The Variegated Thumb

Over the last week I have had several sightings of one of the biggest amphibians I have seen I have seen in our yard. Actually, we don’t really see amphibians around our house – maybe once or twice. This one is big!

He is sitting in a 4″ pot, to give you an idea of his size. Maybe he is a fan of Asparagus and is waiting for the plant to arise from the soil, since it has been promised by the plant tag. I don’t know how to break it to him that the tag is marking an Asparagus macowanii (fern), which is not edible.

I purchased an octopus orchid (labeled Encyclia cochleata, but actually Anacheilium cochleata) on eBay back in January.  At the time, the plant had a bloom spike.  However, the travel was too taxing on the plant and the spike quickly withered, so I didn’t get to see the weird little blooms.

However, the seller did mention that this orchid blooms on each new growth (pseudobulb).  What I didn’t notice was that the largest growth on my plant was actually the “new” growth that hadn’t yet bloomed.  When a newer growth started recently I got excited, thinking that a couple months from now, it might start to bloom.  But then shortly thereafter I noticed there was a bloom spike growing out of that larger pseudobulb!

Doesn’t this orchid have the coolest flowers?

I was operating under the assumption that the genus name Encyclia was correct for this plant, but I was surprised that the bloom shape looks so different from the other Encyclias. Then I found out that this and a couple of other plants have been tossed around among a couple of different genera over the years – including Prosthechea, Encyclia, and Anacheilium. For now, the taxonomists seem to have settled on the last one. Many people in the orchid world just refer to this plant by it’s species name (cochleata), since that is the only part of the name that has stayed consistent.

There are a total of 5 buds on my orchid right now, so hopefully I will have a little “school” of octupi soon. I don’t know if “school” is really the right word. There might not be a correct word for a group of octopus, since I don’t think they are social creatures, by nature.

One reason the blooms of this orchid look different from many Encyclias is that they are resupinate, which means they are upside down from the normal orientation. Regardless of whether this is an Encyclia or not, or has the same orientation of normal Encyclias, I seem to be drawn to plants which have had the name Encyclia attached at some point or another.  I think one thing that attracts me to many Encyclias is the color combinations in the blooms.  Many of them are kind of a brown/mauve background, sometimes with a splash of color, sometimes not.  Some of them almost look like dirt.  Sounds pretty cool, huh?  A flower that is the color of dirt.  Anyway, I like them.  Check out these Encyclias!

I have one true Encyclia in my collection – Encyclia polybulbon.  It is a mounted specimen that has neat, yellow brown blooms.  One really nice thing about Encyclias for me is that they are mostly small, so I can have quite a few of them without taking up too much space.  Some people would consider their small blooms to be a downside, but I like their size – and their dirt brown blooms.

Lately it seems my Alocasias are really taking off.  While many of them don’t like direct sun, they sure do like the heat!  Some of my Alocasias kind of died back over the winter, but they have reemerged with new offsets after their dormancy.  First, I give you my Alocasia amazonica, also known as African Shield.  I like to call it the “pterodactyl plant” and I’m not sure why everyone else doesn’t do the same.   This plant I have had for 2.5 years.  I know, because I blogged when I bought it (the second time).

Next, is Alocasia wentii, which is fairly new to me.  I just got it last fall, before it stopped growing.  It didn’t go completely dormant, keeping one or two leaves through the winter, but it wasn’t actively growing.  Now it is putting out a new, glossy leaf and the coloring is really nice.

This next Alocasia is my favorite.  I have had it for a couple of years.  It was big and mature when I bought it, but it went through spider mite and mealy bug infestations and lost a lot of leaves.  Now the original plant is doing pretty well and even has put out 4 offsets!  I have an Alocasia gageana, a gift from Steve Lucas, which constantly produces new offsets, but my others have been much slower to do this.  I’m looking forward to my little herd of Alocasia lauterbachiana.

Another “Alocasia” I got in the fall went completely dormant through the winter.  I thought I had lost it.  But I cut back on watering, so as not to rot out the bulb.  Then I started watering again in the Spring and it has sprung to life!  I got the plant through a trade labeled Alocasia ‘Hilo Beauty’, as it has been called for many years.  It turns out the plant belongs in the Caladium genus and it is a true species, Caladium praetermissum.  I don’t really know how it ever got the name Hilo connected with it, unless a grower in Hawaii started distributing it first.  Maybe someone just decided it looked like something that would grow in Hawaii…  Apparently the incorrect name started with Graf’s Exotica, a book which is well known as a source of wonderful pictures and outdated names.

Anyway, it is not surprising that this plant’s genus was misappropriated for many years.  The Caladium, Alocasia, Colocasia, and Xanthosoma genera are the most often confused in the aroid family, as I’ve mentioned before.  Many people avoid this confusion by calling them all “elephant ears.”  Score 1 for common names.

The final plant is Alocasia aurora (Alocasia ‘Pink Stem’). This one, as you can tell by that second name, has a very distinct pink petiole. This one also has a new pup forming.

Many orchids bloom in the spring and subsequently start new growth.  This year my orchid collection grew quite a bit.  Some of the orchids I purchased while they were in bloom or just after they finished blooming.  It will be almost a year before I get to see if they will bloom for me.  In the meantime, there is a good sign in that many of my orchids are producing new growth.

I’m still holding out hope that the Bepi above will bloom for me.  The bloom spike is still present, just emerging from the center of the plant, but it is doing so ever so slowly.

Most of my new orchids are sympodial, which means that they produce offshoots, rather than continuing on the original growth.  Above you can see a tall, new “lead” growing from the side of my Blc ‘Golden Tang.’ This is a Cattleya hybrid, more so that any of my other orchids, these hybrids really enjoy the heat.  They are growing like crazy right now.

One of my Ethiopian orchids, Polystachya paniculata, has a small offset that has been present since I bought the plant.  Now it is starting new growth from the original and tall stem.  I don’t know if this is normal for this plant or not.  But it seems to be happy, so that makes me happy.

I’m also holding out some hope that my Dendrobium atroviolaceum will bloom for me.  There is one large bud that has been on the plant since I received it over a month ago.  It still hasn’t opened for me.  There are also several bloom spikes that are starting to emerge from the top of a couple of the stems, but they aren’t really doing anything lately.  It might be the heat.  The good news is that there are 4 or 5 new growths starting from the base of the plant.

Yesterday I posted about my recent adventures into growing aroids from seed.  I told you that I’ve had luck with a couple of different species of Anthurium and Philodendron, but that the Pinellia seeds I got from Derek didn’t germinate.  Boy was I wrong!

The Pinellia seeds hadn’t done anything noticeable as of last week, so I started making use of those pots by thinning out my Philodendron seedlings and transplanting some in there.  Then, earlier this week I noticed there were some big (relatively-speaking) cordate leaves in the pots that originally housed the Pinellias.  I did consciously notice that those leaves were only in the pots where the Pinellia seed were, but I was thinking it might be some interesting phenomenon concerning my transplanting of the Philodendron seedlings.  I didn’t think it could possibly be the Pinellias.

Thankfully, Derek didn’t put both in the same pot, so he knows for certain that the seedlings which came up for him this week are Pinellias.  And now I know, too!  So, I knew I had Philodendrons, and I thought I didn’t have Pinellias.  So I used the Pinellia pots for my Philodendrons, then noticed some of my Philodendrons looked different, only to find that my different-looking Philodendrons were actually Pinellias!  Got that?