Indoor Plant Care Tips Guide

Berry-Go-Rounders:I promise I'll post BGR #41 tomorrow. It's taken a lot more work to put together than I was anticipating. Please don't shun me, or whatever it is y'all do to punish people who post late.Meanwhile, here is an orchid.

Not a particularly timely pair of photos (these were taken May 4 at the ex-job), but they're the best I've got at the moment.

And as long as I'm talking about the outdoor stuff today, I have a question for everybody. Last fall, I asked about five unidentified weedy things that I'd seen around town, and the third one, which had come up in the garden at some point late in the year, was identified as Oenothera biennis, the common evening primrose. I don't know how it got there, but it looked cool, so when something

The people who used to live in this house had a small garden in back, which I've mentioned before, and in the garden they'd planted some cilantro, which I haven't mentioned before because I was under the impression that it was parsley. But it's not. (I have to say I'm a little disappointed in y'all for not saying something when I misidentified it as such earlier. You guys are supposed to catch

I'm going to be working on Berry Go Round #41 this week (hoping to have it up on Wednesday, but no promises), so it's transmitted-light time again. (The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)Hosta NOID.Tradescantia pallida.Cissus rhombifolia. Something about the slight variations in color here makes me really happy. The plant itself mostly makes me angry, unfortunately -- I had one

Sheba was limping a little bit early in the week, and then again on Tuesday or Wednesday, but neither the husband or I could see anything wrong with her foot -- there were no cuts or puncture marks or anything. So it could have been a joint issue, rather than a foot issue. We may never know, because she'd stopped doing it by Thursday.Other than that, nothing big going on with Nina or Sheba. I

Last November, I posted about my Chlorophytum 'Charlotte' forming a seed pod. This was exciting, because I'd had the plant for a couple years by that point, and had never seen a seed pod, plus it meant that maybe I'd get to propagate it. (I don't know anything about 'Charlotte's ancestry, but it could be a hybrid, in which case I'll get seedlings with varying traits, and most of the seedlings

How does everyone feel about an afternoon post that isn't related to Lady Gaga? I said on Monday that I've been having some weird things going on with my Saintpaulias, and suspected cyclamen mites. It's possible that I'm so anxious to get rid of the Saintpaulias -- and I am highly motivated either to make them shape up or to make them go away -- that I'm leaping to the worst possible conclusion,

Another orchid from last March's orchid show. The ancestry is Phrag. Barbara LeAnn 'Select' x Phrag. Rosalie Dixler 'FV.' I couldn't find much else about this particular flower, partly because most of the more promising Google search results redirected me to pages that had nothing to do with orchids. (No clue.) But with a flower like this, words are a bit superfluous anyway.

Just a few little things connecting to this particular plant, which seems to keep drawing my attention lately. 1. Last fall, I asked the hive mind for an ID for this plant: It was on behalf of a reader, who'd written in to ask me. The plant turned out to be a Euphorbia leuconeura, and I expressed an interest in getting some seeds from the reader, the next time the plant produced some. S/He

In case anyone thought that Lady Gaga was unparodyable. (Almost, but Weird Al manages it.)(I kind of love the octopus / Taj Mahal outfit.)

As promised earlier, I present to you the first opened flower on my Chirita 'Deco:'Very frustrated with the camera. I don't feel like it got the colors right, even after I tried to adjust them. This is possibly that thing again where cameras don't photograph blues and purples accurately. I don't know. In any case, it's a much nicer flower than I had been anticipating, it's lasted a long time, and

I'm on the verge of taking back everything nice I ever said about Lady Gaga -- I loved "Bad Romance" (and still do, pretty much), and I don't hate "Telephone" (but I don't love it either), but all the singles since then1 have been . . . well, I sort of feel like she's both trying too hard and like she's not trying hard enough. Like, she's working very hard to be shocking without actually doing

There aren't very many plants which will actually bloom year-round, but there are a few, and there are even more than that with long bloom periods that might as well be continuous bloomers. As always, whether or not you actually see continuous blooming from one of these plants in your home is going to depend on whether or not you're providing the care it needs. It's a short list this time,

Well, it ate my life from about 11:30 PM on Wednesday night until about 3:30 PM on Friday afternoon, but I think, I'm pretty sure, the malware "MS Removal Tool" is no longer on my computer. Among other things, I have a different antivirus program now. I had been using Avira, because I didn't have the money to renew Symantec in February when the subscription ended -- Avira is free -- and because

Late Wednesday night, my computer went crazy: I'd somehow been infected with some malware. (The specific one that got me was "MS Removal Tool," a fake security program that not only pops up to tell you your computer is simultaneously infected with 38 really scary things, but also automatically closes most programs you're running and won't let you open new ones. So you can't run your antivirus

The ex-job has brought in a bunch of climbing / vining plants in the last few weeks. They're mostly species I haven't seen or heard of before, which makes them interesting, but I found it hard to take any of them seriously as a potential purchase. Vining plants are a pain in the ass indoors even when they do overwinter well, because they're always trying to latch on to your other plants (or

Doesn't sound like a proper cultivar name at all as far as I'm concerned, but that's all the ID I have to give you.I realize that yellow Clivias are harder to find and therefore more valuable, among those people who value Clivias, but I'm kind of thinking I don't like them as well as I like the regular orange kind. Not that it really matters to me personally -- I have one of each, and neither has

This was new to me. When I was at the ex-job, we had the same single variety of Gomphrena both years, 'Gnome Purple.' It wasn't objectionable -- it was well-behaved in the plug trays, people bought them, and they didn't need a lot of maintenance -- but I didn't really get the point. Karen 715 showed up in the comments to tell me that no, I wouldn't get the point if I was only seeing them in plug

About a month ago, I posted about how my Kalanchoe prolifera has started to make pinnate leaves (which is exciting if you're a plant nerd), and a conversation started up in the comments about Kalanchoes generally, and Sentient Meat made a reference to the flowers of K. tomentosa, calling them "green and brown: masculine, strange and otherworldly."And then, a month later, I was at the ex-job and

Oh, that's why people buy the Angelonias. I'd never really understood the appeal. But then, when I worked there, the Angelonias never looked like that, either.

The term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" was coined by Onion reviewer Nathan Rabin, who defines her thusly in his review of the 2005 movie Elizabethtown:. . . that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.A much longer and mildly unsafe

I'd been in desperate need of a haircut for about the last month, so we went to Iowa City yesterday so I could get one. In the process, I also wound up getting two plants at the ex-job, because I am weak, and because I was left there to kill time taking pictures while the husband did stuff. Neither were terribly interesting plants, but I've told you about them already so I may as well show them

Blargh. Another Phalaenopsis. Even if it's a Doritaenopsis. Though I suppose I shouldn't complain so much about Phalaenopsis. Mine's still alive, and it's even growing a new leaf as of about a week or two ago. It's not a rebloom, but I'm suddenly doubting that orchids do rebloom. My observations show that they flower once, then die. (Sometimes very slowly, though. Like bromeliads.) Everybody else

Still working on the Fittonia profile; I spent more time than anticipated watering yesterday, so it's mostly written but still a little rough. It'll be posted Sunday instead, I can almost promise. (UPDATE: It was.) Meanwhile, I want to show you this adorable little Huernia zebrina I got via trade last week:Much of the adorableness is because it's in a tiny, tiny pot: each side is about 1 3/4

I'm fairly close to being done with the Fittonia profile; I finally made some serious progress on it over the last couple days. So my blogging energy is going toward finishing that, for now. I'm hoping to have it up Thursday. [UPDATE: Thursday didn't happen, but the profile was finished.] Therefore, transmitted light photos. (The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)Glycine

Not a lot to be said here; these are mostly your ordinary Irises, from around town and a couple from the ex-job. I've seen some really impressive beds of Iris this year; I don't know if they're having an unusually good year or if I'm just noticing them more. There wasn't any ID on this except for something like "Red German Iris."Early dwarf type. I think. It was at least early. And it was short.

Actually, it's been up for a while already, at Sitka Nature, but I'm only just now getting around to it because I had a good blogging week last week and actually managed to write some posts in advance for once. So I'm telling you now.It's possible that some of you are asking What's a Berry-go-Round?Well. Berry-go-Round is a blog carnival1 with a focus on botany. It's not so much about

When I took these pictures, I thought I knew what this was, but after spending some time on-line trying to verify, I lost confidence. So I'm asking y'all. My guess is bull thistle, Cirsium vulgare, though this plant doesn't seem to have long terminal spines like C. vulgare does. Bonus Sheba content!It probably doesn't matter; these pictures were taken 13 May, and the plant's probably been cut

I almost got a good photo of Nina this week, but when I opened the top of the cage to get a better, less hard-water-stained angle, she skittered away into the underbrush. The terrarium underbrush is presently about 180% Pellionia pulchra. It's probably about time to cut those back again. So today's picture is of Sheba, once more:Sheba's had a fairly normal week, though we did take her to

Tragically, the paper wasp pictured here did not survive our encounter, because I knocked it down, flung it to the ground, and stepped on it.It should have known better than to try to start building a nest on our garage door, was my thinking.

*Sigh*My orchid problems continue -- the most recent development is the discovery that the Sophrolaeliocattleya I bought last winter had an impressively developed scale infestation (under a leaf, in a spot that was only visible from one angle -- and apparently I never looked from that angle in the last few months), so it's gone in the trash. I mean, I was looking for an excuse to get rid of it

The previously-mentioned barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) have laid eggs now. I had to use a mirror (the gold stuff at the top), as Errant suggested Saturday, to get the picture.A web cam, which some of you suggested, was never going to happen -- we don't have one already, and the money's not there to buy one. As Pat said, checking on the nest too often may cause the parents to abandon it and

I mentioned this a while ago, but didn't have a picture then. So far, I'm liking this plant, though at least some of my fondness is relief that it didn't die; a lot of the plants that arrived at the same time have, and it's been depressing. The flowers, when they open, are supposed to be somewhere on the purple to white continuum, according to Google. I'll let you know.

With most of these I don't have pictures of whole plants in bloom, and in some cases, cultivars with yellow flowers are rare and hard to find, so the inclusion of a plant in the list doesn't mean that it's usually found with yellow flowers, only that yellow is a color which is known to be possible. For the pictured plants, I have gone with plants which usually or always bloom yellow, for whatever