Weeding display beds

Today, I primarily weeded the oxalis and mulberry weeds out of the ground beds in Display Room 2 (New Caledonia). The oxalis weeds are virtually everywhere in the greenhouse, from the beds to almost all of the pots. The small leaves easily hide in the tinyest nooks and cracks. I suspect the seeds blow in on the wind. The greenhouse will never be rid of the little devil. I won't even post a photo of the weed for fear it will infest my computer too!

While weeding the beds, I had to be careful not to disturb the small volunteer amborella plants taking root in the bed across from the mature amborella plants. This plant is particularly important since it is native only to New Caledonia in the south Pacific Ocean. The plant is essentially unchanged for the past 250 million years, and was certainly in existance along with the entire history of the dinsouars. It is the perfect specimen to successfully grow in a university greenhouse.

The amborella leaves are thick and waxy, like holly leaves. Small white flowers grow from pedicles along the main stems.

Unfortunately, as with most plants in the greenhouse, the amborella bushes are susceptible to scale insects which extrude fecal sap, which in turn allows sooty mold to cover the leaves and reduce the photosynthetic capacity of the plant. The staff at the greenhouse work hard to mitigate and control the infestations on all of the plants, not only amborella. I've been asked to take a pail of soapy water and scub the amborella leaves on more than one occasion.

It is quite a success to see the delicate small amborella seedlings in a bed across the path from the main bush. The seedlings were eventually relocated to a pot to mature into a larger plant.

Finally on this day in September, I used the nail brush to clean a potted climbing hydrangea bush covered in sooty mold.

Comments

Another routine spectacular day in the greenhouse

It has been a sincere pleasure for me to volunteer a few hours a week at the University of Minnesota Botanical Conservatory. After many visits over the last few years, exactly none of those days have felt ordinary or repetitive. If there is a routine , it is that the botanic diversity of the collection - with over 3000 species - is displayed in a spectacular way each day. The Conservatory is located on the St. Paul campus, and is free of charge and open to the public during typical weekday hours. For instance, today most of my allotted time was spent in just one of eight rooms, the room that houses the tropical collection. The chores included pruning, re-potting, spraying, sweeping, etc. As I moved through the room, in every direction, there seemed to be a stunning plant pleading to be admired. After the chores were complete, I had the opportunity to go back and photograph some of the beauties that surrounded me while working. Dendrobium tangerinum , Papua New Guinea Dendr...

I celebrate learning this about cycad plants

I didn't know that the cardboard palm - Zamia furfuracea - is a cycad. It isn't a palm tree (don't judge me, I'm not a botanist). But it also doesn't look like the other more familiar types of cycads with their fluted upright palm-like fronds. I didn't know it is said to be the second most commonly cultivated cycad, after Cycas revoluta . I didn't know this plant is unrelated to the common ZZ plant - Zamioculcas zamifolia - although they have a similar appearance. Before today I didn't know any of these things, but now I am happy to have learned them. From the parking lot I walked to the U of M Conservatory greenhouse in near-zero F weather. Stepping into the tropical spaces was a joy of its own. But being able to learn new information and experience new procedures was a compounding factor. Joy squared. During my 3-hour volunteer shift, my initial task was to clean the parasite critters (mealybugs and scale) from the stems and leaves of the cycad, Zami...

Remembering my former city garden

This post is more of a journal entry than a public blog post. It is interesting to me, but won't be too interesting to almost any other reader - except perhaps my partner who was there as a co-conspirator. I want to document my thoughts about the past, my backyard garden, and what we put in it. The size of our city lot was not large. At 100 x 50 ft, there was just enough room for the house, a small garage, and back yard. The driveway was shared with our neighbor. The style of the house was standard American Foursquare, built in 1903. We bought the place in the early 1990's and slowly, over the next 25 years, renovated almost every inch the house and garden. A dry stone wall was built, with terrace bed to break up the height of the wall Caladiums and dragon-wing begonias line the steps of the front porch Well-earned sit-down on the front porch after a busy day Front wall terrace with blue phlox, hostas, astilbe, snap dragons, and coral bells. Front wall terrace, brunnera "J...

City Gardener

Search This Blog