The Variegated Thumb

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.

The event began Saturday morning.

I had been waiting for a week or more, not knowing how long the bud would stay so large before opening.  We had a little scare on Wednesday when Norman was shaken by an earthquake – a real one.  The US Geological Survey is declaring it a 4.3, after initially saying 4.5.  The Oklahoma Geological Survey is saying it was a 5.1.  Regardless, it was felt by everyone in town and as far away as the Dallas/Ft. Worth metro area, the Tulsa metro area and southern Kansas.  That’s a pretty good distance – 3 states in all.

My Stapelia was on the front porch at the time and pretty top heavy.  It tipped over and the biggest bud tore just a little bit.  I was worried that it wasn’t opening because of the tear, but on Friday night I noticed that 2 of the “seams” of the bud were beginning to part.

Stapelia gigantea bloom (click image for larger)

When I went to check on my Ficus seed trays Saturday a little before lunch time I noticed my Stapelia had finally opened.  You can see the tear in one of the petals above.

Stapelia gigantea detail (click image for larger)

The stink of the bloom is not very far-reaching.  You really have to get your nose up in it, but it smells just like a dead animal when you do.  We spent this weekend tiling our kitchen and when we went out to lunch we left the back door open with fans running.  When we got home I checked on my Stapelia again (of course) and found the largest housefly I’ve ever seen sitting on the bloom.  It almost looked like someone had gotten one of those fake plastic flies and stuck it on there just to give me a hard time.  I grabbed for my camera and the fly flew away!

Stapelia gigantea hairs (click image for larger)

This Stapelia bloom is so interesting.  It’s close to a foot in diameter.  (I didn’t measure, but I really should do that tonight.)  It has long pubescens (hairs) all over the inside of the flower, which you can see pretty well in the photo above.  And it is striped with these red/brown lines which are more concentrated towards the center of the flower.

I put the plant on our dining table and laid the flower flat in order to take some closeup pictures.  As I moved the plant around, I noticed the petals of the flower would catch on the table and fold up a little bit, making the bloom look even more like the starfish that so many people have compared it with.  It truly looked like it was walking along the table.  It’s actually worth videoing – another thing to do this evening!

Yesterday (Sunday), the petals had already curved back behind the center of the bloom.  I don’t know how long the bloom will last, but I’m hoping for about a week, so that I can get all my friends to come over and see it before it perishes.

My Stapelia gigantea buds have been getting very large.  It seems like every day they are larger and can’t get larger, but the next day they surprise me.  I guess the species name gigantea is an apt description for this plant.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the largest bud opens in the next week or so.  The second largest bud will probably trail by a week.  If the smaller buds mature, they could be as much as a month later, since they are still pretty small.

Stapelia gigantea bud on October 1, 2010.

Stapelia gigantea bud on October 6, 2010.

To watch this bud grow more each day has been exciting!

Stapelia gigantea bud "inflating" on October 10, 2010.

Recently the bud has been getting broader, almost as if it is being inflated like a balloon.  If you gently grip the bud you can tell that it is taught and seems like it will pop open any day.

Stapelia gigantea bud on October 12, 2010.

I had to move all of my plants into the greenhouse last week (including my Stapelia) when we had a oncoming frost.  I’ve been moving it back out onto the front porch during the day to give it a little more light since my greenhouse is still shaded.  I don’t know whether I want it to bloom on the front porch, greeting visitors with it’s pungent odor.  Or I could move it into the greenhouse for the blooming event, but that will probably magnify the odor, since it is a confined space.  Hopefully I’ll have some open bloom pictures soon!

Just days after posting about my Stapelia and Huernia plants I got my first bloom!  My Stapelia flavopurpurea had buds on it when I received it in the mail, but I wasn’t sure they would open after the shock of cross-country travel.  And they were very small, so I figured it would be a little while before opening anyway.  But the first one opened this weekend!

Stapelia flavopurpurea bloom - larger than life. This bloom is really just slightly larger than a quarter. (Click picture to see larger.)

Stapelias have two rings of corona.  The inner corona on this Stapelia is the tall and curly purple one, while the outer corona is shorter and yellow.  The species name flavopurpurea comes from the latin names for yellow and purple.  There’s a neat drawing of the coronas and more information here.  I got my nose right up to the bloom, but there is no odor for this plant.  There are more buds on the plant, so hopefully I’ll get to see some more blooms over the next couple of weeks.

Stapelia flavopurpurea buds. (Click picture to see larger.)

I also noticed that my original Stapelia (S. gigantea) has some buds forming on the long trailing stem.

Stapelia gigantea stem with buds

Those buds are held farther away from the stem than the flavopurpurea species.  The blooms are considerably larger, which is probably part of the reason.  They’re also much smellier.

Stapelia gigantea bud and new stem forming.

The appendage below the obvious bud appears to be another stem forming on this already long trailing stem.  I take this as a good sign, as most of the Stapelia giganteas I have seen in bloom are blooming from the ends of long trailing stems.  In fact, when I bought this plant, I picked out the one that already had a downward stem started.

I’ll try to keep taking pictures as the bud matures.  Before opening, the S. gigantea buds look like balloons with a diameter of about 3 or 4 inches.  They are pretty neat.

Plants are very crafty when it comes to getting things done that they can’t do on their own.  Without the mobility of many other living things on Earth, a single plant can manage to breed with plants miles away and then transport itself to a new location, via a seed which was carried by a bird or wafted away on a breeze.  But like I said, plants have to be pretty crafty to get all of this done.

In order to carry out the breeding, plants must intermingle their pollen.  Since they can’t transport the pollen on their own, they have to attract some more mobile friends – like bees, flies, birds, moths and butterflies.  Many people are aware that brightly colored flowers are used for attracting some of these pollinators.  But some things that fly are not attracted so much to bright colors.  In fact, some flying things are attracted to some pretty disgusting things – like dung or dead bodies.  Don’t think the plant kingdom has overlooked these flying things.  There is a nitch of plants which attract flies which feed on carrion by disguising their flowers with the perfume of a decaying body.  Lovely, huh?

In fact, there are several different families of plants that take advantage of these carrion-feeding pollinators.  One group is the Amorphophallus genus from the Aroid family.  Another is the Stapeliae tribe from the Apocynaceae family.  These plants have a pretty good following of people who collect from the genera Stapelia, Huernia, Caralluma, Tridentea and others.  Stapelia is kind of the shining star of the tribe, but I find Huernia to have some really neat species.

I bought my first Stapelia (S. gigantea) back in April and it has been growing very rapidly this summer.

I bought 5 more plants over the last week from a couple of vendors on ebay.  Here they are!

Huernia aspera

Huernia aspera is the largest plant I purchased.  The others are pretty tiny starts.  This plant has nice, deep red blooms that are shaped like stars, just like all plants in this tribe.  These blooms are often pendulous, facing down and looking like a bell in profile.

Huernia penzigii

This is the most attractive plant while not blooming, with it’s silvery stems.  I’m not sure about the blooms of this plant, as I’ve seen conflicting pictures online.  I guess I’ll just have to wait and see!

Huernia longituba

Huernia longituba has elongated blooms, as referenced in the species name.  The blooms have a base color of yellow with speckling of red on the inside.

Stapelia divaricata

Stapelia divaricata has very weird blooms that look like rubbery pale pink or yellow starfish.

Stapelia flavopurpurea - with a flower bud.

Stapelia flavopurpurea has really cool, petite blooms that almost have a touch of Passionflower-flare to them.  The plant I purchases has a bud on it.  I’m hoping it will open, but I wouldn’t be totally surprised if it doesn’t since it just went through a couple of days in a shipping box.

These plants are succulents primarily found in southern and eastern Africa, including some from Ethiopia!  They like to be pretty dry and they don’t at all mind the heat we’ve been having lately.  With a little luck and a couple of seasons, I hope to be able to bring all of these to bloom.