House Plants - Odd ones, rare ones, favorite ones

[caleb]

Here's one that I have in my office:



I don't really know what it is. My secretary thinks it's an overgrown "hens and chicks," whatever that means. It came home with me last fall from a live end-of-the-season plant auction at a local greenhouse/cafe, and it's done remarkably well during the New York winter.

What are you tending indoors?

[caleb]

Shoot, this was supposed to go in the OT. If a mod would move it, I'd be grateful.

[thollandpe]

A friend's father recently passed away, and they had no idea what to do with this old beast:



It took three of us and some serious wrestling, but we relocated it into a building where I work.

She seems happy, and should be pleased the eight-foot ceiling has been lifted!

[j44ke]

Your secretary is partly right, in that it is a succulent, but it is in a different family than the plant commonly referred to as Hen and Chicks. The one you have is a sedum (common reference is stonecrop) of some sort. The sedum family is pretty large and highly varied, ranging from pudgy ground cover to trailing plants like yours, to quite large leaved plants that send up brilliantly red clumps of flowers. We had a much pudgier type growing in a large planter on our porch in Amagansett, and every winter it would get stomped by the snow and ice, and in the spring it would pop back up pudgier and happier than ever.

Hen and Chicks is part of the sempervivum (common reference is house leeks) family, which is another succulent and also a fairly large family of many types and appearances. The reason they are called Hen and Chicks is because the central plant buds small "chicks" from its roots that grow underneath the shade of its leaves, which sort of reminded someone of a hen holding her chicks under her wings. A lot of the sempervivum are cold hardy. We found a whole field near Zermatt once at just over 10,000' of elevation. Amazing that something so packed with water can manage freezing conditions like that.

I don't have any plants now, but I used to grow lithops. This is another crazy succulent family, mostly found in Southern Africa where they grow on the ground and get walked on by all manner of animals big and small. But when you bring them into your house, they die immediately if you look at them sideways. But they are so cool, I tried for a number of years while living in Arizona to grow a nice little indoor rock garden of them. And I had some success, but mine never looked as good as the ones in this photo.



My wife has a ton of orchids in her office, and I am not sure what her magic is, but she can bring orchids back from dead to bloom great guns. However, she now employs a service that comes in and takes away the plants that are not blooming and replaces them with blooming plants. And then when the ones that were taken away start blooming again, they bring them back and take away any others that have stopped. NYC is crazy that way.

[caleb]

Thanks, Jorn. That's a great explanation!

Speaking of unusual plants to grow indoors, I've always wanted to have a dwarf conifer or two, ideally a cedar of some sort. Does anyone know if there are varieties that will do okay indoors in northern climates?

[j44ke]

If growing indoors, you have to pick species based on the climate of your house and your ability to vary that climate appropriately. My grandfather kept bonsai and there were trees that got moved into warmer parts of the house in winter and others that got moved to cooler areas. He had a glassed in study, and one end got sun and the other did not, so one group of trees went to the sunless end (maples and some pines) and the others went to the warmer end (some pines and citrus.)

I don't know enough about conifers specifically, but I do know that Norfolk Island Pines (not really a pine) tend to do well in a lot of houses. I don't know if they have dwarf versions. The actual tree can get very large. And I don't remember the types of pines my grandfather had, except one was a Monterey cypress he bought when he came to visit us in California when I was 5. Very bonsai-looking swirly tree that he had somehow gotten to grow in the crack of a rock, and it is still alive now at my aunt's house 49 years later.

[thollandpe]

Caleb, yours looks similar to the green jade plant that we just put in that same building I mentioned above. These seem hearty as all getout and they symbolize good luck. Plus we're feeding them with greywater from the building's sinks and dishwasher.

[j44ke]

Todd, have you run into LiveRoof Hybrid Green Roofs? They use a lot of sempervivum/echevaria/sedum plantings in modular units with built in piping for irrigation (and I assume could be hooked up for gray water.) Our house is spec'd to have this on its roof, and I am pretty impressed with it from what I've seen.

This moss mat system is also pretty cool, and we may use this for the garage or another outbuilding we have planned after our house is completed.

Most of these succulents are very easily propagated from cuttings, leaves (in the case of the jade plants) and/or budding, so having a small greenhouse nearby could keep up with maintenance.

Sempervivum are known as house leeks, because the seeds & buds can be spread by birds and end up growing on roofs naturally. They were a feature of one of the first building codes during Charlemagne's rule where it was specified that roofs should in fact have sempervivum planted on them to help prevent the spread of fire in towns from sparks landing on thatch or wooden roofs.

[htwoopup]

On orchids...this has gone through I don't know how many blooms. It is in a non-bloom state now but as you can see it is going strong. The plant was a typical scrawny thing purchased from Home Depot a number of years ago for a few dollars. It has even been repotted into larger pots twice. All it ever gets is 2 ice cubes placed near the roots every Tuesday morning. Supposedly (according to the plant lady of the house) this regularity is so important she has the next door neighbor come into the apartment and put the required 2 cubes on it if we are away on a Tuesday morning.

IMG_0952 by Jon Mandel, on Flickr

Weirdest plant we have (sorry no picture as it is in the other country than me at the moment) is a Night Blooming Cereus that was my Mom's. It is just an ugly stick all year. Around the second week of August a bud appears. And then one night it blooms into the most beautiful flower with the most beautiful smell. The flower drops off the next day. My Mom used to have a last minute party every year which was called the day of the night that it bloomed. I am so happy that she left it to me in her limited estate.

[ides1056]

I was going to suggest Night Blooming Cereus. Every time it bloomed was a special occasion when I was a kid. It was a favorite of my mother's as well.

[j44ke]

I had night blooming cereus growing in our yard in Arizona. One of these days I will have to dig up the rolls of film I shot on that yard and scan the images, because it was the most obsessive thing I have done ever. Anyway, they were the species indigenous to the Sonoran desert, and I stood in line at the annual Desert Botanical Garden plant sale to get them. As a plant, they are like you said - nothing really to look at - but the flowers are a bright white burst of petals. One of mine never bloomed, but the other one did fairly regularly and bats would find it somehow and visit the blooms when they opened.

There are other cereus species that produce similar blooms, and some species are actually quite good climbers and get very bushy. I tried and tried to get a bougainvillea to grow on one end of our porch, but something wasn't quite right and it never did anything. So I planted several climbing cereus and they went nuts to the point where I actually had to cut them back and give away cuttings. But the blooms were incredible. And once they were fertilized, they produced very sweet seed-filled fruit. Dragon fruit, if you've seen those in a grocery somewhere, are from a cereus species.

edit: This is the one photo I have of our backyard, which is only 50% of the whole deal but gives you a sense of how plant nuts I actually was at the time.

[Too Tall]

I was going to suggest Night Blooming Cereus. Every time it bloomed was a special occasion when I was a kid. It was a favorite of my mother's as well.

I know of what you speak. We had a large greenhouse attached to our childhood home. We tended mostly cool loving orchids > cymbidiums > cattleyas and a bank of weird / obscure cactus and succulents on the south wall. I had a thing for Staghorn Ferns and grew some monsters.

[JoB]

i just took a bonsai class where we worked on a japanese dwarf juniper and was told it needs to live outside.

[j44ke]

i just took a bonsai class where we worked on a japanese dwarf juniper and was told it needs to live outside.

That's interesting. A lot of the ones we saw in temple areas and botanical gardens in Japan were outside, whether on porches or pedestals like these. I figured it was something you did every once in a while, but they could have just as easily remained outside all year long. These were multiple hundred years old, so they must have been doing it right whatever they were doing.

[Jamie Medeiros]

This place is crazy should you be passing through eastern CT https://www.logees.com/

I picked up a Meiwa kumquat tree there a few years ago and it is going strong.

[steve garro]

I have an Agave Parrii I grew from seed in 1996 - I may get to see it bloom in my life time.

Parry’s Agave


- Garro.

[caleb]

That's interesting. A lot of the ones we saw in temple areas and botanical gardens in Japan were outside, whether on porches or pedestals like these. I figured it was something you did every once in a while, but they could have just as easily remained outside all year long. These were multiple hundred years old, so they must have been doing it right whatever they were doing.

There's an elderly gentleman of Japanese descent in my Minneapolis neighborhood who has a very unique routine. He lives along one of my regular running and biking routes, so I often see him outside.

He has several dozen large plants in pots mounted on casters. He rotates the plants in and out of his garage - which appears to be heated, if not also air conditioned - throughout the day, and around his backyard, in and out of the shade as the sun moves. The garage door also has a full screen, so that he can keep the door open and the bugs out. It looks like a major part of his life, a serious hobby, if not a discipline.

[steve garro]

He has several dozen large plants in pots mounted on casters. He rotates the plants in and out of his garage - which appears to be heated, if not also air conditioned - throughout the day, and around his backyard, in and out of the shade as the sun moves. The garage door also has a full screen, so that he can keep the door open and the bugs out. It looks like a major part of his life, a serious hobby, if not a discipline.

You live by Mr. Bong?

medical-marijuana-denver.jpg




- Garro.

[jscottyk]

I'm a sucker for jade plants of all varieties. A few years ago there was a local plant/flower shop that regularly had huge specimans. Like 3 feet tall. At the time I didn't have the right light in my house for one to thrive. I would love to run across one of those now; have just the right light for it.

Another current favorite is the staghorn fern. This beauty just moved back outside this weekend.
FullSizeRender 43.jpg

[jscottyk]

That's interesting. A lot of the ones we saw in temple areas and botanical gardens in Japan were outside, whether on porches or pedestals like these. I figured it was something you did every once in a while, but they could have just as easily remained outside all year long. These were multiple hundred years old, so they must have been doing it right whatever they were doing.

I think there is a bonsai in my future.