The first plants come inside today

My tea plant has flowered. There are quite a few flowers for such a small plant. Each flower lasts only a bit more than a day before the plant ejects it and it falls off.

My betel pepper has also flowered. One of the distinguishing characteristics of betel pepper is the flower stalks grow upward. Also notice the shiny leaves. I have high hopes my black pepper (pictured in an earlier post) will also flower someday.
This is a PJM Rhododendron. It's not tropical, but I thought I'd add a photo because it's blooming when it's not supposed to be. According to the tag, these bloom in spring--it flowered then, too. This is at least the second year this shrub has bloomed twice.

Speaking of distinguishing characteristics, the first sickle "leaves" have appeared on my tallest koa. These are not true leaves; the leaf stem widens and the true leaf parts stop developing. The true leaf parts on this leaf started to develop, then quit partway.
Cacao (chocolate) trees have a curious habit. At almost exactly four feet tall, the main stem splits into five main branches. I have two cacao trees; one has split into two main trunks. This is the shorter trunk, just now reaching four feet from soil level.
This is the other trunk of the same tree which is about 3 inches taller.
This is the second tree. It is approximately 5-1/2 feet tall. Here is its branch point.
Here is the top view of the second tree's branch point.
This is the latest "flush" of leaves on my cinnamon tree. Since this photo was taken, the overnight temperature dropped below 60 degrees. Some of the veins on these leaves got damaged. It comes inside tonight along with the clove tree and the nutmeg tree.

This is the Surinam cherry I raised from seed. It is not closely related to the cinnamon, but it sure has the same red foliage.

These are bug catchers on my Nepenthes. When I bought this, I was told it was an alata. Now, I'm not so sure. These bug catchers are more orange than spotted purple and they have two hair trails down the front.

This is a Sarracenia pitcher plant. While it too has bug catchers, they form along the main part of the leaf, not at the tip. Nepenthes and Sarracenia belong to the same Order, Ericales.

Another Sarracenia pitcher plant. Anything that eats bugs is a friend of mine.

These are my banana offspring. One was previously pictured in the April 2009 post, still attached to mama. They've grown quite a bit since then.

These are palm seedlings. To the left are year-old fan palms. To the right are six-month-old Manilla palms. The center row has pygmy date palms, but I don't know how old they are.

I didn't have time to resize all the photos so they would fit this blog format, so I posted the ones I had. Yesterday, I took some new photos.

This is my idea of a spice rack. Clockwise from noon: Cinnamon, Banana, Cardamom, Black Pepper, Clove, Bay, Allspice and Winter Savory, with Nutmeg in the center.

Bay (Laurus nobilus)

Black Pepper (Piper nigrum)

Cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum)

Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans)

Lemon (Citrus limon var. Meyer)
Two lemons are entirely hidden behind leaves. Can you find the other 16? Look hard.

Koa (Acacia koa)
The wood from the koa tree is widely regarded as the most beautiful wood there is. When the trees are young, like these, the leaves resemble Mimosa leaves. Mature Koa trees don't have true leaves. The leaf stems widen into sickle-shaped, leaf-like structures that contain the clorophyll necessary to feed the plant. The actual leaf parts quit developing.
The fourth sprout, which earlier I thought had no chance of living because something had eaten the growth point, has caught two of the other saplings in terms of height. I am amazed this plant lived, much less thrived. I have repotted two of these since this photo was taken.

Kukui or Candlenut (Aleurites moluccana)
Notice the crooked stem. It grew out of the seed that way. I hope this is normal--or at least not detrimental.

Mama Banana (Musa sp.)

Baby Banana (Musa sp.)
There are also strawberry plants and a volunteer impatiens in there.

Out of the Sunroom for the Summer

I realize I haven't updated this blog in a long time. On the other hand, none of my plants have been in the sunroom for several months, either. All of them seem very happy in the high heat and humidity we have outdoors in the Tennessee summer. I put most of the plants where they get shade for most of the morning, direct sun from noon to midafternoon, and dappled shade until nightfall. My other plants can't stand that much sun, so they get shade nearly all day.

My Dwarf Red Jamaican Banana is pictured above right. These photos were taken July 1. To the left you can see my pineapple. That's a young coffee tree on the lower right side. At the very bottom, my clove tree is in the small pot.

To the right is a closeup of my clove tree. Of the fifty seeds I ordered, this is the only healthy plant I managed to sprout and grow. As you can see, it grows very slowly.

There were two other clove seedlings I thought would make it. Both had damage to the central bud and had stems that developed where the cotyledons attached to the root stalk. Both suddenly died. I don't know why.

There have been a number of new additions. I hope I can fit them all into the sunroom before it gets cold.

To the left are two Plumeria I bought in Hawaii. One is the Singapore White variety and the other is simply White Plumeria. Unfortunately, I have now lost track of which one is which.

These plants came as rootless sticks. I followed the planting directions I found on the Internet. Both survive, but the short, fat one bloomed and leafed out long before the long skinny one. Maybe this has to do with the variety, maybe it has to do with the size of the stick. You decide.

This is my new small leaf tea plant, Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, pictured on the right. I'm going to let it grow quite a bit before I harvest any leaves. Initially, I thought Bergamot Mint would be an ideal companion plant. Then I read the Bergamot in Earl Grey is Bergamot Orange, not Bergamot Mint. Then I thought Chamomile, but the perennial species is used more for blond hair dye than tea. Now I'm back to square one.

The companion needs to be low growing so it does not compete with the tea plant. It ought to have something to do with tea or be something that is used as a tea or tisane. Suggestions?

One of my Pitcher Plants and my Venus Flytrap are in the photo on the lower right.

More pictures of new acquisitions, including a plant I've been hunting for years, soon.

Spring has sprung

Four Koa seeds have sprouted. Unfortunately, I doubt one of them will make it. Something got into the seed and ate the germ. The cotyledons are up but there are no true leaves growing between them. Unless it can regenerate a new growth point, it won't be around very long. This may also account for my poor germination rate. According to the instructions I found for growing Koa, I expected over 80% of the seed to sprout. Perhaps many had unseen bug bites. I would have expected seeds that had been penetrated to swell during the initial bleach soak (five did, but none of these have sprouted).

One of the other seedlings had some damage as well. One cotyledon got a little munched, but I see some true leaves developing, so there's hope. The last two look very healthy. I've already potted one up into a gallon container and will get to the other one shortly. I ran out of potting mix.

This time I bought some very cheap organic "potting mix" that appears to be mostly composted manure. I'm mixing it half and half with Miracle-Gro tree and shrub. This is supposed to be mixed with natural soil as an amendment. This other potting mix is so dense, it might as well be dirt. I'll post if there's a difference in growth of the Koa trees.

In my last post I neglected to mention my Kava Kava plant (Piper methysticum). It has been deteriorating all winter and looks to be dying. I may have taken it back out to the sunroom too early. It hates the cold.

My pepper plant (Piper nigrum) hates the cold, too, but it (finally!) has grown two new shoots at the base. I feel a bit more confident about its survival, now.

My Jamaican Red dwarf banana tree has sprouted two babies. One is uncurling its first real leaf; the other is still only an inch tall. I'll cut them off from mama and pot them on their own in the coming weeks.

Not so happy...

In my last post, I commented on the plants that seem happy to grow in my sunroom. Unfortunately, not all my plants are thriving. For instance, even though my Cacao trees are adding new leaves, these are smaller than on previous flushes. Older leaves have brown tips. My chocolate trees are not attractive houseplants. My pygmy date palms have gone dormant. I see no new growth at all. My coconut palm died.

I have mixed results on the betel palms. One is adding a new leaf, the other seems iffy.

The results are in on my live oak experiment. I brought 25 acorns from Florida last November in sandwich bags. Half came off a sand live oak, half from a regular live oak. Unfortunately, all of the acorns sprouted before I could get them planted. Once I got home, I planted them in plastic cups filled with a mixture of half bagged play sand and half Miracle-Gro moisture control potting mix. Four of the sand live oaks sprouted, only one of the regular kind did. The remaining roots damped off.

The leaves are quite different on the two varieties. The sand live oak leaves are dark green, thick, and rounded; the live oak leaves are reddish green, elongated, and have more pronounced points.

I have acquired a bag full of plants and a box of seeds from Hawai'i. All were either preinspected and certified for export to the mainland, or were dried seeds that I had inspected by the Hawai'i Department of Agriculture. The HDoA on Maui is very near the Kahului Airport, but as of now, there is no sign visible from the road leading to the airport. There is a sign to some Department of Defense building. Perhaps the easiest directions start with 1) circle the airport; at the point it becomes a two-way road (rather than a one-way loop- -you are now headed away from the airport toward Kahalui) 2) turn left at the second left 3) make an immediate left onto unmarked Mua Street 4) The Department of Agriculture is in the first building on your left that faces Mua Street 5) go through the double doors on the left side of the building. From the Kahalui (toward the airport) direction, if you get to the T-Shirt Factory building (on the OTHER side of the street) you have gone too far.

Remember these very important items: A) Your seeds must be dry. There can be no pulp, pod, or greens stuck to your seeds. B) Bring your own box. You can buy boxes at the Post Office (or use the free ones if you ship your seeds priority mail) C) They will X-ray your plants and seeds at the airport at least twice. Grit your teeth and bear it.

The first seeds I planted are koa (Acacia koa). I soaked them overnight in a weak bleach solution in an effort to kill any fungi present. This does not harm intact koa seeds because they are quite waterproof. I scarified my seeds with pinch-style fingernail clippers. I tried to nip a tiny hole in the tip of each seed on the far end from where the seed had attached to the pod. Sometimes the seed coat cracked and exposed a bit of the inner seed itself. Either way, after soaking for another 24 hours, the seeds swelled up to three times their original size. This is expected and normal. Yesterday, I planted them into Jiffy seed starting mix in peat pots.

Today I planted 20 autograph tree (Clusia rosea) seeds. According to www.instanthawaii.com this is an invasive species. It might survive here indoors, but outdoors, I'm sure it would freeze. This tree bears a tough skinned green fruit. When the fruit is ripe it bursts open from the bottom in a star pattern. This exposes several cells of bright orange pulp. The pulp contains small (2x2x4mm) yellow seeds. Stripping the pulp from the seeds is not easy, but a sharp knife helps. I suspect the orange pulp is very tasty to birds.

More on my Hawai'i plants and seeds later.

Happy to Be Here

We've had several waves of freezing temperatures outdoors. My sunroom regularly dips into the 50's (deg.F) and sometimes into the 40's at night. Some of my plants either don't care or have been close enough to the heater to shrug off the cold.

The Allspice tree is actively growing. The small red leaves are new. There are several growth tips. Allspice is one of the plants that seems to grow in "flushes". It grows several new leaves all at once then rests for a while.

Ignore the bright red spot at the bottom. That's a petal from an impatients. The small leaved plants at the base are Winter Savory.

The Banana is growing the next new leaf before the previous one has unfurled completely. The strawberries sharing this pot are making fruit. Both are clearly happy.

I'm sure I left the Cinnamon tree out too late last fall. It got damaged and didn't show it right away. Cinnamon is definitely one that grows in flushes, and the last one or two got harmed by the frost. The new leaf in the photo has dark veins as compared to the more mature leaf. Any stem or vein still growing got bit. I've lost some tip leaves and upper stems.

So I thought my Cinnamon was barely tolerating life in a temperate zone. That is until yesterday when I found what appear to be blooms on a couple of stems!

Go figure. Now this is not to say the plant has made a flush of leaves since the frostbite, not one. But I didn't expect it to bloom here.








The cardamom plants are unfurling new leaves. I suppose they are as happy as they ever get here. I've never had a cardamom to flower. I wonder if this has more to do with keeping the plants in pots or the climate. The leaves smell good when crushed, but I never get seeds or pods.

My coffee trees and pygmy date palms are growing new leaves slowly. The bay is leafing at every tip. The piper betel is growing slowly, and one betel palm is adding a frond. The acacia will need a trim soon.

That rounds out the census of happy customers.