Indoor Plant Care Tips Guide

Yet another orchid from the Wallace's Garden Center show back at the end of March. This particular one kind of blew my mind. An orange Paphiopedilum? Who ever heard of such a thing? Unfortunately, I suspect the name might not be correct. I mean, P. delenatii is the name that was on the plant, and it does look like a Paphiopedilum, but all of the P. delenatii pictures that come up on a Google

I seem to be asking a lot more ID questions this spring than in previous years, but I guess that's sort of to be expected. Previously, I was in a place where everything was labeled, usually, so I didn't have to ask. If these walks with Sheba continue long enough, I will eventually know the identity of every single plant within a 1-mile radius of my home.Here is today's subject:This looks like it

This post is to announce that I have plants available now to sell or trade (within the Lower 48 U.S. States only, unfortunately). I meant to announce this about a month ago, but I keep wanting to add explanations, caveats, disclaimers, and so forth, which leads to unreadably long posts. I finally decided that I was just not entirely comfortable with turning the blog commercial, so if you want to

We had a small patch of rhubarb in the back yard when I was growing up; I don't remember anybody ever doing anything with it -- Mom didn't make strawberry-rhubarb pies or anything -- but it was there, and I was sort of fond of it. (Maybe that's where my appreciation for big-leaved plants comes from.) I don't remember it ever flowering, though. Not once. So this was a surprise:Pretty sure I would

Saw this at the ex-job sometime in the last week (it's all kind of blurring together lately). I understand abstractly why people like Dahlias, but they don't do a lot for me personally. I googled in the hopes of finding something interesting to share about this particular variety, and didn't really find anything, though I did run into a couple sites (1) (2) that seemed to be suggesting that

Thought maybe it was time for an update on the Anthurium seedlings again. For those who don't know the story, I bought an Anthurium andraeanum 'Pandola' a while back. It had apparently been pollinated, because it formed berries. I planted the berries and got sprouts, which grew into seedlings, and then half the seedlings died in last Feburary's Great Fernlet Dieoff because of the accidental

Test-drove the new camera this morning on the walk with Sheba. The verdict so far seems to be that yes, it does take better pictures, but the display shows them all as being much crappier than the old one did. So I'm more likely to get a good picture, but way less likely to know in advance whether any of the shots are any good.

Now if I wore yellow pants and a pink shirt, you would notice and would probably not be impressed. But when Tulipa bakeri (or is it T. saxatilis ?) dons these same tints, we say "ooh" and "aah" in a good way. I have grown this little gem on many occasions, and it blooms in a desultory fashion and will often live ten or more years. Until Dan Johnson planted these in the Watersmart garden, I would have never thought this awesome Cretan tulip had it in it to be such a good garden plant in Colorado. Now to figure out what it is about this spot that is so perfect, but year after year, and every year, this patch of this breathtaking tulip dazzles. I guess I'll have to order another dozen and try over again at home! Not only the elegant flower combination (pink and yellow, who'd a thunk?) but the elegant carriage, everything about this plant is delightful. And it grows wild only on that craggy Mediterranean island where my parents were both born, and where I spe...

So I was all excited when I got up last Friday, because the next round of watering didn't start until Sunday (today), and I didn't have to buy anything, there were no repotting emergencies or pest emergencies to deal with, I had a ton of pictures already uploaded which could be used for blog fodder, the weather was forecast to be rain so I wouldn't have to walk Sheba -- in short, there was

We don't really "do" daffodils in Colorado they way we should: people water enough so that the sort of display you find throughout our Lilac Garden (always wonderful but positively stunning since Ann Montague came aboard: she's one of Denver Botanic Gardens supreme secret weapons). There are huge spreads of dozens of cultivars, all perfectly labeled. Drop by and check them out some time in the next week or so: they are in peak form. We should have even more masses like this, since most people water more than enough to grow them like they do in England or the US coasts where some public gardens are chockablock full of daffies: a good thing! A closeup of a luminous hybrid taken at Waring House where there's a fine stand: I forgot to photograph the label. Sorry! Brent Heath would know what this was immediately, as would John Morris in St. Louis. I shall in my next life. But I'm a species man! And man oh man, this is the species: the typical wild form of Narcis...

As I write this (noonish on Thursday), we are celebrating eight consecutive vomit-free days, which is a new record (previous record: 7 days, from March 30 to April 6). Possibly this will all have fallen apart by the time you actually read this post, but still, it's progress. Maybe all the barfing really is explainable in terms of treats that disagreed with her, carsickness, or both.Anyway. This

Got a question at the Philodendron bipinnatifidum profile that I am unable to answer. If anybody knows, please answer here or at the profile (though I'll have to approve comments at the profile, so they'll post more slowly).Elle wants to know:I had several large philodendron outgrowing their pots. I had some landscaping done and asked the fellas to plant them in the ground. Well....I think they

Now for the thrilling conclusion to my two-part repotting series. Those who missed part I (primarily about when to repot, and types of pots) may wish to check it out first, but it's not necessary. What kind of potting mix is best to use, when repotting a plant? Ball Professional Growing Mix, package. Ball also sells (at least around here) bags that are one-half and one-quarter this size, which

I saw the most amazing tulip in somebody's yard on Tuesday, and want very much to show it to you, but it's going to have to wait a little longer, because I've been sitting on these pictures of pansies (Viola cvv.) for almost a month now, and if I don't use them pretty soon then they're not going to be even remotely timely anymore.I don't have anything in particular to say about any of them: they

Today we have assorted answers to repotting-related questions that I've seen either on other sites or as search terms leading people to PATSP. Part II will be up on Friday.Is it true that some plants prefer to be rootbound?I really don't think so, though 1) it is maybe sometimes the case that the stress of being rootbound might encourage blooming for some plants, and 2) some kinds of plants mind

Iris nicolae This remarkable morsel leads off the parade of Junos, a section of the genus Iris that Rodionenko (the leading Russian authority on the family) believes deserves generic rank, so that in Russian floras you will find the above listed as Juno nicolae . Whatever their ultimate designation, this highly distinctive group of irises loves Colorado, and over the decades we've managed to gather a number of them and grow them pretty well. I blogged earlier about Iris vicaria , and a few more species are budding up to bloom, but these have been the highlights of my Juno year so far. I. nicolae was actually blooming in March at Centennial Garden, and the following spectacle was photographed there a week ago. It looks as happy there as it must be high in the alpine meadows of Central Asia whence it originated. Iris zinaidae I have a bulb or two of this gem in my home garden, but they are not quite to blooming stage: the clumps at Centennial are growing in a groundcover of Zinnia ...

Yet another orchid picture. I wasn't terribly impressed with the Vandas we had at work. The flowers were very pretty, but the plants . . . not so much. And they were really expensive too, for flowers that looked an awful lot like just another Phalaenopsis.The disappointment was mutual: most of the Vandas didn't last long enough to be sold, which is why I don't expect to see any Vandas there for

I like Creeping Charlie. (Glechoma hederacea; also called ground ivy, gill-over-the-ground, hedgemaids, robin runaway, and alehoof; the botanical name is sometimes Glechoma hederaceum, as well, which is how I learned it originally, and which I'm still liable to revert to if I'm not paying attention.) I like it rather a lot, actually. I understand why some people wouldn't -- it disrupts the smooth

I'm seeing tons of trees in bloom on the walks with Sheba lately, and some of them, in fact, have already peaked and have moved on to the next thing. So I figured if I were going to use the photos I've taken -- and I have way too much time invested in the photographing, selecting, cropping, and color adjusting of the pictures, at this point, to want to file them away just because they're no

Brian (my boss) told me that Thursday was my 30th anniversary working at Denver Botanic Gardens... He congratulated me and gave me a carved walking stick which I shall certainly employ on future hikes and think of him and the institution with genuine tenderness: not many people spend 30 years working in a paradise of flowers. There have (of course) been times of professional frustration and I have "burnt out" on occasion: a workplace no matter how beautiful and exciting is, after all, not a panacea for one's personal dramas. It is perhaps a tribute to my particular workplace that my foibles and faults have not ruined it for me. On the contrary each year, it becomes more and more the garden of my dreams... I could have picked no end of rare plants: there must be twenty or thirty Corydalis alone blooming at Denver Botanic Gardens (my original plantings have sometimes proliferated, but Mike's are still choice and modest). There are Juno iris, and lots of saxifrages a...

Shebarfs maintained her every-four-days barf quota on Wednesday. No carsickness, no excitement, nothing unusual food-wise, just suddenly, a pile of barf appeared on the floor. We're contemplating further dietary changes. Maybe she's allergic to something in the dry food. Maybe I'm feeding her at a bad time of day. Maybe I'm feeding too much. There has to be something I can change. This can't be

I spent yesterday repotting. Like, the entire day. A lot of that time was spent just trying to come up with a list of what needed to be repotted in the first place, or what stuff might need to be repotted but would have to be checked first, or what stuff didn't need to be repotted so much as just divided and as long as I was dividing stuff anyway maybe I should take some cuttings of this thing

Saw this out on a walk with Sheba, and took a picture because it was weird. My first thought was that it was some sort of mushroom, but something about the little node (almost at the bottom of the photo), which I've never seen on a mushroom before, made me keep looking. Long story short, it's a horsetail (Equisetum) of some kind; this is the strobilus, a structure which, if Wikipedia is correct

Two vignettes from Helen Nelson's magical garden in South Metro: the big blue mat center and bottom is none other than Veronica thymoides var. pseudocinerea . It was collected in Turkey by Jim and Jenny Archibald nearly a quarter century ago, and we've grown it several places at Denver Botanic Gardens and at my homes since then. But I have never seen it bloom as prolifically as it does for Helen. In fact, everything in her garden seems just a little brighter, looks just a little fresher. She's one of these natural talents who seems to know just how to grow and show off a plant. ' She has volunteered at Denver Botanic Gardens since the 1990's and is treasured by all the staff who works with her for her uncanny knack at gardening. Her magnificent garden will be featured in this year's Garden Conservancy tours on May 22: you can find out more about these tours at: Garden Conservancy Open days . Come to think of it, my garden will be showcased as well: I better go...

I just started a new round of plant-watering on Monday, so I'm having some trouble keeping up with the blog, but times like this are why I save up these pictures. This particular round is about evenly split: half of them are, I think, pretty good, and the other half were kind of disappointing. But a couple of the good ones are really really good. So. (The previous transmitted light posts can be

While out walking Sheba maybe a week ago, I happened on this:Don't see it? Maybe if I tighten in a little:Well, it's there. The resolution on the picture is only just so good:I assume there used to be more of them at one time, and that the others were dug up, or died, or something. Still. Struck me as amusing. Incongruous, even. It's especially impressive since it must either get mowed over

This plant used to be Brassavola digbyana, but I have it on fairly good authority that Rhyncholaelia is correct. If nothing else, whoever wrote the tag for the orchid show (this is another one from the show at Wallace's Garden Center a couple weeks ago) thinks that it's Rhyncholaelia. I found a lot more about this particular orchid than usual, mainly because of this page, which is just chock full

After a very long period (a couple weeks?) of neither gaining nor losing any plants, the count ratcheted up a couple times last Thursday and Friday. They're not all incredibly interesting, but a few of them are unusual enough to be noteworthy. Also I should show you the new Iresine herbstii 'Blazin' Rose' that I got at Wallace's when I went there for the orchid show, just because I think it's

Well. It looks like Sheba's name is going to stay Sheba. This is not because it did well in last week's poll (though it did, getting twice as many votes as the second-place "Anya") so much as inertia. We're used to calling her that, she doesn't respond incredibly consistently to it but she responds better to that than to anything else, and whether I like it or not, it seems like her name. The

I found out while preparing this post that there are several species of Muscari which are all called "grape hyacinth," something I did not know before. I don't know which of those this plant is, but it was planted at the Catholic church in town.I don't really know Muscari very well. None planted around the house when I was a kid, no amusing garden center stories involving them. They seem like

I have visited Filoli quite a few times, almost from the time that it first went "public" a few decades ago. This truly grand estate could well be described as the West Coast bookend, holding up the tradition of grand European garden design and estate gardening in much the same way that Longwood, that other bulwark that shores the tradition up on the East Coast. Much of the year, this sort of garden is lovely enough, elegant and serene and (well) just a tad dullish to my plantsman eyes. But I hadn't bargained on springtime. Jan and I visited Filoli about a week ago, the last day in March and it was almost too much. I start my disquisition with the modest groundcovering of Cyclamen repandum , the lovely spring bloomer from Southern France that I have also seen covering whole slopes of the Taygetos mountains in Greece. This, I believe, is the true French form, and wonderful. In fact, there are naturalistic touches everywhere at Filoli that counterbalance the grandiose vista...

A couple weeks ago, there was a multi-garden-blog kerfuffle that resulted from, as so many multi-garden-blog-kerfuffles do, a guest post at Garden Rant. The post in question was written by one Robin Ripley, blogger and published author, on the topic of "ugly" vegetable gardens. A number of bloggers then responded to the post with their own posts,1 and it was all very exciting for two or three

It seems like being able to reproduce from a single detached leaf would be so convenient that you'd think every plant would have figured out how to do it, but it's actually a pretty rare quality, limited mostly to succulents, most gesneriads,1 and a few random others. One of the big problems when starting regular stem cuttings2 of a plant is that until there are roots to take up water from the

From Bryce we wended through Zion (which has many charms as well) and through the Mojave to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada where we stayed as guests at Susan Eubank and Paul Martin's wonderful mountain homes (yes homes, they have two side by side: one for them and their adorable daughter Elizabeth and one they usually rent out: since it was unrented, we could have a house all to ourselves!). Sierra spring is incredibly beautiful. The above is the view from their back door: the orange in front is a wonderful borage in the genus Amsickia that colored meadows for acres. In the distance you can glimpse California redbuds ( Cercis occidentalis ) and rock faces stained with the early bloom of annuals. We saw dozens of wonderful plants, but I was particularly thrilled to see a widespread manzanita, Arctostaphylos viscida , in prime form: these even formed small trees and was everywhere in the foothills from the valley up to the deep snow accumulation areas. Of the hundreds of wondefu...

When I quit smoking, some years ago, one of the things I missed about it was having an excuse to go stand outside for a few minutes at a time, several times a day. I'm not otherwise that motivated to go out. Also the nicotine. I still, sometimes, miss the nicotine. The down side of smoking was that it was giving me asthma. (Possibly lung cancer, also, but that wasn't motivation to stop. I bet

I know, I was crazy to do it. But my son managed to turn 18 a month ago, and I'd never shown him Sequiodendrons in California, not to mention redwoods and incense cedars (and all the other Californian dendrophantasmagoria) and now that he's something of a tree nerd, that's tantamount to child abuse. So 11 days, almost 3000 miles....the fantastic tableaux of Western America spun by our windows. Bryce on ice....or perhaps better phrased, ice on Bryce was the hardly the first aha! We drove through hundreds of miles of postcard views by then, but Bryce stops you in your tracks. At nearly 8000', there wasn't a lot in bloom up here (there was more and more as the coast approached). I am a plant nerd first and foremost. But Bryce never ceases to dazzle and even make the likes of me forget chlorphyll for the nonce. I can't imagine anyone who could climb out to Bryce point on a balmy March day like we did and not be humbled by the sheer extravagance, the noble baroque ex...

Wondering if anybody knows of any Euphorbia species which have milii-like flowers like those above, but much larger. The flowers in the picture were maybe an inch, inch and a half (2.5 to 3.8 cm) across, and the stem looked less like Euphorbia milii and more like Pachypodium lamerei: sort of silvery-shiny, and a good inch and a half (3.8 cm, again) thick, with longer but sparser thorns than on

The Stapelia flower bud I told you about last week opened on Wednesday. I was a little disappointed to learn that it was only an S. gigantea; I knew that was most likely (the pot had a newspaper clipping taped to it, about S. gigantea, so I knew that's what the previous owner had thought it was), but I was secretly hoping for something a little more unusual.Which is pretty unreasonable of me, as

It's very difficult to get a decent picture of Sheba; she has a tendency to strike a perfect pose for just a few seconds less than the time it takes me to turn on the camera and start it autofocusing. So I get a lot of shots of her blurred back half running out of frame. Nina, who spends the bulk of her time sitting perfectly motionless, is a lot more cooperative. I'm just saying.Sheba

Another orchid picture from the show in Bettendorf last Saturday. Before sitting down to write this post, I'd thought that Miltoniopsis was a multigeneric hybrid (a hybrid from two or more genera of plant, as opposed to the more typical hybrids from multiple species within a genus) of some kind, maybe Miltonia crossed with Phalaenopsis or something, but it turns out that no, Miltoniopsis is in

I feel like I should probably know what this is already; it looks somehow both really familiar (could we have sold these at the garden center?) and really foreign (surely I'd remember seeing these before, if they were as weedy as they appear to be?). These have been coming up around town in the last couple weeks, especially in ditches and vacant lots.Not an uninteresting plant, in any case. If