A Cheerful 2015 with Gerbera

Welcome 2015!

I’m hoping that everyone will have a cheerful new year…

so I’m sharing a variety of vibrant Gerbera flowers to brighten up the first day of the year.

This year is promising for my new garden residents – the beautiful Gerbera plants.

(My long time plant buddy/dealer Fronia delivered eleven of these beauties last December 1 and an additional seven last December 9, 2014 straight from a flower farm in Davao.)

Some curious people think the blooms are made of synthetic materials because the size of the flowers are 7.5 cm to 10 cm…

I really hope the blooms will be larger after they have adapted to their new environment.

Anyway, I’m glad that the stingless bees love the vibrant flowers…

These plants have no name-tags so I decided to name them with descriptive colors.

What I like about these plants are: [1] They bloom in a variety of colors – whites, creams, yellows, oranges, reds, pinks, purples, and bi-colors (except true blues and purples);

[2] They produce pretty large flowers;

[3] They are low maintenance plants;

[4] They grow well in a tropical garden (like mine);

[5] They look good in containers as well as in flower beds;

[6] They are nice cut flowers… florists say Gerbera ranks number 5 in the most popular cut flowers;

[7]  They are perennials… that is, they bloom many times in a year;

[8] They attract birds, bees AND friends (old and new)…

Thanks for Visiting

and

Have A Prosperous New Year

Phalaenopsis ‘Tinny Golden Sun’

I’m not usually attracted to yellow orchid sprays… but this one is an exception because it’s a Phalaenopsis hybrid. Two people (who are plant enthusiasts) that I know say that the blooms are cool to the eyes.

They call it Phal. Tinny Golden Sun. This is the outcome of Phal (Golden Amboin x Yukimai). The flowers are 8.5 cm H and 8.5 cm W with pale butter yellow color… [sometimes, there’s a greenish tinge depending on the angle of the light].

Yellow Tower Cactus in bloom

I’ve been checking on them since this morning, yet…the ants beat me to the flowers of my Yellow Torch Cactus (Parodia leninghausii).  I was so excited to see its yellow flowers again for they only bloom once a year in my upper garden.

Wordless Wednesday: My most expensive orchid

Vanda Rosalind Cheok x Vanda Varut Leopard is the most expensive orchid recently added to my collection. It is this plant’s first time to bloom in 14 years. I guess it’s worth the wait for the red-mottled yellow flowers are quite large about 6 inches wide. Honestly, I wasn’t attracted to it at first or second glimpse but then again…once you’ve got orchid fever, you couldn’t resist to collect.

Scenes of life and death in wet season

God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.  ~Author Unknown

It’s Typhoon MINA that’s been causing all those rain, wind, and brownouts here in my hometown for the past days… and Lanao del Norte is just at its outskirts! My cacti suffered the most — weeds grew in every pot and cacti condition ranges from okay to rotting to dead. I even found an “empty shell” of a dwarf cactus while weeding its pot…

and a dead Thelocactus setispinus reclining like a tower of Pisa…

…but not all is bad news on cacti. As they say, a garden is always on the business of life and death; if a plant died, seedlings would sprout… and sprout they did. I’ve propagated some Thelocactus seeds early this month and look how they’re (Thelocactus seedlings)  starting their new life.

Also, two of my orchids bloomed again… The red-mottled golden flowers of the Vanda hybrid cheered me up ( this orchid arrived in bloom here in my garden last February 2011)… And so is the orange blooms of my Ascocenda.

4.5 inches wide flowers of Vanda hybrid

3 cm wide flowers of Ascocenda 'Meda Arnold'

Some plants also bloomed to show that they’re faring well in this current weather condition. So overall, I’m still glad while waiting for the this wet season to pass.

minute pink flowers of my bonsai

'Scarlet Beauty'

3 red roses

Yellow Gladiolus blooms

This post is an update on my gladioli plants,  the yellow variety is currently in bloom. I think the blooms are a bit undersized; nevertheless, they still look pretty. Here are the photos:

Veined and beautiful

Fittonia verschaffeltii

I always like a variety of lace as accents in my clothes, linens, table-runners or doilies, etc. And it’s no different in plants; I’m attracted to foliage with lacy veining such as the Fittonia verschaffeltii. Its scientific name is quite tongue-twisting to pronounce; to make it simpler,I simply called it as Fittonia or Nerve Plant. It is also artistically referred to as the Mosaic Plant or Painted Net Leaf due to the tile-like or net-like pattern in its leaves.

Fittonia verschaffeltii pearcei

This creeping plants are perfect for dish gardens or terrariums  especially with three varieties of Nerve Plants combined. Fittonia verschaffeltii  plants have oval leaves about 3 inches long; the dull green leaves have red veins (see top picture). Fittonia verschaffeltii pearcei have bright green leaves with rose-pink veins. A word of advice: Don’t plant this next to white-veined variety for the color of the veins may turned up into a lighter pink. That is what happened to my pink-veined Fittonia (see the photo above.)

Fittonia verschaffeltii argyroneura

Fittonia verschaffeltii argyroneura plants have rich emerald-green leaves with interconnecting white veins; the foliage of this variety are somewhat firm and thinner than the red-veined or pink-veined varieties. When matured, these plants produce sterile yellow flowers (see the photo below).  And since these plants don’t grow from seeds, the best thing to do to multiply them is by separating the young shoots that have rooted in soil from the mother plant.

small yellow flowers of white-veined Nerve Plant

My Fittonias are outdoor plants. So, I potted them in sandy-loam soil and put them in areas with high humidity. They best thrive in moist soil, and they also require complete fertilizer twice a month. I could say that Nerve Plants are easy to care.

Mottled Dancing-Ladies

This Dancing-Lady orchid variety yields beautiful flowers for the past 20 years in my garden.  It was just a burro-eared leaf and a small shoot back then when I got it as a barter plant from my plant buddies, either from Mrs. Vergara or Mrs. Tero in the 1990’s. It has been a delightful sight ever since this plant produced its first spray of yellow flowers with brown mottling.

Today, a spray of my Oncidium orchids starts blooming again and most of them were half-opened around 8 o’clock in the morning. Each flower is 3 cm wide in full bloom. The sepals and petals are heavily mottled with reddish-brown hue while the large yellow skirt-like lips have slight brown markings.

I have this variety for a long time but I must admit that up to now I’m still clueless of its name. However, I know that it requires morning sunlight so I put my Oncidiums in a shady area where the plants are safe from the heat of the midday sun.

Double Yellow

I decided to prune my hibiscus plants this morning when I noticed something yellow moving behind the leaves of my Durian tree. When I pushed aside the branches of the Durian, my hibiscus ‘Double Yellow’ (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) revealed its large flower about 5 inches wide. Rays of sunlight made the petals looked reflective especially when photographed.The exotic flower made me think of my friends…maybe that’s why it is used as a flower symbol for friendship…

Mistletoe Cactus

minute flower and fruits

It’s not yet Christmas but since this plant started blooming the other day, I thought to give my Rhipsalis teres an attention. This plant is also known as the Mistletoe cactus or Wickerwork cactus. My friend Mrs.Tolero, a jet-setter and a plant collector, gave me this epiphyte as a present from her travels sometime in year 2000. She told me that this plant came from South America.

cactus on hanging basket

I knew so little about this plant and for years I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was just an air plant for it doesn’t resemble a normal cactus. It has no spines, just a few bristles here and there.

no spines, just bristles on stems

Its stems are slender, they’re about 0.5 cm in diameter. I also observed that the length of each stems vary but they’re commonly connected together in long joints. The young stems are short about 2 cm, angular and have bristles. The old stems, on the other hand, are long, rounded and smooth. Moreover, the branches are in whorls and they grow downwards, hence, they are usually potted in a hanging basket.

jointed stems

Anyway, what I like about this plant is its fruits; they’re like little round white pearls which decorate the plant. Then, there’s its less than 1 cm wide yellow flowers blooming on either the tip or on the side of the stems. I guess the flowers of my Rhipsalis is somewhat smaller than expected; I’ve been informed that the normal size of its flowers is 2.5cm wide.

growing downward

As per advise of my friend on how to care for Rhipsalis, I put this plant in a shady area where the cactus could avoid exposure from direct sunlight. I also watered it regularly during months of hot season. I cut down its ration of water during the rainy season though.

harmless epiphyte

Due to ignorance, I’ve used chunks of coconut husks as potting medium on this for plant for years. Just recently, I’ve learned that Rhipsalis requires soil rich in humus. So I did the logical thing, I re-potted it with sandy-loam soil. Hopefully, I’ll see bigger flowers the next time it blooms.

less than 1 cm yellow flower