The Variegated Thumb

Over the weekend, we traveled to Wichita, Kansas for the Kansas Orchid Society’s annual show, which was in conjunction with the spring meeting of the American Orchid Society.  Whenever the AOS meeting coincides with a regional show, it is a big affair, with more plants on exhibit and more vendors present.  Some of my good plant friends from neighboring states converged on Wichita, so I got to spend time with plants and friends, which made for a really fun weekend.

Some of my good plant friends. We're all members of the International Aroid Society, as well as local orchid societies.

Since I have so many pictures and so much to talk about, I am going to split this post into a several different posts, the first concentrating on the exhibit highlights.

Me with my two award winners, Polystachya paniculata (in hand) and Dendrobium Little Green Apples (on upper right)

For the first time, I sent a couple of my blooming orchids for inclusion in the Oklahoma Orchid Society’s exhibit.  Both of my orchids (Dendrobium Little Green Apples and Polystachya paniculata) were given 3rd place ribbons, so that was encouraging.

My Polystachya paniculata plant

I have heard about Andy’s Orchids for a while.  It is probably one of the five most popular orchid vendors online.  They have a lot of species available and generally have pretty reasonable prices.  Most of their plants are mounted on sticks, which is nice, too.

Exhibit by Andy's Orchids

Andy’s Orchids had a really nice “exhibit by a commercial grower.”  My friend Steve told me it was put together at their business and shipped in a box filled with packing peanuts.  When they got to the show, they just opened the box, pulled out the structure and let the peanuts fall away.

Cochlioda rosea

The exhibit consisted mostly of intermediate to cool growing orchids, including Masdevallias down near the bottom and at the top a couple of orchids from the genus Cochlioda, a new genus to me.

Spectacular exhibit by Max C. Thompson and Bryon K. Rinke

Two gentlemen that must have huge orchid collections put together this single amazing display that was gigantic.  Can you believe how many blooming orchids are in the photo above?  That is a lot of really nice orchids.  It took several visits by this exhibit to really take it all in.  Actually, scratch that, I doubt I took it all in, even after several visits.

Ancistrochilus rothschildianus

Epidendrum Panama Ruby

These couple of photos are not really the highlights of their exhibit.  They are just plants that I was really interested in.  The above Epidendrum was just an oddball and that’s why it was interesting to me.  Do you see the blooms?  They are kind of discrete.

Epidendrum magnoliae 'Bryon'

The Epidendrum above is native to the southeastern United States, found as far north as North Carolina.  It can withstand a light freeze and prefers to live in Magnolia trees, hence the name Epidendrum magnoliae.  I would like to try growing this orchid someday.

Cattleya that won a first place ribbon

If you grow Cattleya orchids well, they will reward you with a lot of blooms.  If you grow them really well, they will build an army of flowers determined to march to the nearest orchid show and demand a first place ribbon.

Ida locusta

The most highly awarded plant had a totally green flower, with a little bit of yellow on the column.  The plant is Ida locusta and it was given the HCC award (Highly Commendable Certificate), which you can see in the lower part of the picture.

Last weekend, Christie and I drove over to Hot Springs, Arkansas for the weekend.  The town is aptly named after the natural springs that flow from the ground and have brought travelers here for hundreds of years.

Our trip to Hot Springs was inspired by the Tulip Extravaganza at the Garvan Woodland Gardens, but we also enjoyed the National Park focused on the hot springs.  (Ask the locals and they’ll tell you that it is the first US National Park.  In truth, it doesn’t have that official designation, but it was the first nature reserve set aside by the US government, before there was a national park system.)

Tulips at Garvan Woodland Gardens

As you can see, the gardens were beautiful.  They are planted fresh each year so that they can create new swaths of color and have premium new bulbs from Holland.  We enjoyed the diverse palate of colors and tulip styles.

Tulips at Garvan Woodland Gardens

The gardens included lots of neat areas and we spent our whole afternoon wandering through the acres of carefully designed planting.  I have uploaded a photo album with tons of pictures, so feel free to peruse them all by clicking on the photo below.

Click to enter photo album

Strangler fig covering a section of wall at the Martello Tower

On the island of Key West, not far from the marker for the “southern most point in the continental US” is the West Martello Tower and gardens, which is maintained by the Key West Garden Club.  This beautiful garden is the site of a never-completed fort, which is really just a great setting, with brick walls of various heights and wandering paths through what is not a lush tropical garden.

Christie enjoying the beautiful Martello Tower gardens

I have to admit, I enjoyed visiting here much more as it is today than I would have if it had been completed and now stood as a military historical site.

Bromeliads planted around a collapsed portion of wall

The grounds are filled with nice compositions, including the nice spot above where some chunk of brick wall has collapsed and lays half buried, book-ended with a spreading bromeliad.

Gorgeous Plumeria rubra blooms

Interesting Plumeria seed pods

Many people are familiar with the Plumeria pictured above. This is sometimes called Frangipani. It has a beautiful flower, which has been bred for different colors. But the tree is more or less the same for each of these different bloom colors. The Martello Tower Gardens had another species of Plumeria (below), which I hadn’t seen before this Florida trip. Plumeria pudica has a different shaped leaf and the flowers are pure white, with the slightest bit of yellow in the center. (It’s hard to see the yellow in my image due to the bright sun.)

Plumeria pudica

Lots and lots of Ruellias!

I have seen Screwpine trees (Pandanus) in just a couple of places.  They are known for their network of stilt roots, which are usually spiny.  The first time was in the tropical dome at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis.  The second time would be in conservatory at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, where there is a large Pandanus whose huge stilt roots reach into the water of the adjacent pond and fragment into a million tiny roots.  That was a site to see.  There are also quite a few Pandanus growing at the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens in Miami.

Pandanus sanderi tree with amazing prop roots

Dark pink canna

Traveller's palm (Ravenala madagascariensis) in bloom

The tree pictured above is called the Traveller’s Palm, although it is not really a palm.  I have seen these trees in just about every tropical, beach front area I have visited and always just assumed they were in the palm family (Arecaceae) or possibly the banana family (Musaceae).  But when I saw this tree at the Martello garden I realized it had to be in the same family as the Bird of Paradise (Strelitziaceae).  The bloom bracts are unmistakeably similar.  Reading the wikipedia page confirmed my conviction and also mentioned that this tree was once upon a time placed in the banana family – just as I would have put it, without seeing a bloom.  It belongs to the monotypic genus, Ravenala, and is native to Madagascar.

Rose cactus - Pereskia grandifolia

The plant pictured above is called “rose cactus” because it has nice blooms and some killer thorns.  It is actually a cactus, which kind of surprised me, since it does not have the normal succulent look to it.  We saw Ixora all over southern Florida and I really liked their profusion of blooms – usually coral in color, like the plant pictured below.

Coral colored Ixora

I think the Jatropha (below) was probably my favorite blooming plant at the Martello Tower, with dark leaves of interesting shapes and vibrant and contrasting blooms.

Jatropha integerrima

Well, the first half of this post was the colorful half.  The rest is shades of green only.  These happen to be some of my favorite plants.  I was really excited to see that the Key West Garden Club has a nice collection of Dieffenbachias and Aglaonemas inside their tower walls.  The plants are exposed to the elements and natural sunlight, but are inside a bricked area, so they are probably a little more sheltered.  Also, these plants were all growing in pots, whereas most of the rest of the plants in the gardens are growing in the ground.

Pellionia repens

But before we get to all of the Dieffenbachias, check out this large Pellionia repens.  I thought it was interesting to see how the leaf colors vary on this plant.  I have this species myself, growing in a tall glass terrarium.  It is sometimes referred to as “Trailing Watermelon Begonia,” but it is not actually from the Begonia genus.  Good thing, because I have more luck with this plant, than I do with Begonias, generally speaking.  This species is probably the second most common Pellionia, after Pellionia pulchra.

Dieffenbachia oerstedii

Dieffenbachia maculata

I didn’t know the ID of any of these Dieffenbachias for sure, but I had a pretty good idea about the one that turned  out to be Dieffenbachia amoena ‘Tropic Snow’  because my mom has that one.  I consulted with my Dieffenbachia enthusiast friends and got help on the other names.  It turns out that the speckled plant pictured above is the species Dieffenbachia maculata and the plant below is a cultivar, Dieffenbachia maculata ‘Rudolph Roehrs’.  In some cases, the cultivar reverts to the original species, as shown in this picture by my friend, Russ Hammer.

Dieffenbachia maculata'Rudolph Roehrs'

Dieffenbachia amoena 'Tropic Snow'

The Martello Gardens also had a small, but happy collection of orchids and a small collection of bonsai trees.  The bonsai trees were all mislabeled, which I found to be interesting, but not surprising.  I bet they were all repotted at some point and then the labels got put back in the wrong pots.  I did notice that one label was in the wrong pot, but some of the labels didn’t match any of the plants I saw.  Regardless, I could appreciate their appearance and really enjoyed my time at this garden!

While in Key West last month, we visited “The Audubon House.”  You would think with a name like this that the house would have once been under the ownership of someone with the name of Audubon.  It turns out the connection is a little less direct.  John James Audubon, the well known historical figure for his art depicting American birds, traveled to the Florida Keys in 1831 in order to paint the native birds of Florida.  While he was in the Keys, he stayed at the house next door to this house.

The Audubon House

John James Audubon's trip to the Florida Keys

The house has been preserved and connected with Audubon because he admired the gardens while he was in the area and supposedly painted some of the trees and plants into his portraits of various Florida birds.  The gardens have been kept in great condition as a tribute.

Roseate Spoonbill portrait by John James Audubon - my favorite from the Florida collection.

Tree loaded with blooming orchids in front of Audubon House

The house is now a shrine to his work and has a very nice garden outside.  We toured the house and gardens outside, enjoying the beautiful setting.  I think Christie and I could settle into this house just fine.  The trees outside are covered in orchids, and many of them were in bloom for our visit.

Brassavola orchid

Crinum lily bloom

Other interesting plants filled the flowerbeds, including a couple of large Crinum lilies, some yellow Walking Iris (Neomarica longifolia), and a nice Chenille plant (Acalypha hispida).

The yellow walking iris - Neomarica longifolia

Chenille plant - Acalypha hispida

There were lots of Calatheas scattered throughout the gardens, and concentrated here and there.  I have seen these growing in many botanic gardens, but not very often in an outdoor setting.

Calathea Peacock (so the sign reads)

The gardens also contain some Florida native plants, which would have been important to Audubon, as he preferred to paint his birds sitting on authentic trees and plants to the area where he would find them in nature.  One of the natives I really liked was this cycad, Zamia floridana.

Florida native cycad "Coontie" - Zamia floridana

Christie under a nice Staghorn fern

Philodendron stenolobum

There were also some nice aroids, including this large Philodendron stenolobum (above) and Alocasia portei (below). I loved the pendant Anthurium vittariifolium, with its pink berries showing (two below) and now have a small seedling plant from a recent plant trade. I hope my plant is this attractive some day.

A large Alocasia portei (in the center of the image)

Anthurium vittariifolium with berries on spadix

Chamaedorea metallica

My second favorite palm in the entire family is Chamaedorea metallica, which is called the Miniature Fishtail Palm, or Metallic Palm.  It has silver-blue leaves and striking orange flowers and berries.  It is small for a palm, with a maximum size of only 5 or 6 feet tall, and it is therefore usually growing as an understory tree.

Bed of Sansevierias - probably Sansevieria metallica.

You probably already know that I like Stapelias. Am I crazy or do the buds of the Stapelia below look just as cool as the open bloom? Yes, I did bend down and stick my nose into the flower to smell the pungency. And yes, I did request Christie do the same. She grudgingly did so – after a third or fourth request.

Stapelia leendertziae in bloom.

The Audubon House sits on a lot large enough to have several wandering paths through the gardens and 2 separate set-aside gardens: a water garden and an herb garden. The water garden was very tastefully designed, with some heron statues in the pond. I’m sure JJ Audubon would have liked to sit and stare at these nice statues.  The setting of this garden is similar to what I have talked about doing with a portion of our backyard, with the ground paved in either bricks or rock and a shallow pond or other small water feature.  Just a relaxing place to sit and enjoy the outdoors.

The appropriately decorated Audubon water garden.

R.F. Orchids is one of those places of plant legend.  If you’re much of an orchid enthusiast, you have probably read “The Orchid Thief” by Susan Orleans.  In it, she mentions a well known orchid heist, in which a prize-winning orchid breeder, Robert Fuchs, had hundreds of thousands of dollars of prime orchids stolen from his property.  That crime was committed at R.F. Orchids, where Robert “Bob” Fuchs houses his breeding material, as well as his vast stock of orchids for sale to the public.

Sign at entrance to R.F. Orchids. It reads "Where Quality is as Traditional as the Orchid Itself" and "Purveyors of Fine Orchids Since 1970"

I read “The Orchid Thief” a couple of years ago and had kind of forgotten about this part of the book and the name of this particular orchid grower, even though I have heard R.F. Orchids mentioned from time to time since then.  However, I talked Christie into reading the book just before our trip so she could better appreciate the area we were visiting, as well as the obsession of these orchid-crazed (and more generally, plant-crazed) people.  When we visited Ruben in Orchids, Claudia mentioned that we should visit R.F. Orchids while we were in the area.  I had no idea this place was close by and Christie quickly recognized the name from the book that she was in the process of reading.  So we took the short drive and I’m glad we did.

Entering the gates into a beautifully shaded garden. That little red car is our rental car, which we named Fakahatchee Buttonwood. Yes, our rental cars always have names. This particular rental car name reminds me of a specific Saturday Night Live skit.

You can’t imagine the exquisite entrance to this place.  You can look at my pictures and I’m sure it looks pretty, but being there in person is incredible.  I didn’t get the rockstar treatment that Derek did, but we were given a friendly greeting by an employee when we arrived.  A couple of minutes later he came by with a tray of cups filled with passionfruit juice as a refreshment while we were browsing.  The juice was excellent, and much appreciated in the hot and humid greenhouses.

Vanda house at R.F. Orchids

A particularly pretty Vanda - Vanda Kultana Fragrance

I think I was as much taken with the entire atmosphere as I was with any one plant or group of plants.  They greenhouses had lots of breathing room and were dedicated to groups of plants.  There was an entire house for Vandas and other houses for different alliances of orchids.  There were quite a few plants I saw that I would love to have taken home, and all of the plants were really healthy.  However, my wallet had already taken a licking at Ruben in Orchids, and I hadn’t even gotten to the IAS show yet! So I settled for lots of pictures, and looking at the bargain orchid tables.

I'm not sure whether this cat disapproved of the low prices of these budget orchids, or whether he just thought it looked like a comfortable place to lay.

This is the sign picturing the parents of the Vanda hybrid I purchased.

The bargain orchid tables included young plants and keikis of larger orchids that had been sliced off and marked with incredibly low prices. I picked up a couple of Dendrobium nobile keikis for very little. I also dug around in the baskets guarded by the greenhouse cat and Christie and I picked out a little hybrid Vanda, my first Vanda ever. We took a picture of the sign which shows the parent flowers. Can you guess what mine might look like whenever it blooms?

Dendrobium C.K. Ai

Okr. Scarlet Queen 'Chile Pepper'