I’ve photographed this stunning species of Balsam at Glasgow Botanic Gardens, but I couldn’t find an ID tag and ended up spending quite some time scrolling through photos of plants that display blister, or reflective, variegation. This form of variegation is caused by the presence of a layer of air under the epidermis of the leaf, which reflects light creating a white-silvery effect. It is the second time that I “waste” time trying to identify a plant based only on this characteristic and in this case it was actually the flower morphology that led me straight to the Balsaminaceae. It was lucky a few blossoms were present, as the plant seems to be an infrequent bloomer in cultivation and otherwise I would probably still be in the dark.
Once I identified it, I realised that little relevant literature about this plant is readily available online, at least in English and Italian. From what I’ve gathered, it is endemic to India and rarely seen anywhere else other than botanic gardens, where it is grown as a perennial ground cover due to the striking variegation. Despite a look which we generally tend to associate with tropical heat-loving plants, it prefers cooler temperatures and requires consistent humidity to thrive.
I. marianae seems to propagate mostly asexually by trailing along the ground and rooting easily where the stem touches the soil.
When I took these photos in the Kibble Palace, one of the glasshouses at the Gardens, I had no idea less than a year later I would get a chance to walk inside an amazing north-facing little fern house part of the backstage as a student. In that magical, dripping wonderland of cool shade covered in ferns and bryophytes anywhere but the ceiling, a luxuriant I. marianae sprawling around a corner was the only higher plant and was literally covered in flowers. The former curator was very proud of it, as it looked to be doing even better than the one you see above and I regret not asking if I could take a photo…but if I get another chance I will try, that plant needs to be famous!
Back in July 2016 I went to an Italian restaurant here in Glasgow and noticed a HUGE golden photos in a corner. It was one of the largest ones I had ever seen growing in a pot and trained over a fibre-wrapped stake, probably three times bigger than the one my mum had years ago. I really wanted to propagate that beautiful plant, so I spoke to a waiter playing the “oh, ya know, I’m Italian too!” card and they let me take a two-nodes-long cutting. I popped it in a glass of water and then potted it up as soon as it grew good roots and a couple more leaves, which didn’t take long, especially since it was summer.
Fast-forward eighteen months later, I now had a 150 cm/5 ft vine trailing around my kitchen. In October 2016 I also added a few Tradescantia cuttings to the same pot and they got even longer, so I wonder if the golden photos could have grown more without a competitor. Anyway, I had decided I wanted to train it vertically too so I bought a coconut coir wrapped stake online (which incidentally arrived from Italy without my knowledge) and chopped up my plant into ten further cuttings. As soon as they will have rooted I will pot them up securing them to the stake. If all goes well -and it should, golden photos is fast growing and extremely resilient- in about a year and a half I will have a large and beautiful houseplant, and it all started with a small snippet.
If we wanted to create a solid common name for this odd-looking shrub I photographed on the southern coast of Lanzarote, it would reflect its binomial name in referring to the most noticeable characteristic, the lack of leaves, and so the name would be leafless spurge. This is another example of how successful Euphorbias have been as a group at diversifying into numerous species with distinct habits and adaptations to often thrive in the same, or similar, habitat/s. At the sides of this large plant were two clumps of the very different, cactoid Canary Island spurge (E. canariensis), while further down the line there was a beautiful, flowering crown of thorns (E. millii), which is actually native to Madagascar, where it is found on rocky, exposed slopes.
These three species look pretty different, but all have adapted to cope with dry, rocky soils and high light exposure in a similar way: they all went down the line of reducing or completely losing their leaves to cut water loss through transpiration, in favour of photosynthetic stems and branches -only E. millii still retains some apical leaves. This is also very similar to the way aulaga (Launaea arborescens)andverode (Kleinia neriifolia), a couple of native shrubs I described a while ago, have adapted to the same environment, so it’s definitely very successful.
The leafless spurge is grown mostly as an ornamental plant, often in large hedges very close to the shore as it benefits from the moist wind blowing from the sea. It can be kept as a houseplant in temperate climates, but lack of sunshine can be a limiting factor. Regardless, Glasgow Botanic Gardens has one specimen in a heated glasshouse and it would have probably been twice as tall as me if it hadn’t had to be reduced in height at one point, the very thick base betrays old age.
A few days ago I went to the beautiful Winter Gardens here in Glasgow to see what was blooming there under glass in this period, the winner to me was the perfumed passionflower with its large, scented, scarlet flowers. Who lives in warmer, subtropical and tropical areas, especially in the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, is probably quite accustomed to a great variety of shapes and colours within this genus -there are almost 500 species of Passiflora- but coming from northern Italy I am mostly used to see the blue flowers of P. Caerulea, one of the only species which, given some protection, is hardy enough to make it through winter outdoors. The perfumed passionflower, called P. vitifolia due to the vague resemblance of its leaves to those of the grapevine, is not hardy at all and was happily climbing around the hot water pipes which heath the glasshouse. A gardener I asked for information to explained this plant was brought over as cuttings from the Botanic Gardens and had rapidly grown from a few cm to several meters long in just a few years.
Although other passionflower species have recorded medicinal properties, I couldn’t find much about how and if this plant has traditionally been used in its native southern Central America and northern South America. However, in northern India, where it has been introduced, the poulticed leaves are applied externally to treat cutaneous infections, while the flowers are diuretic. It is also one of those species which bear edible fruits -the most popular of them is probably the
maracujá, from P. edulis- the size of an egg and generally looking like a small watermelon.
A random stop at the Winter Gardens really paid off as I finally got to see the giant granadilla (almost) in bloom. Back in July, when I found another stunning, large-leaved Passiflora covered in flowers,the scarlet perfumed passionflower (P. vitacea), I made a mental note to pop around here and there to try and catch it at the right moment, and I probably missed by only a few days or so.
This large perennial vine is widespread in the tropics and is mostly known as the Passiflora which produces the largest edible fruit, weighing up to 4 kg. The long sprawling stems are characterised by four projecting edges, to which the specific epithet quadrangularis refers to, and support large heart-shaped leaves that would shade easily any structure the plant could climb on. I still have to see a boring passionflower, and the giant granadilla doesn’t disappoint with its large, sweetly scented blooms in shades of pink and purple. It can easily be propagated via seed and cuttings and it eventually forms a tuber from which the aerial parts can grow back if you’re trying to raise it too far from the tropics, but ultimately it requires consistently warm conditions to flower and fruit, so a heated glasshouse is the only place I could find it in, here in Glasgow.
It is now the second time I see my salvaged Dedrobium nobile orchid flowering under my care and it’s becoming an event I look forward to, just to know what happens next. Last year it produced nine flowers on the two old canes it had when I bought it, spent and reduced to 50p, and then it grew two stunted, small new canes that never fully developed. This year it managed to grow two large canes which stopped growing just short of completely unfurling the top three leaves, we aren’t blessed with the longest of growing seasons here in Scotland. On one of them, it produced nine flowers again, and two new canes are already a few centimetres long. About three months ago I tried to improve its situation in a diy-ish way by repotting it into a cut plastic bottle in which I pierced holes to improve aeration. The mix I used to loosely fill the space around most of the roots is bark, some sandy compost and…packing chips. I had a handful of them and thought I could try to use them as a filler and see what would happen. I’ve been misting it daily at night, when the heating is on, and I water it thoroughly once a week. For the moment everything is going well!
You really wouldn’t tell there’s snow outside looking at how unperturbed this Monstera deliciosa, often misleadingly sold with the common name ‘split-leaf philodendron’, is going about flowering and fruiting under the glass panels of the Winter Gardens. Native to the tropical forests of Mexico and Central America, it is a loved and well known plant often grown indoors in temperate climates. Its fenestrated (=full of holes), uniquely shaped, massive leaves and the evident stages of reproduction are proof this plant already reached maturity well under 10 metres long (or tall, but it’s a vine), while it can grow three times more when climbing a tree to get closer to the canopy. The Monstera at Glasgow Botanic Gardens is high up close to the glass ceiling probably 20 metres above me, so I’ve never managed to take a good photo. It would have been impossible to observe the edible fruit develop, different fruits at different stages actually. The dry, brown sheet which encloses the green fruit in the top and middle photos is what is left of the spathe, the conspicuous bract of Araceae flowers, and is eventually shed as you can see in the bottom photo.
Now I know the fruits are there I will make sure to go back in time to see them ripening, and maybe get a chance to smell what is supposed to be a pungent fruity scent as unique as this plant is. Its specific epithet “deliciosa” means delicious in reference to the fruit, so I hope the smell is just as nice.
When I first saw this small tree while on holiday in Lanzarote I had a feeling I had seen it before, but I only remembered what it was when I came across a few female plants bearing clusters of small, bright pink fruits. Not all trees were laden with them though, as the pepper tree, also known as Peruvian and Californian pepper tree, is a dioecious species with separate sexes on distinct individuals.
Native to arid and desertic areas of the Andean region spanning from Peru to Argentina, this compact, evergreen tree is well adapted to withstand prolonged draught and to benefit from winter rains, factors which made it very successful as an ornamental plant in the Canary Islands and many other parts of the world, like the Mediterranean, Africa and Australia, where it is often naturalised if not invasive. Although it is unrelated to the real pepper plant (Piper nigrum) the small drupes it produces following tiny white, star-shaped flowers, smell and taste very similar and are the source of what we know as pink peppercorn. I collected a few and checked their germination rate in this period using the wet towel and sealed plastic bag method: two out of six germinated readily within a week, but I realised that it is probably a good idea to take the time to completely remove the dry pink skin from the woody seed, as the two seedlings were covered in mould. I will try again later on this spring and will probably lightly sand them to remove the skin and thin out the seed coat to somewhat mimic avian seed dispersal, which is what generally improves germination of this plant.
When the tree is pruned, the bark exudes a white resinous gum which has been traditionally used to treat digestive issues, whereas the aromatic oil contained in most parts of the plant have antiseptic, antibacterial and insecticide properties. Although the dried fruits are a common food item, care should be taken as they can cause allergic reactions in individuals sensitive to other Anacardiaceae like cashews (Anacardium occidentale) and pistachio nuts (Pistacia vera).
I went to check the progress of the extensive work my local park is undergoing, and I’ve noticed this plant is now gone, so this post is in memory of that cotoneasterrehderi and the last photos I took of it last autumn. This deciduous shrub with long, arched branches is native to the humid mountainous woodlands of SW China, and was introduced to the rest of the world over a century ago, often becoming naturalised due to the high number of small and fleshy red pomes it produces, eaten by birds in winter when other foods are scarce.
The corrugated aspect of the leaves, which are larger than in many other cotoneaster species commonly used as ground/wall cover and in borders, is a defining trait this species shares with the very similar C. bullatus, (bullatus= covered in blisters, in reference to the leaves). They are less common here than many other species and cultivars, and hard to tell apart, so I’m not too sure myself, mostly due to lack of resources on what distinguishes them when growing in the north of the UK. An interesting fact is that C. rehderi seems to generally prefer alkaline, rocky soils if given a choice, but I found it growing in neutral, heavy clay and it didn’t seem bothered at all.
This display of Aeonium species at the Winter Gardens combines the most striking cultivars from the Canary Islands Room at Glasgow Botanic Gardens, where many more plants native to the archipelago are grown together over a much larger space. If last year I missed the blooming of the Aeonium arboreum var. holochrysum grownthere, here I found all the plants loaded with yellow, sun-shaped flowers. Not only the three spikes you see in the middle photo, but a few more around the place, as it’s one of the most commonly grown Aeoniums.
The dark-coloured rosettes highly contrasting against the green foliage are those of Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’ or ‘Schwarzkopf’, not nearly as dark and rose-bud shaped as it generally looks like when growing in parts of the world where the sun shines for a bit longer and a bit harder than here in Scotland. Lanky and floppy as it is, it’s still very noticeable.
The two large variegated rosettes belong to Aeonium arboreum ‘Sunburst’ and one is particularly interesting as it displays variegation mostly on one half.
In the foreground, the smallerand less commonly cultivated Aeonium gomerense, endemic to the island of La Gomera,covers the base of this well-planned, pyramidal show of Crassulaceae.
Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import) 