Mother of Thousands, Mexican Hat Plant (Bryophyllum daigremontianum)

Mother of Thousands, Mexican Hat Plant
Bryophyllum daigremontianum

A closeup view of the plantlets forming on the leaf shown in April. (san Antonio, Tx.)

Good closeup, Hazel.
We used to have these as foliage houseplants but they never bloomed and so I got rid of mine. I have seen them in full bloom in the south and they are quite striking. Can you leave them in the ground there?
It is raining here now...a slow steady rain that is soaking in...I am so happy and so are the frogs!

I had been searching for this plant for many years. It was one of my deceased brother's favorite plants. Mine froze one year when it hit 11 degress which is very rare here. It did not come back up. A nice gentleman, Robert, in the neighborhood down the road from me gave me this one and I was thrilled. His are in the ground and have been for any years. The "Mother" plants are about 3 feet tall. He said that they will freeze when it hits the low 20s, but new ones emerge in the spring. I am growing mine in a container. You can start new ones from leaves as well as the plantlets. They need some sun to bloom.

Don't you just love your frogs! The little tree frogs are my favorites. They sound like birds chirping at night. I have severl areas that I have made into frog havens. I place containers with rocks in them that I fill with water; then, I place other rocks on top and around them leaving enough room for them to go in and out. They seem to like them a lot. Last year, some became very friendly emerging from the plants and hopping up to me. Did you run around with happiness in the rain? I have before after we had been experiencing a serious drought. A couple of times I have performed Indian rain dances.

Thanks for your comments.

Hazel you made both me and my husband laugh out loud. Well, since it rained mostly in the dark of night, I did not go out and dance around in it...I did stroll about with an umbrella though, several times, the next day. We live in a low basin and have a creek that runs year round and several low boggy places and it is always interesting to see the water when it is high. I have a lot of bog plants, and have been putting some of the extras in a part of the yard where they receive no special care. They were standing, some of them completely submerged, in a foot of water last night. I have a bald cypress planted down there, too. I have also been placing extra plants along the creek edge, weighting them down with big rocks to help keep them from washing away. They look a little bad after the creek gets up because they are all laid over in the direction of the current, but other than that, it seems to be working. Better than poison ivy all over the place, ha. When (if) I ever get rid of all my poison ivy, I think I will have to change my Dave's name to something lovely and happy.

How wonderful to have a creek that runs all year on your property. This has always been a dream of mine. I would have never thought to have planted plants with rocks holding them down. Being able to plant bog plants must be fun. They are so interesting and beautiful. Will your plants along the creek edge straighten back up by themselves? Do you have any little newts living in your wet areas? When I taught school along with my snake, lizards, tarantula, fish and other assorted animals I had in my classroom, I had several newts. They are so cute and friendly. You must have alot of frogs.

I do have a small "fake" creek 20 by 2.5 feet feet inside my yard and outside my fence for about 8 feet that I made with river rock as the base and edgers as the sides. It serves to contain the rain runoff from the yards to my west that are a gradual higher elevation than my yard. I want to someday extend it across my whole backyard. It works pretty well in controlling the runoff to one area. Although when we had 18 inches of rain in a short period of time last year, my "creek" overflowed its banks. I just checked and it overflowed Saturday morning when we had 4 inches of rain in about 2 hours. My neighbor built a storage shed 4 days ago smack dab in his drainage area. All I could sa y was, "Oh, nooo!" I told my husband that it was going to divert the drainage flow to a different area as it comes into my yard which it did to some degree. Some water went over the patio pavers that my BBQuer sets upon and my dog's pea gravelled pit where he likes to lie in hot weather, but most if it went down the "creek". So now I am going to ask my neighbor he and I can figure out a way to redirect all of the runoff back into my "creek".

Water goes where it wants to, and sometimes with a powerful force. My neighbor across the highway has caused some drainage changes here, too, that I need to fix. I am starting to get a new creekbed across a section of lawn that I used to mow...now it is exposed tree roots and bare dirt, not attractive. Luckily, it is pretty well hidden by some large evergreens in that area.
I will probably go down to the creek and straighten some of the plants (hostas, especially) and sort of wash them off if needed. I love playing in the water, and used to get spanked every day when I was little for getting in the creek. We live upstream of where I was raised, and our creek is a small tributary. It used to dry up during drought, but now there is a rock quarry upstream that uses water for dust suppression and then it overflows out of a holding pond and comes down my creek. It has not dried up in a long time...hope it doesn't. We have a lot of frogs down there and I saw an alligator turtle down there this spring. Snakes, of course. I have not seen any newts, but we have some spotted salamanders that are black with red spots. They like to live under rocks. Also I occasionally find ring-necked snakes about 8 inches long under rocks. They are so cute.

Those salamanders are handsome critters. The snakes around here I tend to let them share our yard unless they are poisonous. I usually catch the rattlesnakes (when small) and release them at the deer lease. I kill copperheads and coral snakes which are very aggressive. The rattlesnake warns you to stay away and usually scurries off when intruded upon.

We have a few copperheads here, too...they like to be near water I think. Haven't seen but one rattlesnake in the 27 years we have been here, and that was at my neighbor's house. I mostly see king, black, garter, green, and hognose snakes.
Oh, I got soooo excited yesterday. I was extending my woodland paths (hacking through briers and thickets like Lewis and Clark) when I came up on a little orchid...Showy Orchis. It only has one little flower and is a solitary plant, but I marked it and will be looking out for it's safety and hopefully prosperity. Might post a picture...have to see what is already posted here.

The snake I worry about the most is the coral snake because it spends most of the time underground in cracks and crevices ... like around my flowerbeds. It is about 20 inches long which is small compared to other poisonous snakes. It is very nocturnal this and is seldom seen. I do a lot of gardening at night in the summer to escape the heat. It lays 2 to 3 eggs in the summer and interestingly it is the only poisonous snake in North America to lay eggs. I laughed when I read your Lewis and Clark reference, but I bet you don't think it is funny when you are hacking throught the brush. Congrats on finding the orchid. What color bloom does it have? I think your finding it was destiny ... so you can protect it.

The orchid has a small bloom...white lip and pink hood, very dainty. I posted a pic yesterday, maybe it will be on the newsletter tomorrow. It is Orchis spectabilis.
I sprayed 4 gallons of strongest concentration Roundup on my poison ivy yesterday...took me 4 hours to do it. Now I have a 2/3 acre field that has not been mowed in 5 years that I need to deal with, it is growing up with poison ivy and multiflora rose...not a good combo!
I found a lot of large Solomon's Seal plants in the poison ivy along the creek. Alas, I fear I sprayed some of them. Did not see any snakes...it was cool...38 degrees yesterday morning. We call this "Blackberry Winter".

Whew, that's a lot of poison ivy to have to eliminate. It has been cool here. Yesterday was a bit warmer finally. How long does a "Blackberry Winter? last?

You might laugh at my weather lore...Blackberry winter starts when the dewberries bloom and ends when the blackberries bloom...usually a week...the temps usually get down to 40 or less at night but no freezes...sometimes a light frost out in the open areas if there is no wind. My observation is that this happens the week before the full moon in May during most years.

Boy, did my arm get sore from carrying around that sprayer!
My orchid pic and a whole lot more still have not posted.

Your info about blackberry winter is very interesting, thanks. I learn so much from you. I have been trying to come up with a way to make some kind of harness that has side containers that I can strap to my big old dog so I can place things like sprayers, buckets of dirt and such in them. That way he can carry them around for me and at least earn his keep. I was going to try to attach him to my large garden wagon when I have 10 bags of landscape soil and then say, "Mush!" ... but he loves to run so much I thought he might take off down the street with the wagon in tow. Oh, a thought just popped in my mind. I could attach his leash and he couldn't get away. Anyway, I hope the muscles in your arm quits hurting soon.

There must be a lot of photos being uploaded at this time of year because mine are takng some time to be posted too.

edited for typo

This message was edited Thursday, Apr 29th 11:41 PM

Off-topic, but htop, there ARE a lot of photos in the queue. Which means I can either string everybody out with just a couple pics per person each day, OR I can release a bunch of yours "out the back door" so to speak- they won't appear in the newsletter, but they will start a thread here and show up in your member page. That way you don't have to wonder if something uploaded properly, or not. If y'all want me to do that to some of yours, I'd be happy to ;o)

No, a couple a day is fine with me. I have been trying to limit myself to a couple of photos a day (sometimes I get carried away) so more people have a chance to post their plants. This time of year the photos are probably pouring in. I need to make a list of what I have uploaded which I haven't been doing to make sure they uploaded correctly. Sometimes my computer "hangs" for a little while after the upload and I am not sure it has been successful. Thanks for the kind offer though, Terry. That was very thoughtful of you.

Terry, I have a question...my pics are on the large side because my husband insists on having the camera (it's his) set to 1900 X 2560 pixels or something like that. They are 2 to 5 MB and then I resize them with an XP toy to small or medium which gets them down to 50 to 120 KB. Does this make any problems for you?
Like htop, I can wait for mine to post...I enjoy seeing what others have posted in the newsletter and hope someone enjoys mine.

thanks for all your hard work,
Susan

Okey dokey ;o) Image size is up to you, Susan - Dave's process will automatically scale down large images to some maximum pixel dimensions (don't recall what they are off hand - maybe 860x640?)