Indoor Plant Care Tips Guide

This orchid picture is not from the Quad Cities Orchid Show last March, unlike most of the orchid pictures I post. It's not that I've suddenly become a fan of Phalaenopsis or anything, but I thought this was an interesting variety, with an unusual pattern to it.

This post is a little over two years old. I ran into it during the recent blog maintenance, and I was initially surprised that I hadn't posted it, because it looked like it was more or less complete: the pictures were already present, the code for the footnotes (usually the last thing I do with a post, because it's awkward to change once in place) had been done. It's rare for a post to reach this

Get Busy Gardening! is having a houseplant giveaway in two weeks; details for how to enter are here. Only those in the continental U.S. are eligible to enter, alas. You don't get to choose what plants you'll receive, and she doesn't say specifically what she's choosing among, even. The pictures she posts with the announcement suggest that it'll be an assortment of fairly easy-to-grow,

I know the Errata posts are not the most fascinating, but I feel sort of obliged -- if I'm going to be responsible for spreading bad information, the least I can do is post the good information when I find what it is. Also I figure some of y'all are nerdy enough to care about these things for their own sakes. So. In the most recent round of name changes, we have: Maranta leuconeura kerchoviana

Still recovering a bit from the Ficus elastica profile (and from the blog maintenance that goes along with publishing a new profile), so just a photo today. There may be an Errata/Taxonomy post this afternoon as well, because that goes along with the blog maintenance. But maybe there won't be.

Ficus elastica, usually called "rubber plant" or "rubber tree," hails from the northeast corner of India, south and east into Malaysia and Indonesia. It really has been used in the production of rubber, despite what some websites will tell you, but natural rubber currently comes from a different plant, Hevea brasiliensis,1 in the Euphorbia family (Euphorbiaceae). Hevea brasiliensis, the "real"

Awfully similar to Paph. St. Swithin (which may be my favorite orchid of all time), though not quite as dramatic. A little more colorful, perhaps. In blogular news, I have my fingers crossed that the Ficus elastica profile will publish tomorrow. As I write this on Tuesday morning, it's basically complete, and all that's left is: getting a couple more photos (should take about 90 min.)sorting

You'd be forgiven for not believing me, but I think the Ficus elastica profile is going to happen this week. I know we've all been waiting for it for a long time (me absolutely included; I look forward to seeing the profiles at least as much as everybody else does). (UPDATE: And it was.) While we wait, please enjoy this image of my Calathea makoyana, which has defied all odds and lived with me

This is a bigger deal than it appears. I've had this plant for almost a year now (since last October), and had never seen it with flowers until last week. It's not the biggest accomplishment of my life or anything, but it does feel like an accomplishment all the same.

First the Sheba picture: First, this is more or less the picture I was trying to get for last week's post. It would have been better if the original image hadn't been tilted by about 30 degrees, 'cause then I wouldn't have had to cut her tongue off, but hey, we're making progress, and I really like this picture despite the missing tongue, so I'm not going to complain. Second: I've received

The Columnea orientandina I mentioned last May hasn't been growing terribly fast, but it hasn't been giving me any reason to worry about it, either, so I haven't been thinking about it much. It's on a flat with several other plants in 3" pots, and they all get dry at more or less the same rate, so normally I just put the whole tray in the tub, spray it down, add a little fertilizer, and move on

I've been linked to by tvtropes.org! (For the Hothouse Flower review.) I'm so proud! Also the main TV Tropes page for Hothouse Flower lines up pretty well with my review, too. Most of that's just that there are serious problems with the work which should jump out at anybody who reads it, but my review does make specific references to the terms or ideas behind: All Women are Lustful, Chick Lit,

Hey look, it's an orchid photo.

This plant (photographed at the ex-job) doesn't so much appeal to me or not appeal to me as it leaves me kind of scratching my head, wondering why it was necessary. There would be a certain novelty in having a Dracaena deremensis that looked like D. fragrans 'Massangeana,' except that according to the most recent taxonomic rearrangement, D. deremensis is D. fragrans, and although I like pretty

I actually purchased plants from a store this week. May not sound like that big of a deal to you, but it's the first time I'd been able to do that in two months, so it was pretty exciting for me. Maybe especially so, since two of the three plants I bought were reluctant walkaways, plants I'd seen and wanted but didn't have money to buy. So what happened? Well, you remember the Plant-Chaser

for a little while, unless it sounds very obviously like me. In particular don't click links. AOL has been hacked; I don't know how long that will last. There's all kinds of potential badness from this, but I don't know exactly what to expect. I did change my password, but don't expect that to make a difference, as the hackers can presumably read the new password as easily as they could the old

I was trying for a different picture than this, but Sheba doesn't like being in the cornfield and refuses to stay still long enough for a good photo. The corn itself was more cooperative: (I call it "Cathedral.") In non-corn-related news, I have deactivated my Twitter account. This is because I have consistently found that spending large amounts of time on Twitter causes me to become easily

This Dendrobium has been on the blog before, but the orchid show had it again, so I took a picture of it again. 'Cause I'm simple like that. Pretty sure it was the same specimen again, too, because 1) how many can there be in the area? and 2) surely it can't be a coincidence that they had the same annoying, outline-breaking background up behind the flowers this year that they had last year,

I got a Huernia zebrina earlier this summer. When it arrived, it had a flower bud on it, but it dropped the bud within a few days, presumably as a result of the travel. Disappointing, but not unexpected. I noticed last week that there was a bud developing again, and on Sunday I saw it open for the first time. This isn't as open as it will get, but it's as open as it got on Sunday.I didn't detect

This week looks like it's going to be busy for me again. I couldn't bring myself to water yesterday or Sunday, it looks like I'm going to be going in to Iowa City again on Wednesday, and if I don't hurry up and get busy putting some of my plants up on Craigslist I'm never going to manage to sell them all. (I'm still selling plants, by the way.) Therefore, transmitted light photos. (The previous

The one cutting of Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta' (also sometimes Breynia nivosa -- as goes Plant List, so goes my nation) that was under lights in the basement, and was producing variegated leaves there, has decided to bloom. The trigger for blooming appears to have been that I moved it into a larger pot. (The trigger for moving it to a larger pot was that it was drying out faster than I could

When I got up yesterday morning, Microsoft Updates had downloaded a new update for my computer, which, when installed, caused my computer to deny me access to all of my Excel files. Which are numerous, and important. I spent a couple hours trying to deal with it myself (System Restore didn't help.), followed by an hour and five minutes on the phone with a very nice man from India. He was able to

Having a touch of ennui this week (okay, not a touch. More like a face-punch of ennui.), for real but uninteresting reasons. So maybe just the picture today, with a brief explanation:It's more or less impossible to take a decent picture of a dog while playing tug of war with her. In particular, one risks pressing the button while a finger covers most of the flash, because it's hard to hold the

This isn't the greatest picture, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances. All three of these are from seedlings of the 'Bella Red' / 'Bella Pink' / 'Bella Vanilla' crosses: these are just the first three to produce flowers. The one I posted about previously is on the far right, the very pale pink one (it did in fact lose some of the orange color as it aged, like 'Bella Vanilla' does)

I've had a wouldn't-it-be-nice sort of project to get all the plants photographed this summer, or at least to try to get decent pictures of 1) the species/varieties for which I have no good photos already or 2) the ones that have grown significantly since the last time I took pictures. For most of the summer, though, I've been thwarted by the weather, lack of time, or whatever. Then a couple

This doesn't really fit my mental image of Brassolaeliocattleyas, but that's what the tag said. Even though the tags are frequently wrong to one degree or another, that's all I have to go on, so here it is. I'm not sure if I like these flowers or not, but the flowers aren't exactly the point today, because today is mostly about celebrating Bom's upcoming 1-year blogiversary1 with him. It's a bit

Image credit: National Weather Service. (With some modification.)Tomorrow's supposed to be about 10 degrees (F) cooler, but still. Motherfucker.

(NOTE FROM MR. S.: Sorry this is late. I didn't realize that I'd mis-set the date until six hours after it was supposed to post.)Pandanus amaryllifolius passed away on July 23, 2011, at her home in Plant Room Heights, following a brief illness. P. amaryllifolius is survived by a sibling, Pandanus veitchii. P. amaryllifolius moved to the Plant Room Heights area last August. She was an accomplished