Albert's Greenhouse

City landscaping can be boring. It's usually based on the idea of minimal maintenance, minimal plant cost, and marginally acceptable aesthetics.

But occasionally, it surprises even me.

The silk floss tree ( Chorisia speciosa ) looks very tropical, with strange spines on the trunk and brilliant pink flowers appearing in the fall. In fact, it's a native of Brazil and Argentina. But it turns out that it can survive temperatures down to 20F on an occasional basis, which means it survives in select locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The two major places to see it that I know of are a large planting in the parking lot of the Cupertino Target ( pictured here), and a couple places at Stanford University.

It seems as though the thorniness of the trunk varies greatly, from the extreme pictured here to some trees having very few thorns - in this case just on the other side of the parking lot.

There are a lot of undiscovered plants out there in the big wide world. Swathes of them. It's big news when a mammal unknown to science is found. It's barely noticed when a new plant comes to light.

Somehow the sources of the plants are not tied very well to the describers and namers of the plants. The guy who pulls something out of the jungle, propagates and eventually sells it may be far removed from the guy who writes and publishes a formal description.

We have a lot of names that are wrong or incomplete.

The incomplete ones, when done well, can be a bit confusing. There's usually some abbreviation in the name like "sp. aff."

Here's a run-down of some of the ones I see on a daily basis:

cv. = "cultivar" ; a specific selection. Might be a species or might not be, but it identifies a particular set of genes specially bred or selected. A cultivar may be registered or may be trademarked, and it refers to a specific clone of a plant.

aff. = "affinis" ; same base as our word "affinity". Means that the plant might be a new species, or its identity hasn't been completely determined, but it's like another species. So Alocasia aff. nebula would be an Alocasia that looks like A. nebula. It might even be Alocasia nebula, but it's either a little different or nobody with enough experience has had the time to make a positive identification.

cf. = "confer" ; Latin for "compare", this is similar to aff. in that when an identification is uncertain it means the plant looks at least somewhat like a particular other species.

sp. = "species" ; this is often used when a plant's genus has been determined, but not its species. Anthurium sp. would be something that looks like it's an Anthurium, but hasn't been indentified further. This is also combined with some of the other abbreviations above to further indicate the unidentified nature of the plant, or followed by a location name or collection number. It is not used for hybrids.

sp. nov. = "species nova" ; meaning a new species, as yet undescribed. This is used for plants where the new name has not been officially published, but the namer is pretty certain that the plant has never been published before. It is not used for hybrids.

ssp. = "subspecies" ; just like it says, some plant classifications are divided down below the species level. There's Biarum tenuifolium ssp. tenuifolium and also several others including Biarum tenuifolium ssp. galianii. They may be the same species, but they're from distinct populations.

subsp. = see ssp.

var. = "variety" ; very similar to the subspecies designation, this designates a particular type or strain of the species. For instance, there's Anchomanes difformis and Anchomanes difformis var. welwitschii. Both are the same species, but var. welwitschii is a special form of the plant.

f. = "forma" ; somewhat similar to cv, it's preferentially used to indicate a specific form occuring in nature rather than manmade.

x = "cross" ; this is an indication of hybrid parentage of the plant.

• The x may indicate the parentage of the plant, like "Anthurium dressleri x radicans". The female parent is traditionally listed first, but sometimes it's just in alphabetical order.
• The x may indicate the given name of a cross like "Nepenthes x hookeriana", which is a cross between Nepenthes ampullaria and Nepenthes rafflesiana. Not that you'd know that from the name.

hort. = "horticultural" ; this indicates that the name is a a common designation, and not a properly derived scientific name. It also hints that the origins of the plant are somewhat unknown.


There's a good and very readable page on plant naming at the Victorian Carnivorous Plant Society webpage. Carnivorous plant names are pretty messed up and complicated, so they have good reason to be concerned.

I write mostly about tropical plants, but that's not to say that I lack an appreciation for those plants blessed with the fortitude to withstand colder climates. And the rainforests of Oregon and Washington harbor quite a number of interesting species - though perhaps nowhere near the diversity of their tropical analogs.



I had the fortune to be visiting my parents in Western Oregon last weekend about the time that the vine maples were turning color. Anyone who believes that the only real place to go for fall color is in the Northeast would be well rewarded to take a hike into the Cascade Mountain range in Oregon in the fall, braving whatever weather might befall them at the time.


These trees are growing in crevices of a lava flow on the trail to Proxy Falls. It was raining lightly the entire time we were up there, but it was well worth it.

The very first post on this blog, in spring of 2006, was about a reality TV show. My kind of reality TV show. It's called "A Year at Kew" and it's a British series, available on DVD only in PAL format ( your DVD player might not play it - I had to buy a region free player with a PAL to NTSC converter ). There are also a couple of companion books available in both the UK and the USA.

It's been 2 TV seasons since, and I just got season 3 in the mail. By "Royal Post" from amazon.co.uk. I'm halfway through the season so far, and there have been very interesting segments on trying to germinate 200 year old seeds, a trip to very very rural China in search of a medicinal orchid, and pest control in a really big, really old glasshouse, to name a few.

The series follows various projects and events at Kew in the framework of an entire year's worth of experience. Various Kew staff members have become minor TV stars. You get to see a whole lot of behind-the-scenes activity and the show follows botanists and horticulturalists from Kew as they travel to various locations around the world ( like China, Japan and Madagascar ) to study, assist local gardens, and collect plants and seed.

The accusation could be leveled that it's more of a PR vehicle for Kew than anything else, but while this is without a doubt true, it's an entertaining one which matches my interests quite well. They show a lot of glasshouse stuff, a lot of landscaping stuff, arboriculture, how some of the exhibits are put together, art and artists, backstage at the herbarium, library and millenium seed bank, and Kew's youth programs.

I've not been a big fan of reality programming on television, but this is more like a documentary about Kew that's managed to span 3 seasons of material and not get repetitive or boring. I strongly recommend that anyone with a little time and money to spare give it a try - it's a special series, and I doubt we'll see it in the USA anytime soon.

One thing you may have noticed about this blog, if you've been reading it for a while, is that I don't talk that much about orchids. Sure, I have a tropical greenhouse, and I do grow a few ( mainly Coryanthes, Stanhopea, Cirrhopetalums and a Cymbidium ), but I'm no orchid nut.

Still, I do go to orchid shows, and it's not just to smell the pretty flowers.

It turns out that many of the people who grow orchids also grow other intersting things. Well... interesting if you happen to be me.

I went to the San Francisco Orchid Society Orchid fest the other weekend. It's the smaller cousin of their big spring Pacific Orchid Expo ( which I've tried occasionally to attend on the weekends - the line's way too long for someone with my level of patience ). It lasts two days, has a bunch of vendors and a few show plants, and has the advantage of being only moderately well attended.

So I was able to park. I was able to walk up to the door, pay my $3, and waltz right in.

I found a couple of orchids. I picked up a paphiopedilum, a random species orchid with rugose leaves, and two other very interesting little plants: Platycerium madagascariense and Streptocarpus dunnii. These were plants I had my eye on for a while, but for various reasons had been unwilling to pay enough to obtain.

Platycerium madagascariense was going for about $80 + shipping on E-bay, and there were suddenly quite a few small ones available. I picked mine up from an orchid vendor at the show for $25.00+tax. It's a really pretty staghorn fern with rippled shield fronds, and apparently it's not too easy to grow. The advice out there seems to indicate that it likes more water and humidity than other staghorns, and there's some theory about cloud forest conditions that's contradicted by some growers. Time will tell if I can provide it good conditions.

Streptocarpus dunnii actually wasn't on my desired list, but Streptocarpus grandis has been on there for years - and the two plants have a very similar growth habit. Many years ago, I actually acquired and germinated some seed, but I must have kept it too moist and too dark for too long because I was never able to proceed past the seedling stage with these plants. The attraction of these plants is that they grow a single, long leaf ( up to about 3 feet long in some cases ) for their entire life. They are gesneriads, related to some extent to your standard african violet. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep my seedling alive now that I have a little more knowledge of its requirements for good drainage and bright light.

The final benefit of the orchid show was that I dragged my wife ( a non-plant-obsessed person ) along to see the pretty flowers and help me carry things. And she found out that the spring orchid show has a preview gala event ... with wine ... and hors d'oeuvers. And she may not be plant-obsessed, but she likes a good gala, so it looks hopeful that we'll make it to the big show next year.