Debbie ~ thanks for the offer, I am going to pass on the M. maculosa for now. Just not one of those "gotta haves" ~ thank you tho. Congratulations of your retirement!?!! Didn't know that... best wishes on your new endeavor. I shall have to tour your site too.
This message was edited Jan 21, 2008 9:49 PM
does anyone grow texas tuberose? or african hosta?
Its not a retirement--just a life course change. I'm also doing some consulting and website work for others, too. Just wish to stop commuting, working within rigid time confines, and live, how shall we phrase this?, "off the grid" for a while. ;)
I do owe you a plant and will be happy to send you one if you change your mind. That particular plant I have a lot of right now.
Off the grid ~ hmmm. One always hears that in context of off the power grid in rural areas ~ dropping out or bugging out. I like it and seriously, best wishes!
same here - best wishes, is one of those dreams of ours to drop off the grid for a while one of these days maybe.
mitch i put some sprekelia in the ground last year so get back with me later to find out if they return.
on the plant files zip code reports....i sure wish we could report either outside or in. if a plant obviously is a house plant where it is reported to grow it isn't confusing but when the zone is close to me then i always wonder. i usually dmail that person though to find out how they do grow it. plant delights is another good resource for whether a plant will grow here or not. it is good online reference site for me as i seem to like a lot of the plants that they grow.
deb, i need to look up your site and see what i just have to have. lol.
I can tell you lots about where Tony at PDN gets some of his seed.
well do tell. lol. from you?
Would not be a suprise :-)
Good deal - I hope they do.
we all have the same sources and belong to the same professional and academic organizations
i have never bought a plant delights plant but i love his commentary on the site. does he write that stuff?
yes he does--only the cartoons are outsourced.
So you are in the bizz - cannot wait to see you in the Watchdog top 30.
Mitch--I doubt that will ever happen; the vast majority of my business doesn't originate here. But there are a lot of folks right here on this forum (and others) that frequent me.
deb, do you grow any of the small flowered clematis?
You never know, Baker Creek started really small and just friends and word of mouth and now look at them.
I need to look at your site.. so much to look at there.
I need to finish it by this weekend Mitch--lol
Right now its turned incredibly warm outside here (at least 70F). Mitch, I'm going to be doing seeds this afternoon. Just at my desk now gathering up seeds, can't believe the temps today; thought it was supposed to be miserable, cold, and wet the rest of the week.
I only do bulbs and rhizomes right now--I'll see what else I have time for later in the year. I grow the native clematis for myself, but that's the only clematis I do.
I love seed starting days... I have a friend up North that is dying to teach me some of the basics of tissue culture, I just mastered cuttings... with the world of growers it never stops does it?
deb, can i dmail me regarding some of my interests? which lycoris are you growing now that are available?
Nope Mitch--it never stops, and you never stop learning. =)
Cuttings is what I have little patience with. Digging up and dividing, I'm OK with that. I admire your patience with cuttings!
Cuttings I can do - it took a lot of dead things before I got it but Josephine is the Queen of cuttings and she taught me - or tried to and then after failing over and over I just about have it. I started right at 500 cuttings lest fall for the swap and gardens here at the school.
Mitch,
I always learn more from failing than success!
=)
same here - now I teach the kids at school.. they can root anything, one boy brought plum tree branches and wanted to try - sure thing they rooted and we have leaves...
Mamajack ~ I had read in Perennials forum that you actually had both of these plants already. Are you growing them outside? Inside? In pots? What are your successes with them?
pod, i just got them about a week ago. they are both in the house for now. i plan to put both of them in the ground though in a few weeks so i will know more next year.
Mitch, you are to be commened over and over again for your work with these children. You have definitely "planted seed" that will grow forever.
Christi
i agree with lou, mitch. do they have anything like that in rockwall if you know? how could i find out? i would love to show kids what i know about plants and seeds which isn't always a lot but we could learn together.
Mamajack call the school and talk with them. There was very little here before me - no garden at all. I have found the school will use it and loves to have the help to run it if we can get people out to help and work with them.
Mamajack and everyone else - I started a thread over in the Daves Garden forum about the problem with the zip codes, my little idea would be to have a box to check to see if hardy, not hardy, houseplant, or indoor part of the year and outdoors part of the year - I think this would at least be a help with the new zip code reports. Head over there and take a peek.
Terry said the zipecodes are for info only - and the zones are just that zones. If you find a wrong zone report let them know and they will update it, so does not solve our problem but I tried.
Problem is with the zip codes is a lot of people have collections of plants in heated or unheated greenhouses as well as coldframes. =)
I pointed that out over in the thread, asked maybe to have more info there then zipcodes, and with the zone thing well they mgiht be right or not I would rather hear it from someone growing the plant right now.
Oh well - still the best thing on the web, and getting better just does not help us with this.
mitch, i thought you were hired to teach horticulture or something related. thanks for trying to improve the system. lol.
I teach Kinder - I do the garden for free for the love of it.
I'm going to revisit this thread today for some of the "watchers" of this thread who have emailed me (not dmailed) to please elaborate on some of my experiences and research with these species (and closely related ones) on my blog. This is a bit too many pictures and rather uninteresting for my often daily blog which tends to be a bit more "colorfull". So I will put the info here since it is closely related.
This information applies to all these species--all of these are one year old seed raised, seedlings only. While I have older, more mature specimens of all these plants, my work this morning was done with an emphasis on how these plants survive winter dormancy/inactivity in lovely humid, often winter wet, unincorporated, west Houston.
The seeds of all these species were obtained from the original plant explorers/collectors with exacting provenance identification data. The fellow seed siblings of these species are either growing in 2 Botanical Gardens in Texas (as the case with the Manfreda maculosa) or 3 Botanical Gardens in South Africa. There is no doubt on identification on these particular seedlings as Botanical Gardens have very exacting requirements. They also funded the expeditions for collection of these, as well as many other species.
My source of information (other than the collectors and Botanical Gardens themselves--and they also use this resource; among others) for all the African species is Aluka (of which I am a member):
http://www.aluka.org/page/about/historyMission.jsp
Aluka also has a free to the public feature from now until June 30th (I'm not certain on this date)--I highly recommend trying it as it is a wonderful resource for a number of subjects.
Working with African species first; let's look at Ledebouria luteola.
While this species is not in PlantFiles (I'll make an entry later), or on the PBS WIKI (I'll make one there also later) or IBS Gallery (I also publish there); it is an accepted species with great garden potential. Remember, these are only one year old seedlings--how nice of it to give me a bloom soon though. This is one of the species under this "umbrella" of study. While this one likes it (so far anyway) on the dryish side--its tolerating a fair amount of winter sun and is hardy here. I do not give any of these examples any special treatment--that's the point, to study their adaptability. Next week many of these will be planted in different conditions, in the ground, in different locations on the property.
Aluka link:
http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.AP.SPECIMEN.PRE0044891-0&pgs=
I forgot to mention that the Ledebouria luteola sample hails from Zimbabwe.
This next one is Drimiopsis kirkii or the "Leather Leaf Scilla" which superficially resembles a manfreda species, but definitely not. While certainly not rare, never the less interesting. These little guys are still in a community pot, as I had no time last fall to deal with them. If you look closely around the rocks, you will count about 15 seedling re-emerging from doramncy. They have been the slowest species to re-emerge this season and therefore, the bad photo. They like it (so far anyway) very dry, but some sun. It is also in the PlantFiles:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/161125/
Aluka link:
http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.AP.VISUAL.KCUR00000136&pgs=
Drimiopsis maculata looks very much like the photo above; also very slow to re-emerge this season. I can show you photo's, but they are rather boring.
I also have two other, as of yet, unidentified (to me anyway) Ledebouria species.
The next species is Scilla pauciflora. In the PlantFiles, this species is listed as a syn. for Ledebouria socialis--but it is a distinctly seperate species. I also have a collection of plants loosely falling under the umbrella of "scilla's" and think they are quite interesting too. They are native from Europe thru Africa. This particular one has been narrowed out to fall either in with the scilla's (and for a number of quite a number of technical but very valid reasons) or in with the Ledebouria's--which it actually resembles less. This one is under active study by many people. I thought it rather generous to throw up a couple of bud scapes at one year old--sure makes the study easier.
Next the very common, but quite cute Ledebouria cooperi. This one likes partial sun and very wet conditions for me--mo' wetter, mo' better. This one should also be blooming in the next month. Zones 7-10 on this species. This one is a great garden plant.
PlantFiles:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/62384/
Last but definitely not least, on to Manfreda maculosa--our beloved Texas native. These are one year old only seedlings--I'm not getting into my older plants on these today.
This is a low growing native of South Texas and northeastern Mexico (where these seedlings hail from) with rosettes of thin, soft, canoe-shaped glaucous, succulent blue-green toothed leaves sporting an abundance of maroon to brown colored spots. The plants reach a maximum height and width of one foot (30 cm), which makes them the perfect size for most garden and container settings; also excellent ground covers. The tubular two-foot-tall blooms open a greenish-white and fade reddish-pink as they age. Manfreda maculosa grows from underground rhizomes and needs a very well drained soil with full sun to partial shade. It becomes deciduous to survive droughts and can survive serious freezes without damage once established in the garden. Chopped rhizomes of Manfreda maculosa were once used as a source of soap and shampoo in the republic of Texas. Caterpillars of the rare Manfreda Giant Skipper (Stallingsia maculosa) depend on this plant as a food source. Another must-have native Texas bulb/plant that grows good in zones 8-9.
This plant is called the 'deciduous agave' for a number of reasons. One, it will loose all its leaves in response to drought--a survival technique. It also looses all its lowers leaves in the spring after the winter season (thus the ratty appearance of mine).
This first sample is on the east side of the house (notice cement foundation) and only gets about 3 hours of sun per day. Notice it actually looks better and has more spots than the second photo in full sun. The spots are a function of age not sun--the seedlings don't even start to develop spots until they reach 9-12 months of age (kind of like the line in 101 dalmations--"They'll get their spots).
A grouping of several--Northern exposure--full blazing sun all day long. The plant in the upper left corner is a Phlox "John Fanick" just emerging from dormancy.
that was great information. but let me clear up something that you said...
on the manfreda...you are saying the plant has to be a certain age to get spots. so it's not the shade or the sun that causes the spots? if the plant is old enough it will have spots whether in the shade or the sun?
i put the afican hosta in the ground a month ago. i haven't looked at it lately to see what happened to it. but you are saying that yours that was in the ground hasn't emerged yet, right?
Cut and pasted from above (Manfreda maculosa):
This first sample is on the east side of the house (notice cement foundation) and only gets about 3 hours of sun per day. Notice it actually looks better and has more spots than the second photo of the group in full sun. The spots are a function of age not sun--the seedlings don't even start to develop spots until they reach 9-12 months of age (kind of like the line in 101 dalmations--"They'll get their spots").
And again cut and pasted from above (Drimiopsis maculata):
If you look closely around the rocks, you will count about 15 seedling re-emerging from dormancy. They have been the slowest species to re-emerge this season and therefore, the bad photo. Drimiopsis maculata looks very much like the photo above; also very slow to re-emerge this season.