Skip to main content

Tidy Up the Hidden Spots

Whether in our homes or workplaces, we all have a routine for cleaning things. But often apart from our routine, there are those hard-to-reach places where dust or other bits collect. Over time, the buildup of debris can be a shock when the existence of these neglected spots is finally realized.

Today at the U of M Conservatory greenhouse, where I am a volunteer indoor gardener, I spent my 3-hour shift reaching into out-of-the-way spaces to sweep, rinse, or wipe away fallen debris. I focused my efforts on the public area of the conservatory where new guests are more likely to see dusty surfaces that have escaped recent routine maintenance.

A similar form of untidiness is the sudden realization that a particular plant has grown immensely since the last time you noticed it. The leaves have overspread the space and blocked much of the sun light for everything below. It is time to prune away the excess.

My task for today included pruning the largest plant in the collection, a tree fern native to the small island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific. The fronds are each up to three meters long and span the width of the greenhouse room, encroaching into the neighboring space. Using large pruning shears, I was directed to cut down two of the fronds to allow more light to the plants underneath it.

Cyathea intermedia, perhaps one of the largest of the world's tree ferns.

Tree ferns are ancient plants, native to tropical and subtropical biomes. I've had the privilege of hiking in tree fern forests where the fronds grow up and out in huge fiddle head structures from the center of the trunk. Like all ferns, the fronds produce spores on the underside of each leaflet (in the greenhouse the spores fall to coat everything below in fine black dust). In the wild the spores go on to produce small intermediate plants with both male and female parts. The sperm and eggs from different plants recombine to form new ferns.

Fiddle heads of a tree fern, Hawaii's Volcano Nat'l Park

Tree fern shadow casting green filtered light onto the forest floor, New Zealand

A now-clean window sill helps to frame this Phaenocoma prolifera, cape strawflower from South Africa

A spot often missed in routine cleaning are the ledges underneath benches. They slowing collect fallen leaves and dust which potentially could include dormant pathogens waiting to find a plant victim.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more