I had to show off the latest flush of growth on my Cinnamon tree (Cinnamomum verum).






It has also flowered for the first time, but you can barely see the flower. It is tiny, white, and superimposed over the yellow leaf in the center of the photo.

Still Here....

Welcome back to my jungle.  These photos were taken November, 2011, a couple of months after I brought my tropical plants in for the winter.  These purplish-red flowers are from a 'Sharry Baby' Oncidium orchid.  They are fragrant and last for weeks.  I plant my orchids in hanging baskets with coco liners.  For arboreal (tree dwelling) orchids, I use a commercial orchid mix.  It's mostly bark, but it includes charcoal, perlite, and peat moss.  It's OK to water them frequently because most of the water runs right out of the bottom.  I spray the leaves with a water soluble orchid fertilizer mixed at half the strength listed in the directions on the bottle.

This is a Blue Ginger (Dichorisandra thyrsiflora).  Although I bought this in Hawaii, it is actually native to Brazil.  It likes a shady moist spot, however I use regular Miracle-Gro potting mix.  The moisture control mix holds too much water and breaks down much faster than the original stuff.  (After the built-in fertilizer runs out, I use strictly organic fertilizers.)  The Ginger came as a finger-sized piece of stem in a plastic bag bearing the Hawaii Dept. of Agriculture inspection stamp.  It takes a couple of years for that stem to grow flowers like these.  It spreads from the roots, so it could become invasive in areas without frost.  I'm going to plant some in zone 9 and see if it makes it through the winter.

This is a double Hibiscus.  I don't know the name of the variety.  I suspect this is a hybrid between a tropical Hibiscus and a temperate species.  While the flowers are beautiful, the problem with Hibiscus in the sunroom is aphids.  Aphids LOVE Hibiscus leaves and will suck them dry if you allow it.  Insecticidal soap only slows the bugs down a little--it does not eradicate the problem.

This is a close-up view of my T.R. Hovey Papaya (Carica papaya).  As you can see, this one sheds most of its flower buds.  However, if the flower develops, it is very likely to grow into a fruit.  The petals don't really spread apart any more than this.  They simply dry up and fall off.  I thought I had some recent pictures of the fruit on my camera, but I'll have to upload them to a different post.  The fruit becomes a much darker green as it grows.  I've got it planted in a 24 inch diameter half-whisky-barrel liner filled with--you guessed it--original Miracle-Gro potting mix.

In advertising pictures, TR Hovey Papaya are always heavily laden with fruit.  I may be getting less fruit because of the cool temperatures in my sunroom over the winter, the unavoidable partial shade, or my lower frequency of watering when plants are dormant. 

Did you know Papaya are distantly related to Cabbage?

This is Hawaiian Ti (Cordyline fruticosa) in flower.  This is only the second time I've ever seen these flowers.  The first time I saw them, I asked the owners how they  got flowers.  They advised pouring cold coffee on it instead of water.  I followed this advice and got flowers.  Amazing!

The Native Hawaiians used Ti leaves to wrap food for cooking the same way the Aztecs wrapped tamales in corn husks.  Many Cordylines with highly colored foliage are readily available in garden centers across the USA.  They come in various shades of red and purple, sometimes mixed with green.

All you need to propagate Ti is a thumb-sized cutting of stem.  Plant the stem mostly covered in potting mix.  Keep moist, but not soggy.  It takes a while, but the stem will root and sprout a stem with leaves.  The more green there is in the leaves, the more vigorous the plant will be.

I bought 100 Kona Coffee (Coffea arabica) seedlings and the seeds from one Cocoa Bean Pod (Theobroma cacao) from a vendor on the Big Island.  The Chocolate saplings on the right and the Coffee saplings on the left are the result.  These are among my most tropical plants since they die at the first hint of frost.

Coffee is remarkably easy to grow and makes an excellent houseplant.  It grows slowly giving you plenty of time to prune it to size.  If you don't prune it, it will bump the ceiling--hey, it's a tree.  When you prune, remember only one-year-old branches make flowers and then beans.  It will grow in indirect sunlight, but you'll get more berries the more sunlight it gets.  That brings to mind the second caution:  Don't take your coffee plant directly from indoors to full sun.  The leaves will sunburn and it will take some time for the injured plant to replace the lost leaves.  If you introduce your Coffee to more sunlight gradually, the leaves will adapt and give you more flowers.

On the Coffee plants above, notice how the leaves grow in opposite pairs with the next pair of leaves growing at a 90 degree angle from the previous pair.

Here are three Coffee saplings, a Cola (Kola acuminata) sapling, and a piece of Pepper (Piper nigrum) vine.  What's weird about these Coffee seedlings is they have three leaves growing at each point on the stem rather than the two in the Coffee plants in the previous photo.

Over 10% of the Coffee sprouts I got had what appeared to be multiple cotyledons.  About 5% exhibited the three leaf pattern (not all 5% were part of the 10%).  Approximately half of these grew out of it and resumed the two leaf pattern.  Only these three plants have maintained the three leaf pattern including growing three branches.  (Each of these branches resumed the two-leaf pattern.)  I don't know if this leaf pattern is an indicator of a genetic problem or not.  Professional Coffee growers generally throw oddball plants away rather than risk investing time, water, fertilizer in a defective plant.  The three leaf pattern plants will grow much thicker than the others.  I'll let you know if they flower or make beans.

Flowers & Fruit

One of my pitcher plants has flowered. The petal color is unbelieveable; I wish this photo could do it justice. Unfortunately, these flowers droop so the insides are difficult to see.

I harvested one lemon for Thanksgiving but the other 18 are still attached. They are smaller than the one I took, but still larger than a golf ball. I heard a report on the news today about when the oranges get colder they get sweeter. I wonder if that holds true for Meyer Lemons?

This orange stalk holds the fruit of this Cataractarum palm. The berries are like olives--green when young, black when ripe. I doubt these are fit to eat, and they might even be poisonous.







These three young palm trees show a great deal of variety. The light green palm in the upper right is a Manilla palm, an Areca relative. The lower center palm is a Chusan palm, a fan palm. The palm in the upper left is a Pygmy Date, a pinate palm.

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.