Ok, this was a really interesting accidental happening. I was taking the Aeschynanthus splendidus down from the hook so I could water it. The flower clusters you can see opened between the last time I took the flower down for a thorough watering and when they were just getting to be good size buds.
The photos can't show this incident well at all, but I found that the tubes of the flowers were all filled with liquid!
I accidently spilled most of it out the day prior to taking this photo, and to take a picture of your own hand with sticky water dripping down is a bit of a trick, but here it is!
The flowers didn't just have a drop or two in them, they were full of nectar. It tasted very good too. A humming bird would have been very thrilled and excited.
Here are some pictures of something I was interested in for a long time. This is xSinvana 'Heartland's Mavrick'. It's a cross between another xSinvana 'Mount Magazine" and a mini Sinningia 'Los Angeles".
A xSinvana is a cross between a Sinningia and a Paliavana.
The flowers are big and held up well by the stem. My little plant started out about 6 months ago from a small cutting that, after being sent in the mail, was pretty limp and sad.
The tube is nice and long and has the Gesneriad fuzzy flower thing going, as you can see.
And I have found with a few Gesneriad flowers that the very bottom will have a stripe of a different shade or color. The bottom of this one has the white stripe. A curious thing...
And this is Sinningia guttata. I love the spots! I also am very interested that the flower has the spotting at the base by the calyx and then goes pretty solid-color until you get to the flower's face. It's a very nice contrast in color.
Now.... what if you crossed a Sinvana with a guttata? Would you get a Sinvanatta?
Questions? Comments????
Well, how's this for brightening a rainy day? This is Sinningia speciosa 'Cabo Frio'.
What a spectacular plant. The leaves span over 17" across and the flowers themselves are 1 7/8" long.
Grower Terry K. got the seed from a place you (as gesneriad enthusiast) will want to support: Mauro Peixots's Brazil Plants. http://www.brazilplants.com/ Congratulations on the lovely plant Terry!
Another site to interest the Sinningia lover is http://www.burwur.net/sinns/sinns.htm
Sinningias are tuber forming plants that will grow under fluorescent lights, even from seed. And as you can see from the photos, make a spectacular display. If you haven't tried these out yet, it's something that should be on your list. If you don't have room for a plant that gets 17 inches across, there are hundreds if not thousands of smaller Sinningias both miniature and micro-miniature too.
This is a goose looking for an appropriate nesting site for himself and his mate. It's nice to note that it's April 14th, 2013 and the average high temperatres for the day should be well into the upper 50's.
What happened to spring?
It was a surprising day in the plant room today. Not only did flowers just show up in bloom, I found enough rhizomes to stock a flower store!
This is Seemannia purpurascens. I've been waiting for such a long time and all of a sudden I was looking at the back of the terrarium that this has grown out of and *poof, I have a bud.
Apparently, they grow out of containers and off your shelf even with some judicious pruning.
I think it's a quite handsome bud and I can't wait till it opens a little more!
The plant also makes cool rhizomes and ariel rhizomes. Worth the price of admission just to see the dark, dark foliage and all the fun stuff it produces!
This was a total shock! I had a very, very scraggly plant that I recently staked and groomed and stuck in the back of a shelf with some larger Sinnigias.
Now, not only do the leaves look nice, the thing is in bloom! Yay!
I'm pretty pleased with this flower. I went online and couldn't find one that has the two tone colors like this one. I'm wondering if they start out two tone or I have an interesting one.
It might just get crossed with something to see if that two-tone color and multiple bloom will combine with a plant with large blooms.
Compared to ones that have been grown outdoors, this is pretty tiny, but it's still in bloom and it counts!
I'm going to summer it out here in MN when the appropriate weather comes in another few months.
This is a Nematanthus crassifolius that also sort of sneaked up on me with a flower. This one I knew about for a couple of weeks, but it's pretty exciting when you see it.
The flowers are quite large and waxy looking and as you can sort of tell the flowers dangle down on about a four inch pedicle. I would bet a hummingbird might find this pretty exciting too!
These plants seem to take quite a long while to grow into something interesting. Also, while they don't want to be soaking wet, they also don't really want to be too dry either, or you will lose leaves. They do seem to root cuttings well though.
This is a Eucodonia 'Adele' being shown off by Winston, who is thoroughly disgusted with having to pose with a flower on his very manly head.
He prefers to be left to his napping undisturbed.
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Welcome! Today you're in for a treat. Here are some very nicely shot photos of "What's Doin' the Bloomin' Today" sent over to us by guest blogger Janice!
This is one of my favorites, 'Noreen'. I like the bright yellow and the fact that some of the upper petals show the yellow instead of only the lower three.
Jealousy is a bad thing, right? This plant never seems to quit blooming for Janice. It's Columnea "Firebird". I've visited on several occasions and this plant is always doing this. I'm pretty sure if I bought one it wouldn't look quite like this, but if Columneas like growing in your home, try this one out!
Pretty in pink..... 'Pink Sunrise' has a lot of the bright yellow showing in the throat and nice big flowers. Now if someone could get either a very, very ruffled edge or a frilled edge like Alsobia show, this would be just about perfect, right?
I think that 'Alissa' was one of the first all-yellow Streps. The flowers are nicely presented with just a hint of purplish white around the edges.
Here's an offering from (yes, I'm going to BRAG a lot) one of our very own club members!!!! From Miller of Neil's Streps comes 'Freckles'. Love the distinct two-tone and the contrasting colors. I don't think it could get any better with any other color combination. When I figure out how to grow a decent Strep., this is going to be on the top of the list.
Thanks again to Janice. Please leave a little kudos for such nice pix.
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Now, do you want something that puts on a show? This is Columnea 'Red Skelton'. Mine is still a young plant that's living in the same little pot it got shipped in. It requires very little fussing and the blooms are, like some Columneas, very long and bright.
As you can see by the ruler the flowers are over three inches long.
Typical for gesneriads you will notice the four joined stamen holding the pollen. Columneas have an intriguingly shaped flower probably designed to attract a specific pollinator... could it be a humming bird? The color would certainly attract them.
The hairs on the flower tube also show up... another thing gesneriads have in common... lots of hair!
This is a cool miniature Sinningia named 'Miriam G.'.
The splash of uneven darker magenta really highlights the flower's face. If you look to the top left at the back flower in the photo you see that the blossom curves sharply up resembling a pipe for smoking tobacco. Another adaptation to attract a specific pollinator?
The plant seems to grow reasonably compactly and keeps its shape. A really nice variety.
I can't resist putting these up on the blog. This is of course a Chrysothemis pulchella.
There are a few things that make this a really cool plant. First, the calyx are so bright orange. They come out before the yellow flower appears and they stay even after the yellow petals are all done and gone.
Another thing about the Chrysothemis is that they are one of the gesneriads that make TUBERS!!! So, even when you goof up, break it off, neglect it and dry it out.... chances are that it will resprout from its tuber like a Sinningia. It's also one of the very brightest yellow/orange gesneriads I can think of .... and being as those are my favorite colors I would suggest you will really have to try one too!
Questions??? Comments???
This is Drymonia 'First Peach' and it's the first time it's bloomed for me!
Woo hooo, it's a pretty flower and it sure "looks like a gesneriad" from the shape and fringes on the petals etc.
It is a sturdy plant that has stiff leathery leaves and I would imagine that it could grow pretty large. It's blooming with two blooms in a 4" pot right now. Maybe it will be the sort that likes growing in dappled shade outside in the MN summer. It would be lovely!
Here is our friend and vexing plant Sinningia tubiflora. It doesn't seem to bloom indoors all that often but when it does it has a sweet fragrance and those super long flowers are pretty interesting to look at.
A poor shot of Sinningia reitzii but it's still decked out in Christmas colors and no matter how mean you are to it and how dry and wilted it becomes and how many leaves you kill off, it will come back from almost anything and still bloom consistantly.
Just think if you were to actually do a good job caring for it.... Nice plant IF you keep hacking it off, otherwise it gets too tall for the lights.
One of the mid-size Sinningias called 'Zillinova'. I think it's from Kartuz Greenhouse. Nice textured leaves and really nice blooms with some interesting patterning on the petals. The flower has lightish lines on the petals and they are similar on all the flowers, sort of like you creased the petals but you didn't.
Here's a first for the collection... I finally got a Nematanthus brasiliensis
to bloom with a second flower coming. These are pretty cool and they hang down on a long pedicle.
Here's something else new to the collection!
This is Nematanthus Bijou. It started out as a very sickly little cutting that was graciously given to me from an Ebay order that sat in a hot box wayyyyy toooo long. Most all of the leaves were mushy and many fell off but this one came back and rooted.
Now it's a very pretty little starter plant.
The leaves are very dark green and shiny and the flowers seem to come on a young-ish plant. The petals are a nice bright yellow with orange while the tube is a bright orange with the characteristic "goldfish" lump.
Questions???
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This is a photo of Streptocarpus candidus from the gesneriphiles list on the Internet. It's a group that chats about all things gesneriad using email. People can ask questions or post photos, answer questions or make comments. If you aren't already signed up for this, you probably should be!
Look here for more info: "gesneriphiles@lists.ibiblio.org" <gesneriphiles@lists.ibiblio.org>
Anyway, I saw this photo posted by Bob Stewart and had to ask permission to put this on our blog because it's so cool. This is Streptocarpus candidus. If you will look carefully at the photo you will see that the leaves are lighter green on the top and there is a defined line and then the regular green on the bottom. These leaves are doing what our trees do in the fall and making an abscission layer and they are planning to shed the upper parts of the leaf to conserve on water.
Bob explained a bit more for me and I'll quote him: "What is happening in the picture is roughly the same thing that happens to an oak tree. In both cases the plant is preparing for winter. In winter, water is in short supply, either because not much
falls or because the water is frozen so the plant cannot get at it.
The plant needs to reduce its water loss, and the way to do this is to
reduce the leaf area. The oak tree forms a layer of waterproof corky
cells at the base of the each leaf petiole, cutting the whole leaf off
from the rest of the tree. The leaf will eventually fall, although in
oaks it may not fall until spring.
The streptocarpus forms a layer of waterproof corky cells part way
down the body of the leaf, cutting the far end of the leaf off from
the rest of the plant. The far end of the leaf will gradually die and
dry or rot away, though in mild situations this may take months.
In spring the oak tree grows whole new leaves from buds along the
stem.
In spring the streptocarpus starts extending the old leaf from a layer
of generative cells near the base. This is the same layer of cells
that produced the leaf in the first place, and the leaf simply gets
longer from the base."
I would very much like to thank Bob for the use and description of the photo and also encourage people to go see about the gesneriphile list. There is a LOT of useful info on it.
Questions??? Comments????
This is a slice of Seemannia purpurascens. It's really fun to look at different plant materials under the microscope!
You will note that it's got the bright purple outer layer because the plant looks purple when you observe it.
The majority of the stuff in the middle is the pith. What I'm trying to find are the vascular bundles.
This is a diagram that is copyrighted and property of Pearson Education Inc. I don't quite know how to site their work except to say that it is theirs and they are excellent.
You will observe that the phloem (food conducting ducts) and the xylem (water conducting ducts) are grouped in "bundles" around the outer rings of the stem. Let's see if we can see them in our unstained but pretty clear cross cutting of the Seemannia stem.
Moving from the outside to the very center, you see the outer hairs, then the pink outermost layer. It touches the yellow layer next and then we get to the what we're looking for. You see a darker thin yellowish line with some clearer bundles of stuff next. Hopefully, we've found vascular bundles of tissue.
Lastly comes the clear middle, or pith which functions mostly to support the stem.
When I was looking at the outer surface of a leaf I was absolutely stunned to find that the hair are STRIPED! Look closely at some of the lower ones in the photo. It goes purple stripe, white, purple stripe, white, etc.
It's the completely unexpected and wonderful stuff that you find that really makes this fun!
This is the leaf surface where the stripy hairs come from. You can sort of get the gist from the real-size view but it's the upper photo and the magnification that shows the very cool patterning in the 'hairs'. What on earth does this do to be advantageous for the plant? It must do something or it would be like this.
I took the leaf pictured above and cut a thin slice through the petiole and leaf blade. The bigger lump over on the left is the petiole and you see thin leaf surface and secondary lumps where the veins got cut.
Note in the middle of the main leaf petiole you can see two lines of darker color... I'm thinking it is more vascular tissue like the main stem.
This is the same bit of leaf magnified more. The lines in the middle show up better.
Anyway... pretty cool what's inside the gesneriads eh? Almost as cool as what we appreciate them for on the outside. I might have to slice up a flower from this Seemannia when it blooms and see what's inside it too.
Questions???
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This is a single flower from a Gloxinia 'Dragon Song'. It's got the neat pouch-shaped bottom to the flower.
These bloom on an inflorescence that is tall and holds many small flowers above the foliage. Cool looking plant with nice shiny dark colored foliage.
I'm intrigued by what else you can see if you go beyond just looking at the obvious... the color and shape of the flower.
I can see that like most gesneriads it has the anthers joined in the middle.
I had to include an outside shot too because the gesneriad flowers are also almost always covered, like the rest of the plant, in 'hair'.
A good part of the petals are cut off in this shot to make it easier to see the pistal and stamen of the plant.
If you look closely you see the top of the pollen sacs, and towards the front of the photo you see it is brighter white and that is some of the pollen breaking it's way out of the pollen sac almost ready to pollinate another flower.
The 'top' side of the pollen sacs, nicely joined. Even the filaments (the tall things that hold up the anthers) have hair on them!
A little closer look which, let's face it, is cool looking.
The front white object is the female part, the pistil, of which you can see the top knob part (the stigma) and just a little of the style.
It appears to have some pollen clinging to it. It might also be contamination from beating up the blossom and cutting away some of the petals to get the view.
This is the 'bottom' side view of the pollen sacs with some of the pollen ready to be released out into the world.
If a pollinator like a bee or a fly comes along and investigates the interior of the blossom, some of this pollen will likely stick to the insect and it will be transported over to the next flower visited.
Every type of flower has a distinct type of pollen. Sometimes pollen from prehistoric times is also found in fossils and scientists can identify what sorts of plants were present when that flower was alive thousands and thousands of years ago.
Questions???
Commets???
