‘Black Pagoda.’  It has beautiful foliage – dark and light green stripes on the top of the leaves and purply-red and green on the undersides.

I searched the plant for more of the inconspicuous buds and found that the plant is covered in them.  Looking around on the Dave’s Garden website, I discovered a variety of lipstick plant that looks much like mine with a nice orange inflorescence.  You can see it here.  There are over 185 species of Aeschynanthus in the wild.  I read a comment by someone else saying that their ‘Black Pagoda’ has green blooms.

Large buds on Aeschynanthus longicaulis (lipstick plant) 'Black Pagoda'.

When I did a google image search for “Aeschynanthus longicaulis” all of the inflorescence pictures were green.  With my largest buds about to open and still no sign of color, I resigned myself to the fact that my blooms would stay green, not the colorful red or orange I had seen from some other species of Aeschynanthus.  I believe the lipstick plant with orange blooms is actually Aeschynanthus parasiticus.

Open inflorescence on Aeschynanthus longicaulis (lipstick plant) 'Black Pagoda'. Notice the stamens extruding from the tubular calyx on the lower bloom.

Even if the blooms are not very colorful on my plant, you just can’t beat the mottled foliage of this species.

Aeschynanthus longicaulis 'Black Pagoda' (lipstick plant)

Maybe it will win me a prize in the houseplant picture contest from the Life on the Balcony blog!    We’ll see.

My plant has sent out a runner from one of the drainage holes on the bottom of the hanging pot.  I hope that I will be able to repot this plant in the spring and pull the runner back through the hole and pot it separately.  I might just have to do the repotting soon though, to avoid damaging the plant or having to cut into the pot.

Aeschynanthus longicaulis runner from pot drainage hole

More Information

The Aeschynanthus genus contains about 150 species, most of which are considered epiphytes.  Some are actually considered lithophytic, though.  There is more information and some good pictures of the Aeschynanthus genus here and here.