Indoor Plant Care Tips Guide

This was tagged as a Doritaenopsis, but science appears to have more or less settled the question of whether Phalaenopsis and Doritis are the same thing with an exuberant "YES!," so I've changed the name. (The hobby and retail communities' collective response appears to be more along the lines of "We would prefer to continue making the distinction!") Not the world's best phal or anything, but I

Well, Ivynettle kind of beat me to this post, by posting a larger, better-looking Hoya bella with more flowers on it, but I don't have a lot else going on at the moment, so it's what I'm going to post. I don't think these pictures require a lot by way of context, but I'll note that: � Hoya bella flowers have been the subject of PATSP posts before (last year; three years ago), � this is the

I've been on the lookout this spring for the plants from last fall/winter's Missing From retail series, just to see how absent they really are. For the most part, the plants I said were missing around here still are, but there have been a few sightings. I guess Cyperus spp. have been around every year and I just wasn't paying attention until this one, because I've seen them in two stores so far

At the moment, I'm going through another spell of being unenthused with plants, mostly because it's been cool again here and I've spent a bunch of time and energy putting them out in the morning, watering like mad so I can be finished before it's too cold to have them outside, and then dragging them all back in again. And even then, I've still damaged a couple. (Whatever the books and websites

Haven't done any LOLplants for a while, but a reader e-mailed me this last week and I found it amusing, so here you go. For those who don't know, this is an example of guttation. Guttation tends to freak out people who haven't seen it before, but by itself, it's harmless. The PATSP post about guttation can be read here.

I started a batch of Leuchtenbergia principis seeds on 8 May. I wasn't sure what percentage would germinate, so I started a lot (56, which isn't even half the number I got1). I noticed the first seedlings on 15 May, and new ones keep popping up. So I will soon have way, way too many baby Leuchtenbergias, with enough seeds to make way, way more. So far, they don't look like much, and

Still have a lot of these photos stockpiled from . . . I don't even know how many years ago. Long time. I should probably try harder to burn through those, 'cause I'm still taking new pictures, and at this rate I'll never actually end up posting them. (The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.) Tetrastigma voinieriana. Alas, my Tetrastigma was lost in the big scale purge in

I think all the relevant commentary for this one is covered in the post title.

I will be hosting a book giveaway for America's Romance With the English Garden (Thomas J. Mickey) in early June. It's apparently1 about the beginnings of the American garden industry, and how the English gardening style became the default style for American gardens. Not really normal PATSP fare, but it seemed like an interesting topic. If this interests you, you may wish to check out its page at

Once again, the neighbor across the street from us has a large swath of yard covered in Mertensia virginica. The occupants have changed two or three times since we've lived here, and every time that's happened, I've been worried that the new people might decide to dig it all up. So every spring when the Mertensia blooms again, I feel relieved: they've gotten through another year. And so have I.

(Via Know Your Meme.)

The name makes more sense than you'd think at first glance: Paphiopedilum Faire-Maud is a cross between Paphiopedilum fairrieanum and Paphiopedilum Maudiae.

Technically Sheba's on the neighbor's lawn in this picture, not ours; our lot has a corner taken out of it for unknown historical reasons.

I seem to be kind of on a roll this week as far as posting every day -- which hasn't happened since December -- so let's see if I can't make it seven for seven just to prove that it's still possible. All of these pictures are from the ex-job, over the last three or four months. Anybody who can identify one of the three plants here with any degree of confidence should let me know in the comments

We've bought some Portulaca grandifloras this year, both a couple six-packs and a couple packages of seeds. It's maybe a little late for seeds, but if we plant them soon, we can still get some flowers from them before the summer's done. (Unfortunately, we had one spot in mind for them when we bought them, then decided that we didn't want to plant anything there after all, so now we're trying to

This was blooming at the ex-job last week. Sorry about the crappy photo: the light was bad, the background was cluttered, and there's only so much I can do to clean these things up. Hopefully you get the idea regardless. I'm not sure the color of the actual flowers comes across properly here; in person, it was sort of navy blue, which is what I thought was the most interesting about the whole

Reader generosity (thank you, Paul VA!) has gotten me one of the plants that's been on my want list for a long time, Euphorbia leuconeura. He even sent a slightly smaller duplicate, just in case. Not a lot to say about the plant yet; I only just got them last Thursday. The only thing that's really jumped out at me so far is that they're a lot prettier in person than I was expecting from the

I couldn't find any record of an Epidendrum Fany Lady. At first I thought maybe it was a misspelled Funny Lady, but that doesn't appear to exist either. So I don't know anything about this particular orchid except that apparently it's an Epidendrum. Alas, this is another case where I was a bit too far away to get a good photo. I've spotted a couple Epidendrums in regular, everyday retail lately

Things of interest from the internet: 1) I sort of already suspected that imidacloprid is not particularly good for the environment, but had avoided reading much on the subject because I didn't want to have to stop using the only thing I've got that seems to work. And then The Raw Story published an article about imidacloprid in water being linked to lower populations of snails, dragonflies, and

A bunch of things have been happening -- new plants, sightings of interesting and/or pretty things, discoveries of articles on the internet that you may find relevant or important -- but I've been unable to write during the last few days because 1) all the plants had to come back in the house for a few days, and then 2) in the process of bringing all the plants back in the house for a few days, I

What a terrible time of year this is. So warm out (71, 80, and 87 F on Sun/Mon/Tue, which is 22, 27 and 31 C, for those of you in civilized countries) that I feel stupid if I don't have the plants outside, because obviously they'd enjoy themselves, but too cold at night to leave them there, so I have to haul them all back in the house or into the garage or something, then drag them back out again