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What's growing on?

Let's see, what's looking good on the porch today?  

The Gasteria's blooming, big (3' on a 6 inch plant!) branching stalks of
orange and green tubular flowers. This is the one Mom's afraid of! :)

The Haworthia is also in bloom, with a bit more sedate attitude.  1 foot
stalks on an 8 inch plant, with little green and white tube flowers. 
BTW, how hard is it to get haworthia offsets divided and growing by
themselves?  This plant is a major clump!

Various unidentified cacti are growing fine.  I have one that has big
lacy yellow flowers and one that's kind of squat with smaller red
flowers.  Also, I have one that's got these hairy tumor-things growing
out of the top in a ring.  Are these flowerbuds or fruits or just the
way it grows?  They seem to be getting bigger...

Beaucarnia is doing fine.  Not big yet.  It was a garden center
special.  Multiple moptops, since they had cut the main fountain off.
Don't ask me...they didn't tell me why...

Large amounts of hens and chicks that are temporary denizens of the
houseplant realm...they're waiting patiently for me to figure out where
to put them in the garden.

Big old aloe of some kind.  Well, not really BIG, but bigger than I
usually see this type.  Not the messy, floppy vera, but the neater,
thicker rosette type.  Lots of little offsets.

An echeveria, the Mexican Snowball, I think.  It's kind of
bluish-greenish-white with the powdery bloom.

Hoya carnosa.  God, I can't wait to see if this one blooms this year! 
It's growing like crazy, though...nasty-looking naked whips reaching
across the porch...

The sprekelias are faded...sigh.  They are gorgeous flowers when they
come out.  I'm trying to grow the one to seed, so I can raise more next
year without paying $3 per bulb...

A columbine seedling waiting to be transplanted to the shade garden.

A rescued aechmea and family.  The main vase is already flowered and
faded.  I rescued it from a bargain shelf at Lowe's, along with a
vriesea and a neoregelia that were fading in the same pot, all with
offsets.  I lost the neoregelia while repotting.  The vriesia offset is
just fine!  And the aechmea is VERY grateful...not only do I have the
three pups it already had on it when I rescued it, it has begun two
more!

Another vriesia, carinata this time.  She's starting to look healthier
than she did at the office.  She's put up three pups, too!

A boweia volubilis that I'm pretty much ignoring except for a trickle of
water every now and then.  When I paid attention to it, it tried to die
on me!

A cute little syngonium, with rust-red leaves.  Another rescue...this
one was drowning in two inches of water under a greenhouse bench with
about 6 inches of thick old water root growing out of the hole of a 2
inch pot.  It's just happy now!

Tuberoses.  I just want them to survive long enough to flower, anyway!

Tillandsias.  I have a regular air plant (big though, for one of
these...about 6 inches in diameter) and a Spanish moss.  

Purple Wave Petunia...I love this thing!  It's grown about 3 feet in the
month since I bought it.  It's in a hanging basket and it's just about
to throw about forty-seven bushels of neon purple flowers!

A weird kind of mutation of birdsnest fern.  This one is called
"Victoria" and it almost looks like a cross between birdsnest and
hartstongue ferns.  Thick wavy fronds in a rosette around a "nest" of
fibers that the fiddleheads emerge from.

African Violet.  Optimara hybrid "Indian Summer" in a candyjar
terrarium.  

Fatshedera lizei, growing bushy.  Pinched it back about three weeks ago.

Homalomena.  I love this plant!  It just keeps growing, and growing, and
growing...and the foliage is gorgeous.  Big ribbed hearts on long,
graceful stems.  Beautiful.

Button fern in the kitchen...I keep forgetting it's there but it's
forgiving.  If I forget to water it, it still comes back.  I really
ought to move this to the porch so I'll remember to water it when I do
the others...

Oh, and a big bucket of ivy!  I'm trying to train it to a sphere...it
listens about as well as the cat...


-- 
Botanical name of the week: Kolkwitzia....doesn't tell me a thing about
the plant; I just like to say it! :)

Jim Gray 
jjg@c-cor.com
Altoona, PA: Zone 6A
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