The Variegated Thumb

Last year, Derek got some great photos of his Pinellia tripartita in bloom, including one photo which was featured in the International Aroid Society calendar.  This plant is known to spread like crazy, since it offsets from the tubers, produces viable seed and also form bulbils at base of the petioles.  He shared some of his bulb offsets with me and then later some seeds, too.  I planted these in pots and kept them in my greenhouse over the winter.  The seeds sproutedshortly after I got them and stayed about the same over the winter.  The bulb offsets were dormant when I potted them up, but they have come up now and produced an inflorescence, which now has berries (infructescence).

Pinellia tripartita

I haven’t planted this one outside yet and it performed so well for me in the pot this year that I don’t know if I will.  However, since I have so many seeds, it looks like I could easily have enough to plant some outdoors and keep some in pots, which would be nice.

Pinellia tripartita infructescence

At the IAS show in September I picked up a Pinellia pedatisecta,  which Dr. Croat had pulled up from his own yard.  I planted that one outside and it has also come up and produced an inflorescence, and has now set berries.  Both of these plants are hardy in zones 5-10, so they shouldn’t have any trouble with the extreme heat or freezing temperatures of my zone.

Pinellia pedatisecta

Pinellia pedatisecta infructescence

At the Wichita orchid show I traded some plants with friends that I was meeting there.  I got a nice clump of Pinellia ternata from Steve and have planted those beside the Pinellia pedatisecta beside the greenhouse.  This plant also produces bulbils at the base of the petioles, so it spreads in a variety of methods.

Pinellia ternata

I know this plant doesn’t look great right now, having just been transplanted, but it should perk up given a little time.  Hopefully next year the clump is just as big and has a couple of blooms to go along with it.  This little strip of garden along the back side of my greenhouse is becoming the hardy aroids area.

My friend Derek inspired me to try hand pollinating some of my orchids.  Derek hand pollinated his Phalaenopsis with itself.  I was lucky enough to have two Dendrobium species (not hybrids) in bloom at the same time, so I set out to cross this unusual and very different species.  The anatomy of orchids is very similar, regardless of the genus, which is what makes them orchids.  I watched a video on youtube before trying this.  It is a very simple process, but that’s didn’t prevent me from making a mistake!

One of my plants is Dendrobium anceps, which I posted photos of recently.  The other is Dendrobium peguanum, a little miniature that I purchased recently in full bloom.  This little guy is only about 2 inches tall (maybe less) and held about 25 blooms above his little pseudobulbs.

Dendrobium peguanum blooms

The process of hand pollination requires 2 easy steps:

1. Choose one healthy bloom.  Using a toothpick, remove the pollinia from this bloom.

Dendrobium anceps pollinia being removed

Dendrobium anceps pollinia removed

The pollinia are two tiny orange dots that are hidden behind the anther cap on the column.  And for these little Dendrobiums I was working with, when I say little, I mean tiny.  In my case, I separated the anther cap from the pollinia so I could concentrate on keeping track of the pollinia, which is the only part that matters here.

Dendrobium peguanum pollinia on toothpick

The column is the part that sticks out from the plane of the flower and is opposite the lip.  The lip is usually pretty obvious, sometimes being frilly on the edges.  Usually, the column is positioned above the lip, which is called resupinate and means “upside down.”  So the “norm” for orchids is upside down.  When the column and lip are arranged the opposite way it is considered non-resupinate.  These Dendrobiums have a mixture of arrangements on them, as you can see in the pictures below.  Same bloom, just “upside down” in one and “right side up” in the other.

Dendrobium peguanum resupinate bloom

Dendrobium peguanum non-resupinate bloom

2. Place the pollinia inside the receptor on the column. This is where I screwed up.  Once the anther cap and pollinia are removed from the column, there is a little bit of a hole exposed on the tip of the column.  I tried to place the pollinia back in that hole.  After I did so, I was laying in bed thinking something didn’t seem right about that.  I got out of bed, watched another youtube video and realized my mistake.  Thankfully, the pollinia were relatively simple to remove and I was able to put them in the proper location.  The proper location is the little green void that you can see just below the tip of my toothpick in the picture below.

Dendrobium peguanum being pollinated with pollinia from Dendrobium anceps

Since both plants had many flowers in good health, I pollinated several on each plant independently, and then I crossed one flower on each plant.  After doing so, I put a little sticky note flag next to each of the blooms that was a crossed pollination, so I will know that those are special, if a seed pod forms.

Orchids are not easy to grow from seed.  Although it happens in the wild in a haphazard manner, to grow an orchid from seed outside of nature, it must be done in a sterile lab environment.  And it costs money.  If I get pods to form on my orchids I will probably count it a success but not do anything with them.  UNLESS I get pods to form on those two flagged blooms.  Those would be special, because I would have created my own hybrid, Dendrobium anceps x Dendrobium peguanum and Dendrobium peguanum x Dendrobium anceps, depending on which plant was the pollinator or the pollinatee.   If I get this lucky, I will probably send my pods off to be flasked, in which case I could wait 6 months to a year before getting some little plants back.  I don’t know if these have been crossed before or not.  Maybe something interesting will result.

A while back, I mentioned my purchase of Anthurium scandens.  I was lucky enough to purchase the plant on eBay, only to be given one a couple of days later.  At that time I was a little annoyed I had spent money on a plant, only to receive a larger one for free.  But then a couple of months later, when my free cutting died, I was glad that I had purchased the original.

The feature that really drew me to this plant was the “woody” appearance.  It has a “woody” look because it has persistent brown cataphylls.  In laypeople’s terms, the stems of the plant have little brown sheaths that cover the green stems.  Another cool attribute of the plant is the profusion of adventitious roots coming out of the length of the stem, as well as inflorescences at nearly every node.  These inflorescences self-pollinate and bear white fruit (berries).  It is quite remarkable, unlike any other aroid I have ever grown.

Anthurium scandens - photo courtesy Christopher Rogers. It is easy to see the woody appearance here, as well as the adventitious roots all over the place.

Anyway, the plant that I purchased, I still have.  But it has barely grown for me and doesn’t have the distinct persistent cataphylls.  Maybe this is just a variation or maybe my plant is just not mature enough yet.  Time will tell.

Anthurium scandens - photo courtesy Derek Powazek. Notice the color of the berries. And again the adventitious roots are prominent.

Then recently, I received some seeds from a friend of Anthurium scandens and now have little seedlings growing!  I’m super pumped about these little guys.

Anthurium scandens seeds germinating

Anthurium scandens seedlings - as of January 16, 2012.

I also got a cutting from Jason’s plant, who got his at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden at our MidAmerica meeting.  So these are cuttings from the same plant that I had.  I’m really happy to have this plant back in my collection and I looking forward to my seedlings becoming mature.

Anthurium scandens cutting from Jason

As legend has it, the founder of the Buddhist faith, Siddhartha Gautama, gained his enlightenment after meditating for 49 days underneath a tree.  That tree, for obvious reasons, has been sacred to the Buddhist faith ever since.  In many ways it is equivalent to the cross on which Christ was crucified.  Some old Christian churches claim to have pieces of the original cross and those pieces are considered holy relics.

The Bodhi tree is unique in that it is a living relic, so it continues to spread throughout the world over time.  The Bodhi tree has been given many names including “Bo tree” and “pipal tree.”  These names are used in reference to the original tree, as well as all trees of that species.  The Latin for this species is Ficus religiosa.  It is a large Banyan, fig tree.  The original tree was located in northeastern India, near the border with Nepal.  Since then, the tree has been propagated to several different locations, resulting in a chain of highly-revered trees which have a tie to world history.  One of the famous propagated trees is in the Foster Botanical Gardens in Honolulu, Hawaii.  Christie and I visited that garden in May 2009 and saw the gigantic Buddha tree.

Recently the tree growing in the Foster Botanical Garden began to set seed.  In Hawaii, this is worthy of concern, as the tree could become invasive, if the seedlings are not removed while they are small.  My good friend, Leland, who has ties to the Foster Botanical Garden, obtained some of these seedlings and sent them to me.

Ficus religiosa leaf

The leaves of this tree are beautiful: cordate with an extended tip, giving them an unmistakable appearance.

Ficus religiosa sapling

I wrote about my cuttings of Silver Buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus var. sericeus) in my Florida acquisitions post a couple of weeks ago.  It has now been about 7 weeks since I prepared my cuttings and put them into the sealed container of vermiculite.  I have uncapped the top a couple of times to check and see how they were doing, removing any dead leaves from the stems, but otherwise leaving them alone.  The good news is that only a couple of leaves have fallen off the cuttings and they seem to be pretty happy.  The cuttings that I put directly in water began to rot within a couple of days and they quickly lost all of their leaves.  So I was feeling pretty good about my sealed container of cuttings.

Silver Buttonwood cutting with one root starting

Last night I decided it was time to pluck one of the cuttings and see if there was any root growth started.  I was expecting either a bunch of tiny, fibrous roots or nothing.  This is based solely on my past experiences with rooting semi-hardwood cuttings.  What I found, instead, was one thick little root starting.  Not fibrous by any stretch of the imagination.

First root emerging from a Silver Buttonwood cutting

I’m really happy to see this root emerging and now I have an idea about the rate of growth.  7 weeks = 1/2 cm.  Pretty slow.  However, it’s possible that the root really just started to emerge recently and will grow much quicker now that it has started.  It’s also possible that these cuttings want something different – substrate, light, temperature, water.  Who knows.  I’m glad I’m getting some results.

I carefully replaced the cutting in the container and left the others alone.  I will give them another month or so, before checking again.  Hopefully at that time, they will be ready to transplant to individual pots and start life as little saplings.