Plant Sale Tues. 7/12/11 11AM to 5PM

We will be having a small, but choice, plant sale at the Science Building Greenhouse on Tuesday, July 12. Among the offerings will be a variety of succulents including Lithops and Fenestraria (Baby’s Toes), Sarracenia pitcher plants, Bromeliads, and small plants of the rare Bomarea aff. superba, an herbaceous vine with umbels of up to 100 3 inch gold flowers -like living fireworks in your garden!

Bomarea aff. superba in Martin's garden, photos by Ric

Another pic of flowers exploding in Martin’s Magnolia trees:

Beautiful to look up into!

Plant Sale! 4/21 & 22, 10AM-4PM

Monday and Tuesday this week (4/19 and 4/2o)  we will be working hard on plant sale prep. If you’d like to help, stop by the Science Greenhouse from 1 PM on for plant grooming, labeling, and pricing. We still need plant sale workers for 2 hour shifts. Work the sale and get a free plant!

For those of you interested in purchasing plants, here is an alphabetical list of things we will offer. I will be adding to this list as the sale approaches. Don’t miss the unusual flower pictured at the end of the list!

Agave Victoria-reginae var. compacta, a prolific miniature century plant

Alluaudia humbertii, from the spiny dry forests of Madegascar

Assorted Bromeliads and Cacti, tough plants that let you get away with an occasional vacation

Barbacenia purpurea, an indoor plant from Brazil relatively new to cultivation

Beschorneria albiflora, a dramatic drought tolerant plant that attracts hummingbirds with huge, red inflorescences from Mexico

Brighamia rockii, just a few seed grown plants of this Hawaii native on the verge of extinction in the wild

Davallia figiensis, a miniature form of rabbits foot fern

Drosera binanta ‘Giant’  to catch small flying insects with it’s tentacle-like leaves

Gunnera killipiana with large umbrella-like leaves and flower spikes with maroon tassels from Mexico

Hatiora salicornioides, the drunkard’s dream plant with tiny bottle-shaped stem sections in a “bottoms up” position

Kalanchoe tubiflora, mother of millions eventually bearing many red-orange tubular flowers, Madagascar

Lapageria rosea, the elegant and much sought after national flower of Chile

Medinilla cummingii from high elevation Borneo with pink flowers and purple fruit

Musa vellutina, a dwarf, ornamental banana with flamingo pink inflorescences, but inedible fruit, alas

Phaedranassa dubia an Amaryllis relative from Ecuador with red, tubular flowers designed for hummingbirds

Pinguicula primuliflora, a butterwort that catches small insects on fly paper leaves

Quercus agrifolia, small coastal live oak trees -plant one to start your own carbon sequestration program!

Quercus lobata used to be widespread in CA at low elevations and along streams. It’s now rare and endangered!

Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Hahnii’  a dwarf mother-in-law tongue plant that tolerates low light and neglect indoors

Sarracenia species including: leucophylla ‘Tarnok,’ the double flowered New World pitcher plant with elegant white tipped leaves

Sarracenia oreophylla, a golden-chartreuse New World pitcher plant now rare and endangered in its FL home

Sarracenia  Xreadii, a vigorous natural hybrid with S. leucophylla with more red in the leaves and maroon flowers

Tillandsia usneoides, or Spanish moss, that can be grown draped on other plants with regular misting

Tradescantia zebrina, extremely easy to grow with purple and white striped leaves in hanging baskets

*Xerophyta (Talbotia) elegans, the marvelous desiccation tolerant plant for shade that can be dried out completely, folding up and turning a nice shade of purple, then revived to lush green in hours with watering. Researchers in South Africa are attempting to transfer the genes responsible for this amazing ability to crop plants.

And here’s a treat for those who have read this far -our Bulbophyllum echinolabium , with flowers some describe as smelling a bit like dead fish, has flowered for the first time at SFSU and may be flowering for the Plant Sale in which case it will be on display:

Klattia partita, Unusual Irid to Flower

Klattia partita is one of the 15 species of woody irid from western South Africa. It is very seldom seen in nature and has long been considered impossible to grow, but a seedling at SFSU may soon be in flower. The genus Klattia has just 3 species, one with bright red, another yellow, and this, the most unusual, with purple-black infloresences. Once it has flowered, all three species will have done so at SFSU, certainly a first in cultivation anywhere in the world.

Klattia partita, 10 O'Clock Peak, Langeberg, RSA, photo by Martin Grantham

New FOTGH Projects

Over winter break slow, but steady progress has been made on several projects discussed at FOTGH meetings in the past resulting in more volunteer opportunities:

I. Landscaping around the New Greenhouse will eventually represent plant communities from Earth’s five   Mediterranean climate zones. With a lot of help from volunteer, Mischa Kornievsky, installation of the first area devoted to plants of South Africa is nearing completion and emphasizes the incredibly diverse Fynbos shrublands of the west, but with a few representatives of the Afromontane Forest, and eastern South African plant communities as well. This site is just to the west of the Head House with a zig-zag path that leads to the top of the slope. The SFSU Bio. Dept. GH has one of the most unique and extensive collections of fynbos plants outside South Africa, most with collection data.

A fynbos slope along the Sleeping Beauty Hiking Trail in So. Africa	Protea cynaroides, Sleeping Beauty Trail
Klattia stokoei is in cultivation at SFSU and nowhere else in the entire world	along with Nivenia inaequalis!

Open Greenhouse Sept. 23

 

Flowering at the Greenhouse this week: Blandfordia grandiflora, Australia

Last flowering of the season for Stanhopea tigrina, Mexico

And Tigridia (Rigidella) Orthantha, Mexico & Guatemala

FOTGH is planning to host an Open Greenhouse for students, staff, faculty, and the public on Sept. 23 from noon until 5 PM. FOTGH members will act as docents and lead tours through the three rooms of the teaching collection offering information about some of the most interesting plants to be found there.

Other activities to be going on in conjunction with the Open Greenhouse will be a Pineapple Tasting. (Yes, another fruit is ripening as I type.)

And a Venus Flytrap Feeding -like the Lion Feedings that used to be held at the SF Zoo, but a lot safer for all involved!

Traps big enough to nibble a thumb!

Flies are preferred, of course.

These plants will snap at anything!

You are invited to come and enjoy the day of the event, or to contact FOTGH to find out about volunteering to help in the preparations for this event.

(All photos by Nichole Roether)

Martin

Pineapple Tasting This Thursday 1-3 PM

Things are looking good for a combined Pineapple and Miracle Fruit tasting this Thursday at the New Greemhouse from 1 to 3 PM. We will have ONE large GH grown pineapple and one store bought for a taste comparison. Then we will have a LMITED number of Miracle Fruit available so you can experience a mysterious transformation of your taste buds causing them to respond to sour foods as if they were sweet for 30 minutes to 2 hours after ingesting. Hope to see you there!

Martin

Make a Pineapple Tasting Possible

The SFSU Greenhouse has some delightful plant experiences to share this week. One of our pineapple fruits has ripened to a translucent amber and is releasing a sweet fragrance in the warm room. There are quite a few taste-transforming miracle fruits available that will make sour food items taste sweet for 30 minutes to 2 hours after having eaten one, and the Stanhopea tigrina orchids will open 4 huge, extravagantly fragrant flowers this week, joining a set of insect imitating and insect trapping orchid flowers already open. If anyone would like to work with FOTGH to share these botanical, culinary, and sensual experiences with the public by helping publicize a pineapple tasting, setting up a greeting table, being present to greet visitors at set hours, bringing sour foods to sample before and after a taste of miracle fruit, etc., please contact me (marhoot@yahoo.com) or Mandana (mandana@sfsu.edu) ASAP to make an event happen. With only one, part time, staff person taking care of all the Greenhouse collections, such events can’t happen without You!

Thanks,

Martin

Titan Time Lapse Avaialble

Thanks to SFSU photography student, Dalton Blanco, an aerial time lapse of SFSU’s recent Titan Arum can be viewed at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyw8gdzP9Hg

Enjoy a quick recap of our patient vigil leading up to the brief spectacle of a Titan Arum flowering from a different perspective. It’s probably a good thing we couldn’t capture the scent for you!

Here are some of the pics I took with Nichole Roether’s great camera -Thanks Nichole!

Martin

Topping a Titan?

There’s little chance of that! The Titan’s spadix has now collapsed to one side making him look like an enormous marabou stork standing resolutely on one firm green leg, eyes hidden in a purple ruff. I suspect he may be pouting. Clearly he is undergoing the plant equivalent of moulting, that awkward avian state between feathers, as he sheds the inflorescence and prepares a new leaf. We’ll leave him to that.

There are other rare, odd, and interesting botanical events in the making at the SFSU Greenhouse! Just last week the Stanhopea tigrina orchid (pic Marty Epstein) initiated inflorescences of its own (more on Stanhopea: http://stanhopea.autrevie.com/). In many ways Stanhopea flowering is the inverse of that in Amorphophallus that sends its shoot up like a spire while these amazing orchids send their spikes down through the side or bottom of slatted pots where they dangle enormous spotted blooms. Instead of stinking, the flowers produce a heady, exquisitely sweet fragrance that will fill the entire room on the morning of opening. But as in Amorphophallus, individual blooms are short-lived, overconfident, if you will, that the strength of their scent will command the presence of their pollinators, post-haste. The pollinators happen to be iridescent, often blue-green Euglossid bees (more: http://stanhopea.autrevie.com/Stanhopea_Pollination.html). The male bees go so far as to gather the scent of Stanhopea orchids to use in courtship!  Having seen them in the wild, I wish there were some locally that could visit, but they are not that far off, as Stanhopea tigrina grows naturally just over the Texas border in Taumaulipas, Mexico. Because of this, it is exceptionally cold hardy and could be grown outdoors over much of the Bay Area with confidence were it available. I hope to keep you posted on the flowering of our plants so that you will have a chance to sample the scent female Euglossids find irrisisitable!

On another note, The SFSU Greenhouse is in possession of a taste-altering Miracle Fruit tree and usually has the berries available that can change your taste buds (for 30 minutes to 2 hours) so that sour and/or bitter foods taste incredibly sweet. I have organized tastings in the past, inviting people to bring sour foods to sample before and after a bit of Miracle Fruit, but we need someone to organize these events in the future as I am too busy and no students are available to do so. If you’d like to organize, or just help with such an event, please contact me.

Martin

Last Titan Viewing Monday

July 5, 2009

The inflorescence had not completely closed by 9 PM Sunday, but the remaining odor was slight. I jumped the gun last post in stating that the male flowers were releasing pollen, but they will be doing so soon. Over the next week the inflorescence will slowly decline, the spadix collapse, and then the entire structure slump over. We will be keeping our overhead camera going through this process as well. Stay tuned for the time lapse footage to come later. There will be a last viewing (wake?) Monday afternoon, July 6, 2-6 PM. Come say goodbye to the Titan. Thanks to Sergei Zavarin for the pic below taken at 10 AM today with the Titan early in it’s closing process.

Martin