Albert's Greenhouse

Ceropegia ampliata

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:31:00 +0000

This asclepiad has one of the larger ceropegia flowers, about the size of my thumb. I made some cuttings from friend's plant this spring, and now they are starting to flower. The plant barely grows any leaves, which it quickly sheds, leaving the succulent green stem as the only photosynthetic surface. It's amazing that it can summon enough energy from a foot or two of stem to make such a large flower, but all four cuttings are either in flower or in bud right now.

The flower is an insect trap - hairs inside will keep flies there overnight before releasing them covered in pollen the next day. I'll have to dissect one soon, but meanwhile I'm enjoying the very strange flowers from the outside.

A note on the cuttings: the cut ends need to dry out before being plunged into soil, which should be allowed to dry almost completely between waterings. Otherwise, one ends up with melting cuttings, which is what happened the first time I tried this. Standard succulent practice, really, but something to remember.

This particular plant does better than most ceropegias in a moist, tropical lowland greenhouse once it's established.

I do love ceropegias - the flowers grow in such interesting forms.

Haemanthus unifoliatus thinks it's Fall

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:12:00 +0000

Haemanthus unifoliatus apparently thinks it's Fall already, and I don't really want to disagree. Thunderstorms and rain unseasonably early this year, but as usual for the area, some of the warmest temperatures of the year as well. Aside from Arum pictum and some Zantedeschia odorata peeking out, it's the first of the fall emergents to actually emerge.

It is a pretty little thing.

Finally!

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:27:00 +0000

Peristeria elata - national flower of Panama.
The first flower opened in my greenhouse tonight.
After what must be about ten years of watching this thing grow...

Begonias by the Dozen

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:26:00 +0000

I bought a dozen mixed begonia tubers from Antonelli's Begonias last fall.
Here's what came about - some good, some not so good, but a nice mixture that's got plenty of compliments in my courtyard this summer.
I started the begonias indoors on a heat mat in the early spring - about March or so. They first flowered in late June, and are still going strong towards the end of August.

Except of course #4, which failed to flower at all. But it's got really nice leaves.

Bloom Day May 15th, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:48:00 +0000

May Dreams Gardens sponsors a celebration of what's in bloom on the 15th of each month. This blog is not quite your standard gardening blog, but here's a 2nd posting of the somewhat normal and the not so much...

Aristolochia fimbriata	Musella lasiocarpa	Arum pictum
Celosia argentea var. cristata	Drosera filiformis "Florida Giant"	Anigozanthos x
Aloe sp.	Arisaema candidissimum	Amorphophallus obscurus
Drosera adalae	Pinguicula x "John Rizzi"	Impatiens niamniamensis
Epiphyllum x	Epiphyllum x	Lisianthus nigrescens

A Tale of Two Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Sat, 02 May 2009 06:14:00 +0000

In the past week, I've attended what are probably the two biggest botanical garden spring plant sales in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last Friday was the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley, and this evening was the SF Botanical Garden sale at Strying Arboretum. These were both actually pre-sales for garden members - the public sales were the next day - but it's fairly common knowledge that if you would like to have the best selection, you need to be at the members sale.

In fact, if you really want the hard to get plants, you probably want to show up a couple of hours early and stand in line. Having been blessed with a more-or-less 9-5 job somewhere down in the South Bay Area means that this is not really a viable option for me, unless I want to burn some vacation time in the hopes of standing in line during it. I also happen to hate standing in line. I showed up for each sale a little after the 5pm start time - early enough to see what plants were in generally okay supply, but not early enough to snap up anything that was both famous and rarely offered. One must remember that the people who really know what's uncommon are also the people waiting for hours at the head of that line with membership cards in hand. They are the competition for the really rare stuff ... not the general public that will come in the next day looking for stuff that will stay green.

There's been a few people who seem interested in a comparison of the sales. This is in no way a competition - there's no reason on earth you can't go to both sales ... or neither one. Though if you have a limited amount of vacation time, or expendable cash for purchasing a membership, you might be swayed to concentrate on one or the other. I'm also comparing the member pre-sales, not the public sales. Both institutions seem to be able to provide plenty of very nice, very interesting plants which are not easy to find elsewhere, at very reasonable prices - both to their members on Friday and the public in Saturday - but there are a few concerns that are particularly strong at the member sales which might not effect the general public sale the next day.

So ... on to comparison:

Parking: Strybing > UCBG
It turns out that the museums in golden gate park close at 5pm, just when the sale opens. I had no problem at all finding free street parking in the park within an easy walk of the Strybing sale. They also have valet parking for $10, if you're so inclined.
Contrast this to UCBG, with only pay parking, and a close parking lot that can fill up by 4pm. Overflow parking is plentiful, but quite some distance up a narrow curvy road, and serviced by slow and rather infrequent shuttles ... and if you have your own cart or wagon, it's not an easy fit onto the aforementioned shuttles. Paying for parking in the overflow lot was complicated by the fact that all the signs pointed to a single pay kiosk up a bunch of stairs that had been vandalized and was not working - luckily, there was another working machine across the street near the bus stop, but that wasn't particularly obvious from the signs. And of course, the machines will only take $1 and $5 bills - no credit cards... Parking at UCBG was, in a word, painful.

UPDATE 5/19/09: I've been informed by the management ( thanks, Paul ) that the close parking lot at UCBG is actually free during the sale, and that spaces tend to open up there on a continuing basis somewhat after the sale begins. My wife did notice that a little after 5:00pm is probably not the optimum time to arrive at the sale - too late for the really rare plants, and too early to find good used parking.

The Lines: Who Knows?
Probably somebody who showed up before the gates opened at 5pm. I didn't have a significant wait to show my membership card and get in to either sale, though I did cause some confusion by trying to get into Strybing with my UCBG membership card. It didn't work.

The Crowds: UCBG > Strybing
Strybing is slightly more crowded, it would seem. They also have a number of shopping carts and somewhat more narrow aisles, including several pinch points between the different rooms. More of the UCBG sale is outdoors, and the wagons seem less intrusive than the carts by far. Both sales are crowded, but Strybing is much less easy to navigate.

The Checkout: Strybing == UCBG
Strybing has more cashiers. UCBG has more lines that take credit cards, and a more organized line in general ... but seemingly fewer or slower cashiers. Both had plenty of boxes at checkout, and neither provided a particularly useful or enlightening receipt ... which means I have no idea or record of what the individual plants I bought cost, though I do know the totals from both sales. The fact that one is left with basically no way to tie price to plant once the price tags are pulled at checkout is irksome to me.

Plant Pickup: Strybing == UCBG
You can leave your plants across the street from the UCBG entrance while you go get your car from the far parking lot. Strybing has a similar attended setup in the back of the building. Both appeared to work well, though we did see the UCBG setup get backed up a bit. I imagine that the Strybing plant pickup could have suffered a similar fate later in the evening had we stuck around.

Pricing: Strybing > UCBG
I don't have particular price points, but it seems like Strybing was slightly cheaper than UCBG. It wasn't all that far apart, any obviously subject to quite some variation, but it seemed that there were a lot more low priced plants at Strybing, and some things like passiflora were going for a few dollars less.

Members Refreshments: UCBG >> Strybing
I bring my wife to these events. She has basically no interest in plants, but does have an interest in food, wine, and finding something to do while I'm out shopping. UCBG had a generous amount of professionally catered food available, and pretty much all the wine you wanted, all free for members. Strybing was charging $4 for a plastic cup of wine, and had a few appetizers available for free - but nothing remotely approaching UCBG. It appeared that higher level members and volunteers may have had access to nicer food, but not us commoner members. This sort of this is an issue to those of us who might want to justify a trip to the plant sale as a night out to other less plant oriented members of our family.

Rare Plant Availability: UCBG == Strybing
These are two plant sales with a lot in common, and a few differences. Neither sale had plants which I would consider REALLY rare in cultivation easily available. I suspect that there were a few of these things that were snapped up by those who came early and stood in line, but frankly the assortment left to those of us a few minutes into the sale while unusual would not qualify as exactly hard to obtain through other specialist venues or at the Strybing monthly sales and UCBG Plant Deck. I picked up an uncommon Raoulia at Strybing as well as a not easily available Chiranthodendron pentadactylon tree. At UCBG, I bought a rarely available named Lapageria and a generally hard to find Irid. Really hard to get stuff that is reasonably suitable for the climate like Deppea splendens, Brugmansia vulcanicola or Passiflora parritae were simply not in evidence. Even somewhat less uncommon things like Haemanthus sp., species Clivia, Brunsvigia sp. and so on were either poorly represented or not available.

Plant Diversity: UCBG == Strybing
The preceding is not to say that there was not a good selection of many genera that are uncommon and interesting. Both sales had excellent selections of California native plants. UCBG had an amazing amount of Lapageria cultivars and Bomarea, while Strybing had an excellent selection of cooler growing Tasconia Passiflora species and hybrids. Neither garden did terribly well in the tropicals, though UCBG offered Amorphophallus titanum seedlings and Strybing had a good selection of Begonias. Strybing is aided by several local societies and had the edge in Alpines, Rhododendrons, Bromeliads, Bamboo, Epiphyllum and Roses. UCBG had a significantly better set of succulents and carnivorous plants, and may have edged out Strybing in the South African section. Both gardens did very well in the Protea/Banksia/Grevillea department, and neither garden had a particularly good selection of South African bulbous plants, as I many have hinted at before. Both gardens offer pretty well similar selections of Ferns, for some reason.

Plant Quantity: Strybing > UCBG
There seem to be more plants available at Strybing - they carry a few more categories than UCBG seems to have the time for, though the plants in these categories are not really all that rare. For instance, you could buy tomato starts at Strybing ... not a big deal to me.

Silent Auction: Strbying > UCBG
Actually, I'm not quite sure about this one. The Strybing silent auction was bigger. Many of the plants were simply well-grown specimens and not in my mind quite as uncommon as some of the things offered at UCBG. I bid on a plant at UCBG, and I did not find anything that I wanted to bid on at Strybing ... but your results may vary. It seemed to me that the UCBG auction was more about larger specimens of uncommon things, while the Strybing auction was more about just very nice, large specimens.

Would You Go Back?
This was the question my wife asked me. Are we going back to the sales next year?
I know it will certainly be easier to convince her to go back to UCBG with the plentiful appetizers and free-flowing wine. That's a sure bet. But I'm dreading the parking. Moreover, I'm not exactly clear on whether I'll be able to add interesting plants to my collection in a civilized manner, without standing in line for a few hours and joining the mad rush. A friend of mine recently reminded me - it's not about the rarity of the plants you grow - it's about how much you enjoy growing them. I left both sales with a few very interesting plants - perhaps not the most rare, but certainly ones I will enjoy growing for years to come.

So Who's the Winner?
I know it sounds like chickening out, but the purpose of this exercise was not to figure out who has the best sale ... and given the above, it's not obvious. It depends on what you're into, and even then, it isn't clear at all. Say you're into passiflora. Well - Strybing has a wider selection of passiflora. But it doesn't overlap much, if at all, with the selection at UCBG, which includes a couple quite rare ones. The only way you're going to be a winner is to go to both sales. And that will make both you and the gardens that rely on your support winners in the end.

A Trip to the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:00:00 +0000

There are two big-time botanical gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last week, I posted some pictures from Strybing BG, which is currently considering charging for admission. This week, I'd like to put up some photos from the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley, which I visited on the same day.

Unlike Strybing, it can be expensive to go to the UCBG - you have to pay for both parking and admission ( unless you're a member like me - then you just pay for parking ). Admission is $7, and parking is usually plentiful and convenient, though requiring of small bills. You'd think they'd get a credit card machine installed there - every single time I visit I hear grumbling from the people who are both mystified and annoyed by the parking ticket machine.

The UCBG is 34 acres and was established in 1890. It seems a lot bigger than 34 acres when you're walking it because it's built in a canyon and paths can be steep. They have very nice collections from Asia ( check out the Arisaema and Rhododendrons ), South America and South Africa ( great Bulbs! ), as well as a small but well-kept tropical conservatory. Their succulent collection is also very impressive and partially under glass. Unfortunately, a lot of it is behind metal fencing due to theft concerns, which makes is very difficult to take good pictures.

If you ever get a chance for a tour behind the scenes, you'll find that their research collection is actually a lot larger than what's on display in the glasshouses - as befits a university garden, I suppose. Another great thing about UCBG is that their accession database is available online - you can find out what they're theoretically growing.

Like Strybing, UCBG is very much into propagation and distribution of their collections. Unlike Strybing, they have an extensive plant sale every day of the year on their plant deck. Their selection of South American vines for sale is impressive including many rare Passiflora, named Lapageria, and Bomarea. They also carry tons of cloudforest plants, succulents, native plants, and neat stuff like Arisaema and Podophyllum. Apparently, some people have made a business of buying plants from their plant deck and selling them on E-Bay.

UCBG is having their spring plant sale in about a week - Members preview night is Friday, April 24th, and the sale runs from the 25th through the 26th. Some of the plants that will be available are listed on their website, but I figure that list is not really completist. I'll definitely be there.

Bloom Day April 15, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:24:00 +0000

May Dreams Gardens sponsors a celebration of what's in bloom on the 15th of each month. This blog is not quite your standard gardening blog, but I thought I'd try a posting ... somehow my flowers don't look like everyone else's.

Arisaema intermedium	Arisaema ringens	Arisaema thunbergii
Lobelia "Candy Corn" Scadoxus multiflorus ssp. katherinae		Brugmansia "Double White"

Garden Admission Prices

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:56:00 +0000

There's talk that the San Francisco Botanic Garden is going to be charging for entry sometime in the not too distant future. This of course brings up the question of how Strybing compares to other gardens out there. It's a complicated question. Different gardens work differently. Some are run for profit, some by government, and some by non-profit organizations. They all have different facilities, and they all have different types of collections. Here's a survey of a few, and what they charge:

Garden	Admission*	Yearly Dual Membership	Glasshouses?
United States BG	FREE	N/A	YES
Birmingham BG	FREE	$60	YES
North Carolina BG	FREE	$60	NO
UC Riverside BG	$1 Suggested Donation	$50	NO
San Francisco BG	FREE	$75	NO
Fort Worth BG	$4	$60	YES
Memphis BG	$5	$75	NO
Tucson BG	$11	$45	YES
South Coast BG	$7	$50	NO
UC BG at Berkeley	$7	$65	YES
Rio Grande BG	$7	$59	YES
San Antonio BG	$7	$60	YES
Los Angeles County BG	$7	$70	YES
Brooklyn BG	$8	$75	YES
Missouri BG	$8	$150	YES
UBC BG	$8	$75	NO
Quail BG	$10	$75	NO
Atlanta BG	$12	$75	YES
Denver BG	$12.50	$55	YES
Desert Botanical Garden	$15	$75	NO
Longwood Gardens	$16	$105	YES
Marie Selby BG	$17	$90	YES
RBG Kew	$19	$132	YES
Chicago BG	FREE, but $20 Parking	$70	NO
Huntington Library	$20	$120	YES
Fairchild Tropical Garden	$20	$77	YES
New York BG	$20	$100	YES
Butchart Gardens	$28	$104	NO

*NOTE: Single admission during high season with access to glasshouses, if any, and all parts of the garden excepting "attractions". Many gardens have free days, and lower prices during times of lower demand. Some gardens offer a discounted or free pass to just wander the grounds. Some prices are in CAD.

Some of the more pricey ones are display gardens that have become tourist attractions in their own right, as opposed to simple botanic gardens. Some of the gardens are allied with Aquariums or Zoos. Many of them have conservatories or other enclosing structures. And everyone has a different price structure.

It becomes evident that those gardens with glasshouses feel free to charge more than those without. And those gardens with large display areas seem to be more expensive as well. Or perhaps the higher fees allow them to provide more display areas and more glasshouses. A chicken and egg question.

$20 seems to be about the upper limit, and $7 is a popular pricepoint.

The Birmingham BG seems to be a good deal, with free parking, admission, and apparently a nice glasshouse. The US BG also is a good deal, but it's in Washington, D.C. - city of free admission to all manner of things.

I have not been to all these places, but I will say that Strybing competes favorably with the South Coast BG. Strybing is disadvantaged in competition against many of the other gardens by the complete lack of any conservatory space, but the collections are actually excellent in both breadth and rarity. You'll see some things at Strybing that you won't see anywhere except Andean cloud forest ... and that is actually worth something.

Strybing in the Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:04:00 +0000

Went a couple weekends ago to the San Francisco Botanic Garden at Strybing Arboretum. That's a mouthful right there. It was one of the first really sunny Saturdays of the year, and this made parking difficult. With all the new museums there in recent years, it's been necessary to get to the park before 9am on a weekend to have any hope of finding parking.

There are many things of botanical interest in the park, including some rainforest displays at the California Academy of Sciences, the always interesting Conservatory of Flowers, and of course the Botanical Garden. The SFBG is the only one of the three with no lines and free admission, though I hear that is planned to change.

Strybing has several excellent collections - I like their South African and South American Cloud Forest gardens a lot. They're well situated in an area which almost never freezes, and doesn't really get very hot except a couple days a year. Spring and Fall are probably the best times as this part of San Francisco can be covered in fog in the summer - a welcome respite from the heat further south. This allows them to grow some things that will not grow anywhere else in California.

Strybing has a really great philosophy about plant sales - they try to propagate most of their collection and hold monthly sales which are relatively low-key to distribute the plants. You can pick up California natives, cloud forest plants, rare passionflowers, and alpines to name just a few of the choices. Their yearly Spring Sale is a lot bigger, a lot more crowded, and a lot more hectic - but they say they have around 20,000 plants available there.

Some new materials

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:00:00 +0000

I've been working on getting a cooler greenhouse up and running in order to grow some highland tropical plants. It's a very small space, so I took it as an opportunity to try out some new and different construction materials and methods.

This post is about my experiences in using PVC pipe as a framing material, and Solexx corrugated plastic as a covering.

PVC Pipe Greenhouse Framing

There are quite a few plans out there on the internet regarding how to use PVC as a framing material to make a hoop house with a plastic film covering, but I became interested in using it as a more permanent framing material. It's relatively cheap, though it's yet another plastic made from oil, so prices could rise. It's also quite durable, being resistant to sunlight and waterproof. It's very easy to work with - easy to cut and drill and solvent weld or glue.

After some reading up on the matter, I settled on 1" Schedule 40 ( the thick stuff ) PVC pipe as my framing material. Anything larger than this seems to be prohibitively expensive, especially for the fittings, and 1" is quite strong, at least in most directions. I was able to get away with 24" centers in a lot of my construction.

I did not use a primer on the PVC cement - just a thin coating of one of the blue colored cement products at each joint. This greatly speeded construction, and I doubt that there will be an issue with the joint strength because of it. I should note that when you're using such a large quantity of cement in an enclosed garage, ventilation becomes an important consideration.

The main idea was to use the PVC as a framing material - not bending it as in a lot of the plans out there. So I framed walls with the stuff using 90 degree elbows and T joints where necessary. I tried to keep the lengths between the joints between about 2' and 4', which means there is some amount of cross-bracing in the wall panels. Corners were made by simply screwing two wall panels together, and any gaps were filled with silicone caulk ( or one of the cheaper caulks which are available ).

So far, the construction has been plenty strong. The walls are a bit flexible when pressed inward or outward, but they are quite resistant to moving in any other direction. They are supporting fairly heavy metal exhaust fans, light fixtures, and electrical boxes quite firmly.

If I had one complaint about the PVC construction methods I used, it would be that it was exceedingly difficult to keep things square during the construction. The PVC fittings are somewhat variable as to exactly how much of each pipe they accept, and when building boxes for walls, it's often necessary to weld two joints at the same time. All this leads to measurements being a little less than exact. Since I had so much PVC to cut, I used a power compound miter saw to make all the cuts quickly and squarely.

Given the chance, I'd be a little more careful next time with making sure things come out squarely, but I would do it again.

Solexx
Solexx is the brand name of a type of corrugated translucent plastic material sold as a greenhouse covering. What it appears to be is the same corrugated plastic that the post office uses for their mail crates, and various farmers use for packing produce. It's apparently been treated with UV resistant compounds, and it comes in 4 foot wide rolls up to about 1000' long. The good thing about it is that it's shippable by UPS in the roll form.

Solexx comes in two thicknesses: 3.5mm and 5mm. I purchased the thinner one. It seems like it's less than 1/4" thick but more than 1/8" thick. It's substantially cheaper and advertised to let more light through.

Working with Solexx is easy in some ways and difficult in others. It cuts easily with a sharp box cutter, and it's not difficult to get straight cuts if you mark them beforehand with a sharpie and a straight edge. The rolls really need some time on a warm day to flatten out on a lawn or something before they are used. I fastened the material to my PVC greenhouse frame using self-drilling lathe screws from the local hardware store. The manufacturer recommends using screws with neoprene washers for waterproofing, but I did not find this necessary. The extra lip on the head of the lathe screws seems to do the job just fine.

The manufacturer also sells plastic edging strips for joining pieces of material and sealing the ends. I did not use this - I just overlapped the sheets by a small amount and I plan to caulk the ends closed where necessary this summer when things dry out. Meanwhile, I've got some water in the channels, but not much. I imagine that with some caulk, the strips would have made my joints more watertight. The only place that this became an issue is in the roof, where I have a could of overlaps. Caulking between the sheets seems to have sealed them right up without the use of the strips.

If I had to find one fault with the Solexx, it would be the fact that it's a fairly soft plastic. It's never going to shatter, but I have several small holes in the greenhouse ( not worth the trouble to fill, I would think ) that are from times my screwdriver slipped off the head of a screw and punched easily thought the material. It's not a weak material at all, but it is prone to puncture wounds from sharp objects.

Another issue with the Solexx is light transmission. The claim seems to be that it gets about 70% light transmission, which is substantially less than double wall polycarbonate, glass, or even most fiberglass coverings. It's still quite a bit of light, and more than enough light for most plants if the greenhouse is situated in a properly sunny location. Unfortunately, my new greenhouse is not situated very well and doesn't get a lot of light to begin with. I've addressed this with some supplemental lighting rather than worrying about trying to make it work with an ultra-efficient covering.

I think I would also use Solexx again, given the choice. It's a bit cheaper, more conveniently shipped, and easier to work than double wall polycarbonate. On the other hand, I don't really have a good feeling for how long the covering will last, and I would not use it in a place where I needed to capture every last ray of light.

Prothalli, definitely

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:45:00 +0000

Well, it's been a month at least since I tried to propagate some of my ant ferns ( Lecanopteris sp. ) using spores. And I think I've been successful ... up to this point. These definitely look like prothalli - the intermediate stage in fern reproduction.

I'm happy about it - but what do I do now?

Temperature Monitoring

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

You may have noticed that most of the posts on this blog are about the plants I grow, or see, or whatever. Operative word being that the posts are on the plants. This post, along with a few I'm contemplating, is different. It's about some greenhouse hardware.

I've wanted to be able to post realtime temperature data ( and more... ) on my alsgh.com website for a while now. I mostly just want to be able to keep track of things when I'm away from home, but I think that the temperature trends in my greenhouse might be interesting to others who are trying to grow the plants that I grow.

Meanwhile, I've been working on a 2nd, very small, highland tropical greenhouse, for those plants that are from cooler, higher altitude regions of the tropics and therefore requiring of cooler days and nights. My intent is to provide a maximum daytime temperature of around 75F and a minimum nighttime temperature of 45F or so. As part of this project, I looked into new ways to monitor the greenhouse temperature.

In my hot house, I have a remote thermometer/hygrometer from Oregon Scientific which transmits to a receiver in my bedroom. That way I can see the temperature every day and make sure things haven't gotten out of hand. The thermometer sensor is at the very edge of its radio range here, however, and it sometimes fails to give a reading. The new cool house is located somewhat further away, so I figured that a similar setup would not work.

I started to look into the possibility of putting a small computer in the new greenhouse and using that to monitor the temperature and more. I found the FitPC Slim, which is a very tiny computer that runs Windows XP, has 3 USB ports, a VGA port, an Ethernet port and WiFi. It's made by an Israeli company that normally does embedded computers. It goes for about $350 on amazon.com. I also found the TEMPerHum USB stick that's made by a Chinese company called Shenzen RDing Tech. It's not officially imported into the USA by anyone, but you can get it online shipped from Hong Kong for about $25.

It took me a while to get some working software for the stick, but in the end, everything worked out pretty well, and I now have almost realtime temperature monitoring online. You can read more about the setup on my greenhouse pages.

Prothallus? Or Algae?

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

You may remember from my last post that I sowed some spores of a couple Lecanopteris ant ferns a couple weeks ago - that being my first spore propagation attempt ever.

The results are not in yet, but there is some green stuff growing in the dishes:

Perhaps it's algae? Perhaps it's a prototypical prothallus? Only time, or a microbiologist commentator will tell...

Spores ( from outer space? )

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Somebody wrote me and asked me about my Lecanopteris mirabilis yeasterday. It's a tropical ant-fern with plate-like rhizomes under which ants can live. It's also a very beautiful plant, and something of a headache since I've never been able to get it to root well from cuttings. The cuttings will survive on their own for a remarkable number of months, but they seem to be hesitant to grow.

In any case, this person was looking to get the plant, and mentioned that if I had some mature fronds ( with spores ), he or I might be able to propagate it that way. So I went out to the greenhouse, looked around a bit, and found a fertile frond. This inspired me to try something I've never tried before - growing a fern from spores.

I've always been confused by the fern life cycle. They generate spores, each spore can grow into a little tiny plant called a prothallus, which then generates male and female sexual cells, which then combine with each other and form a new fern. This has always bugged me - it's way too indirect or something, I guess.

So I picked off a frond from my Lecanopteris mirabilis, and put it on a piece of white paper on top of my chest freezer. Almost immediately, what I assume are spores began to be launched out of the spore patches. And by launched, I mean that they seem to actually be propelled some distance away from the frond ... I prepared a substrate by putting some sort of sterilized peat from a jiffy peat pellet into a plastic petri dish, and then shook some of the spore material off the paper and onto the peat.

The petri dish is now sitting on a shelf in my germination area, and I'm waiting for the prothalli to form. I guess we'll see what happens.

I took some photomicrographs of the spore material that I collected. There are little alien-looking brown things, sort of yellow spherical globs, and a bunch of white hairs. I'm assuming that the yellow spheres are the spores, the alien brown things are somehow related to releasing the spores, and the hairs are just there for decoration.

RBG Kew - Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

The last stop on our conservatory tour of Kew is the Princess of Wales Conservatory. Covering an area larger than the Palm House, yet seeming quite modest from the outside, this very modern building is an exercise in design for energy conservation. The climate control is all computerized, and as you walk through the 10 different climate zones ( some are just little rooms ), you can hear the vents opening and closing to almost passively keep the temperature in a good range.

There's a desert environment, a fernery, a high altitude section, and a large tropical area. When we visited, they had a huge Amorphophallus titanum on display, along with a revolving selection of orchids in flower.

One more thing we noticed on our visit was that some of the maintenance staff was dealing with an overgrown tree ... and on closer inspection, we recognized a couple of them from the television show. They very kindly took a little time out of their day to pose for a picture with us.

This conservatory was perhaps my favorite - although I was really happy to finally walk the aisles of the famous and historic Palm House and Temperate House, the plant displays in the Princess of Wales Conservatory were perhaps more interesting for me. The layout of the many different environments meant that you saw something new past each bend in the path and over each hill, and the stunning variety of plant life from different climates kept my interest from beginning to end.

The waterlily house, which is the only other functioning public conservatory at Kew right now, was closed for the winter ... in the summer it houses Victoria waterlilies and other plants that like ultra-hot tropical conditions. It shares a heating system with the Palm House that's next to it. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to visit when it's open.

RBG Kew - Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

The Temperate House at Kew is the largest ornamental glasshouse in the UK, at 52,000 square feet. Construction was started in 1860, but not completed for many years due to funding difficulties. The main center block and the octagons at each end were built between 1860 and 1862. The end blocks were added between 1860 and 1899. In many ways it's a similar plan to the palm house, but much more blocky and square. There's a big tall central area and then two shorter wings off to the sides.

The temperate house re-creates a temperate environment - most of the plants inside seem to be from coastal mediterranean parts of the world where it gets cool, but does not freeze. For me, this means that many of the plants are familiar as landscaping around the San Francisco Bay Area, and therefore perhaps not as interesting as those in the tropical or alpine houses. There are certainly a lot of palm trees.

The Temperate House is somewhat off the beaten path, and seems not to be as popular as the Palm house or the Princess of Wales Conservatory, at least. It is worth the walk, however, if only for the architecture. The structure was renovated between 1972 and 1980, and is still looking pretty good.

RBG Kew - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

The Palm House is iconic of Kew in a way that few other buildings are. It's not the biggest ( That would be the Temperate House ), and it's not the Oldest ( Maybe the Orangery or the Nash Conservatory, formerly the Aroid House ), but in many ways it's the most graceful, and it's the first thing you see when you pay your money and walk into the main entrance.

Completed in 1848. Restored in 1957, over 100 years later. Restored again in 1988. Designed by Decimus Burton, built by Richard Turner. Wrought iron and glass in the form of an upturned ships hull. It's beautiful and impressive now - just think how it must have looked to someone in 1865 London.

The public face of Kew's tropical collection is housed here - palm trees, tropical flowers, and nice wide aisles. The collection is large and well grown, especially the palms and cycads. It's here, at one end, where you can find the Encephalartos altensteinii, a cycad which has been in captivity since 1773.

Both the Temperate House and the Palm House have convenient 2nd story walkways which allow a visitor to view the canopy from above. Most of the plantings are in raised beds rather than pots.

The palm house has a marine collection down in the basement where the heating apparatus used to be. It's nothing like our local Monterey Bay Aquarium, but it does have a nice exhibit of what I presume to be local sea life.

RBG Kew - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

The Alpine House is probably the newest greenhouse at Kew, and it serves two purposes which are almost the opposite of what a greenhouse is normally considered to be for: it keeps the plants DRY in the winter, and it keeps them COOL in the summer.

I have spent most of my life living in ignorance of the requirements of alpine plants - I always figured that they needed it cooler than normal, but I did not realize that so many could be grown at lower elevations simply by giving them good drainage, a dry winter, and a relatively cool summer growing season.

In fact, these conditions (sans the dry winter) are basically available in my backyard, and in fact the Alpine House at Kew seems to house a remarkable number of plants like Helicodiceros which are NOT alpine, but are from coastal mediterranean climates somewhat like my own.

Apparently, the soaring glass roof and a huge heat sink underneath the structure combine to keep things cool during the long summer days without using an undue amount of electricity. In fact, the cooling arrangements for most of the glasshouses at Kew seem to be fairly efficient since many of them date from before the introduction of electric fans to the greenhouse industry.

I have to say that some of the plants in there I had not seen in person before, or even necessarily heard of, and they did have some really cool leaves. Might be time for me to start an alpine collection.

RBG Kew - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

I've been putting off posting about my visits to Kew in the spring of 2008, for several reasons. It's a huge place, it's an historical place, it was the last major botanical event of the trip, and in many ways it was more than simply a visit to a botanical garden for me personally.

Any discussion of Victorian plant exploration cannot avoid mention of the history of this place - the herbarium where plant specimens taken by Darwin, Hooker and pretty much every plant explorer since are stored - the glasshouses where rubber seeds liberated from Brazil by Richard Spruce were grown out before being shipped on to Sri Lanka - a potted plant collected before the Declaration of Independence was signed - all this and so much more of the very roots of botany is here.

Not to mention three years of a gardening reality show was filmed here. I'm a big fan of both Victorian botanical history and A Year at Kew. But more on that later.

Kew's not cheap and it's not close to the center of London. Out in Zone 3 on the District Line, Kew Gardens station is still part of the underground - but it's far. I estimate spending over $60 to get the two of use over there and inside the gardens ... and we went on two separate days.

We came at both a good time and a bad time of the year. The lawns were carpeted with early bright blue flowers, rhododendrons were just starting to come in to bloom, and we managed to hit a day when the meager sunlight was in fact visible through the clouds. On the other hand, the many of the lawns were more like swamps, the wind was bitterly cold, the sun set at what seemed to be an exceptionally early hour, the trees were bare and the Waterlily House was closed for the season. All the more reason to try to come back in summer this year, I guess.

Living in Northern California, we've come to regard February as about the last we'd expect of winter if we're going to get any at all. It's kind of like spring year-round here. Not so much in England.

Columbia Road Flower Market

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Continuing the set of pictures and narrative from our trip last Spring... Columbia Road Flower Market is held on Sundays in East London. Since my wife was interested in seeing the many food markets that London has to offer, I was able to sneak in a visit to this large, weekly horticultural market not too far from Brick Lane.

When visiting a foreign country, or even just the next town over, I like to spend a little time looking at whatever plants they may have for sale. In some countries, it's just gathered medicinal herbs and some farmed produce, and in others you get a wide variety of sometimes unidentifiable but decorative specimens.

I'd have to say that this flower market in London boasted a lot of well-grown material, yet nothing much that we couldn't find back home. There were plenty of cut flowers, bedding plants and even tropicals. The emphasis was more on plants suited for a slightly cooler climate than ours, which makes a lot of sense.

They did have a few surprises such as this cart of sarracenia and succulents ... The plants themselves are not so surprising, but one gets the feeling that they actually felt they might sell this many plants to the public on a single rainy Sunday at the end of March.

Anthurium Seed Sowing

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

I did a little experiment in Anthurium seed sowing in the late summer last year. I have an Anthurium bakeri which is self-fertile and as a result provides me with large quantities of berries pretty much year-round.

I was trying to figure out whether the substrate made a big difference is seed longevity, and whether I needed to remove the pulp from around the seeds before sowing ( which can be an arduous task. )

I sowed two sets of seed on a peat/vermiculite substrate, and two sets of seed on a long fiber sphagnum substrate. One set on each substrate had the berries completely washed off and the other just had the berries crushed a bit.

Germination of Anthurium from fresh seed can be quick but the subsequent growth of the seedlings can be excruciatingly slow. So far, it appears that substrate is not effecting the growth rate, but that berries sown on the long fiber sphagnum without removal of the pulp did not germinate.

There's been an interesting thread on some favorite methods of Anthurium seed sowing recently on Aroid-L. You can find it here.

Buzz Pollination ( in the backyard )

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:00:00 +0000

So, I'm watching this episode of The Private Life of Plants, and they're out on some coastal South African meadow watching bumble bees pollinate a particularly interesting flower. It's got yellow colored tubular stamens, and though it looks like there's pollen one them, the pollen is actually secreted way down inside the flower somewhere. The bumble bee knows the secret, though - it just has to buzz at the right frequency when it's on the flower, and pollen will come shooting out of the stamens.

And I'm thinking that this is a neat strategy. The flower conserves pollen for its chosen pollinators. Quite similar to the way many orchids require a specific stimulus to release their pollen sacks. So cool, in fact, that I might just want to get a plant like that for myself.

Well, after some online research, I realize that I have a plant like that myself. And you probably do to. It turns out that tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and even blueberries work this way.

In fact, greenhouse growers of tomatoes used to shake the flowers by hand to encourage good fruit set, until they discovered that bumblebees will work for cheaper than humans...

Gardens of The Alhambra

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Southern Spain is a fascinating place - heavily Catholic right now, but with a history of Moorish art and architecture. The Alhambra in Granada is a huge palace and fortress complex completed by Muslim rulers of Spain in the mid to late 14th century. It's filled with beautiful architecture and beautiful gardens. It's also probably one of the biggest tourist attractions in all of Spain.

We visited on a cold, rainy day in early spring as part of a medium sized tour group. A tour group composed primarily of retired Americans who might have been expecting Southern Spain to be a little more sunny and a lot warmer, but who gamely trudged up and down the cold and slippery stone steps to see what must have been a very beautiful place in more gentle weather.

The plants here are nothing particularly special, but the garden design is striking. The use of water and geometric forms is particularly pleasing. Fountains and ponds are everywhere.

The Palacio de Generalife - or Summer Palace - next door has perhaps more beautiful gardens on a smaller scale. The most recent garden restoration there was completed in 1951, and the palace was originally connected to the Alhambra by a covered walkway, which would have been useful.

In the end, the entire tour group survived several hours in the biting cold and rain, and though the term "Alhambra" became a pejorative one for the rest of the tour, I think that we left with not just an impression of extreme cold, but with an appreciation for the grandeur that we had seen.

Royal Botanic Garden in Madrid

noreply@blogger.com (Albert Huntington) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:00:00 +0000

Wherever I travel, I try to seek out the local botanic gardens. Last spring, I found myself in Madrid, and took the opportunity to spend a few hours at El Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, or the Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid.

Situated in central Madrid, near the Atocha train station and not far from famous museums including the Prado and Reina Sofia‎, the plant collection dates back to a royal collection started in 1794. The gardens cover 20 acres and include a set of glasshouses showcasing arid and tropical climates, along with a small indoor carnivorous plant display. The garden is nowdays primarily a public display garden rather than an academic institution, having been remodeled in 1981 for that purpose.

One of the primary attractions of this garden is that the climate in Madrid is similar to the climate where I live - having the dry summers and cool wet winters typical of the Mediterranean basin. They have large displays of roses, camellias, and bulbous plants which would all grow well for me in my home garden. Interestingly, there is also a sizable display of vegetables grown quite artistically.

The plants of the garden seem to have expanded beyond its boundaries. Almost directly across the street from the garden sits this huge wall completely covered with living plants - definitely a work of botanic art.

I should also note that when it was remodeled in 1992, the old portion of Atocha train station was converted into an indoor tropical garden surrounded by shops and restaurants - worth a short visit in itself.