random pics relevant to fruit - part 2

more fruity pics for tropical fruit forum...

diversity and productivity sitting in a tree

reply to my thread about florida natural farming (fnf)...

****************************

when i was a kid i would religiously read the peanuts comic strip. lucy would often offer to balance a football so that charlie brown could kick it. each time, at the very last second, she would pull it away and he would fall flat on his back.

fnf has several large inga trees and each time he says that they are going to finally fruit, but every time, at the very last minute, they trick him.  it’s a bit entertaining and endearing.  

i don’t think that i’ve ever heard fnf mention that fruit trees near the ingas grow extra fast, which is interesting because check this out…

the cacao on the left isn’t growing anywhere near any ingas, while the cacao on the right is growing in an inga alley. fake news? the slide is from this video on inga alley cropping, which i only recently learned about thanks to the wikipedia article on mycorrhiza. here’s the wikipedia article on inga alley cropping.

naturally i was quite curious if it has ever been discussed here on tff, and it has been, albeit briefly…about the inga genus. in that 2017 thread there were only 4 participants, one of which was pineislander. he was there. where were we? not there.

one time, nearly a decade ago, at an orchid show i started talking with a random guy. he mentioned something about the orchidboard, and i told him that i was on there as well. i asked him what his username was. when he said what it was, i realized that he was the guy on there who told me to go f myself because he thought my views on orchid conservation were heretical.

flauro01, hint matthew 5:38? nope, i didn't turn my other cheek, i quickly lost all interest in talking with the guy and exited stage left. if i had been a little forgiving then i'm sure that i would have learned some useful stuff from him.

i only made 1 comment on fnf's videos, and he deleted it. in his video he said something about being overwhelmed trying to do everything on his own, so i commented that i’ve met a lot of young and enthusiastic plant people via my local facebook plant group who have been more than willing to lend a hand in my garden. my comment wasn't even vaguely negative or critical, so the fact he deleted it was very off-putting. fortunately, in this case, being so much older and wiser (hah) i just barely managed to turn the cheek and i continued to watch his videos, and i’ve learned useful stuff from them.

sure, it would greatly help fnf's cause if he was more like fff planting garcinias together with an enthusiastic young person, but that's just not who he is. just like most of us don't regularly video document our garden efforts, endeavors and experiments. we all have room for improvement.

in my book, fnf's shortcomings are eclipsed by his crazy cool achievement of growing such a wide variety of crazy cool plants without any irrigation. so it's awesome to see him back on this forum again. if we can all try to turn the cheek, then there's lots of useful stuff that we can learn from each other, such as whether ingas actually do help nearby fruit trees grow faster, via mycorrhizae.

in the wikipedia entry on mycorrhizae there’s a section on orchids. orchids are unique in that their seeds do not contain the energy that they need to germinate (exceptions to the rule). on the one hand, this allows the incredibly small seeds to travel considerable distances on the wind, but on the other hand, the only way that they can germinate is if they get lucky enough to land on a spot where they will be penetrated by a suitable  mycorrhizae. the orchid seed will take the energy it needs to germinate from the fungus, but it doesn't kill it. the fungus takes up residence in the roots of the seedling.  if the orchid seedling is growing on a tree (epiphyte!), then as its roots grow longer and more numerous, this will help the fungus colonize the tree and more of its spores will spread to other trees, which will help to germinate the orchid's seeds.

here's my 2014 attempt to illustrate orchid roots facilitating fungi colonization of its tree...

in 2011 i sowed a bunch of different orchid seeds on my deodar cedar tree here in the los angeles area that has orchids and other epiphytes growing on it. i was hoping that some of their roots contained the helpful fungus and it had spread all over the tree, but i wasn’t holding my breath. so it was a very surreal surprise, to say the least, when i noticed several tiny green boogers (aka protocorms) magically appear on the sunny side of the tree on completely barren bark...

i immediately started to inspect every inch of the tree and found several dozen protocorms. what was rather fascinating, is that all of the protocorms were located within 1/2" of the roots of the mature orchids on the tree. evidently, in my dry conditions, that was as far as the helpful fungus could travel from its moist home inside the succulent orchid roots.

it turned out that all the orchid seeds that germinated on my tree were from laelia anceps, an orchid native to mexico. another fascinating thing is that the orchid roots in the above picture were from a dendrobium speciosum, which is a distantly related orchid native to australia. the two orchids are so distantly related that they can't be crossed. i also found laelia anceps protocorms growing right next to roots of vanda tricolor, a distantly related orchid native to indonesia. these two orchids are even more distantly related, given that their forms are completely different (sympodial vs monopodial).

where was the fungi from? was it just 1 variety? in any case, it’s important to appreciate that the fungi facilitated an exchange of resources between very distantly related orchid species.

it took nearly a decade for the 1st laelia anceps seedling to bloom.

a couple years ago i removed a division from the 2nd laelia anceps seedling to bloom on my tree and i sent it to my online friend keith in tampa so that he could attach it to his tree in order to try to innoculate it with the beneficial fungi in the orchid’s roots. he actually recently upgraded to a real life friend when i met him in person. a couple months ago i visited florida for the 1st time and he was nice enough to give my friend and i a garden tour. keith is so cool. he's young but already so knowledgeable. he's trying to select coconuts for cold tolerance. and he has a big vanilla (pompona?) vine growing on his tree…

random pics relevant to fruit

the tropical fruit forum doesn't have a function to upload pics.  just how useful is this function anyways?  the correct answer can only be determined by each forum member using their donations (to the forum) to communicate their own personal perception of this function's usefulness.  in the meantime, i'll use this entry to post pics for use on the forum.

pot optimization

i've always grown some tropical fruit trees, but recently i've become a "bit" more interested in them.  the following post is for the tropical fruit forum...optimal pot riddle.

************************************

"if you really want to give something a head start, put it in a deep, deep ass pot." - flyingfoxfruits 

"after 10+ years of side-by-side tests of different pots, i'm sold on the fabric pots, at least for my conditions." - coplantnut, experiments with container-grown mangosteen in colorado

"neither, after trying both pots you mentioned and the fabric pots, I have finally switched to regular nursery pots coated with microkote." - simon_grow, which is better? air-pots versus rootmaker's rootbuilder II 

when i 1st moved into my place i dug a bunch of holes to plant trees.  if i was lucky i would find a marble.  i'd tell my girlfriend at the time that i had a valuable surprise for her and she was nice enough to pretend to be happy to receive a random marble.  she ended up filling half a jar with them.

when i 1st joined this forum a little over a year ago i have to admit that i didn't do much digging to find old but valuable threads.  the other day though, when i decided to share some of my thoughts on pots, i figured it would be a good idea to 1st dig to try and find some buried treasure.

here are some of the more or less relevant things i unearthed...

side by side microkote experiment - graftingavocados

why do my jackfruit seedlings always fail? - daintree

garcinia seedlings (confessions of a repot head) - ethan

sourcing tree pots - zephian

jabuticaba: how to grow them? - huertasurbanas

greenhouse, rootmaker pots for tropicals and fruit "porn" - mark in texas

air pruning pots--opinions? - starling1

100% synthetic potting mix? - josh-los-angeles

mangosteen and lychee, growing in warm enclosure - socal2warm

did i overlook the most useful content about pots?  if so, please share it.  overlooking the best things in life is one of the worst things in life.  like the time i went to puerto vallarta 25 years ago and overlooked luc's garcinia.

if we could use our donations (to the tff) to determine the creation and order of forum categories, how much would we donate for the topic of pots?  in my previous thread i didn't include the topic of pots among the top three topics that i'd be willing to donate for.  maybe that was a mistake.

prior to digging for pot threads, i had never heard of microkote before, which was curious since it seemed quite useful, but i don't remember it being mentioned in any relatively recent threads.  so i googled within this site and found 1 microkote search result since 2018.  

then i found 0 "semi-hydro" search results since forever.

which is more useful... semi-hydro or microkote or...?

naturally we all have different conditions, so something that is useful in wet conditions, for example, might be useless in dry conditions.  optimal is relative, kinda.

a year ago i visited the salton sea for the 1st time and was intrigued that the shore consisted of a very loose mix of barnacle shells, fish bones and sand.  i asked my friend whether it might make a good medium and she replied something like, no way, it's toxic!  i replied, hold my beer.  i found a random empty 5 gallon pot, filled it with the seashore medium, took it home and rinsed it several times.  then i stuck two well callused aloe cuttings (tenuior and my tenuior hybrid) into the medium in a 1 gallon pot.  for the sake of comparison i stuck two more cuttings in pure pumice and two more cuttings in cat liter (my ex left it)...

the cat liter was an obvious fail, guess it was the wrong kind.  but surprisingly the salton sea medium seemed to work.  here's a recent pic...

the roots...

the left two aloes were in the salton seashore medium, the two on the right were in pure pumice.  the roots that were in pumice look a bit better so it seems reasonable to say that with these two aloes, and in my relatively drier conditions, pumice is a bit more optimal than the salton seashore.   but perhaps in wetter conditions the seashore medium would be a bit more optimal.

Upcoming Fern And Exotic Plant Show

This Friday, Saturday and Sunday I'll be selling some plants at the Fern and Exotic Plant Show which will be held at the Los Angeles Arboretum.  

Naturally I'll be selling some mounts, for example...

This mount, which is up for auction, includes...

1. Aeschynanthus bolero bicolore
2. Ceropegia woodii variegata
3. Dischidia oiantha
4. Hatiora epiphylloides ssp. bradei
5. Hatiora salicornioides fa. Bambusoides
6. Hoya BP-03
7. Hoya burtoniae? 
8. Hoya engleriana
9. Hoya nummularioides
10. Microgramma squamulosa
11. Peperomia NOID 1
12. Peperomia NOID 2 
13. Philodendron paraiso verde (reverted)
14. Schlumbergera NOID 

Here are some pics from previous shows...

Outdoor grown Hoya revolubilis specimen, one of my fav fav Hoyas.  

Tillandsia flabellata.  Sadly I killed mine recently, probably because I didn't mount it.  

Hoya Mathilde (carnosa x serpens) outdoor grown specimen.  

Platycerium andinum (left) and Platycerium Dragon, both are good outdoor growers here.

Begonia bogneri in a terrarium.

The Point Of Diversity Is Adaptability

My comment on: Rapid morphological evolution in the Silvereye: random processes or selection?

*************************************

Much of this is over my head, so I'm probably not appreciating the gist of the study.  Just finished reading/skimming the paper.  I wish that there had been some, or any, discussion of the rather significant difference in climate between Tahiti and New Zealand.  

Here in the Los Angeles area my friend and I often share plants with each other.  She lives closer to the coast than I do so her conditions are more intermediate than mine.  For a while now I've been wanting to try conducting a simple experiment to quantify the variation in temperature preference in a batch of seeds.  We'd sow the seeds from a single pod of say Begonia fischeri (the only "weedy" Begonia here) and then split the pots.  When the seedlings were a few inches tall we'd share half of the largest ones with each other.  So we'd each have two batches of seedlings.  Then we would compare the disparity in blooming time.  The greater the disparity, the greater the variation in temperature preference, the more adaptable the species.  

If you took a dozen Silvereyes from Tahiti, a dozen from New Zealand, and introduced them to two different islands in say Hawaii, we can reasonably guess that the Tahiti ones would colonize their island faster.  How much faster though?  The disparity would quantify the adaptability of this species.  The disparity would be even greater if it was 100 rather than 12 birds initially introduced.  What about if a third island was colonized with a 100 crosses between the two populations?  They'd fall somewhere in the middle?  Or perhaps they would win as a result of greater variation in other factors such as body/brain/beak/wing size?  

Right now there's discussion, or maybe even efforts, to eradicate hybrids between native iguanas and invasive ones.  The goal is ostensibly to prevent the loss of diversity.  But I think the scientists are somehow missing that the very point of diversity is adaptability.  It's entirely possible that the hybrids will be better than the parents at adapting to rapid climate change.  Perhaps our own very existence is due to greater climate adaptability conferred by our ancestors mixing with more cold tolerant neanderthals.  

The Epiphytic Bundling Method

There's always a better way to do things.  But so far, in my experience, the most efficient way to attach epiphytes to branches is the bundling method.  This is simply where you use fishing line to attach some plants to a dense pad of moss, and then use fishing line to attach the bundle to a branch.  

For example, a couple weeks ago I attached the simplest bundle to Carol's avocado tree.  First I put a layer of wet NZ Sphagnum moss on a paving stone on my lap.  I sprinkled some Osmocote on top...

Then I put on another layer of wet moss...

Next I added Cycas debaoensis and Disocactus amazonicus as well as another layer of wet moss...

In most cases I put the entire plant including the roots on top of the moss.  In this case though I decided to cover the roots.  I firmly and repeatedly pressed down on the moss for a while before using fishing line to tie it all together...

Then I added a small piece of live green moss on top.  If the moss establishes then it will actually create more medium.  

Lastly I used fishing line to attach the bundle to the tree directly above a Platycerium superbum...

Virtually all plants LOVE growing in Staghorns, hence Rule #17.  

I feel like the key part is that the moss must be tightly compacted.  If the moss is too loose then it will dry out a lot faster.  So this is why when I make a bundle I use wet moss.  Naturally it is easier to press down than dry or damp moss.  It also helps to use a lot of fishing line.  I use enough fishing line so that there is around a half inch between loops.  

Here's a bundle that I made a decade ago... 

I attached the bundle to my tree and the only plant still alive is the Anthurium scandens (xerophytic form).  You can see more pics here... Epiphyte Grand Prix.  

One version of the bundling method is to first attach the plants to a flat piece of wood.  Then, when the plants are very established, they can be easily removed and attached to a branch.  I used this method with some ferns...

The ferns included Lepisorus bicolor, Drynaria sparsisora and a NOID Pyrrosia.  It is just over a year later and all three ferns are still alive on Carol's avocado tree.  

Here's another version...

It looks like I attached three bundles to both pieces of wire mesh.  But I didn't.  Instead I put the moss and plants on top of the mesh and attached them using fishing line.  It wasn't very easy.  The two bundles went on Carol's avocado tree as well, right next to Cattleya orchids.  

On my own tree in a few cases the bundles started to dislodge themselves when the fishing line quit working.  The branches were too smooth for the plants to really root onto.  In situations like this it is a good idea to put the bundle next to a Cattleya.  The orchid roots will quickly grow into the bundle and attach it to the branch.  

Speaking of orchid roots...

A year or two ago I easily removed this clump of orchids and succulents (Kalanchoe uniflora is so good!!!) from my tree.  I think they had grown into a space that I needed to be in when I climb the tree.  They essentially formed a bundle.  I took the bundle to a cozy plant party where I split it up to share.  Carol got a piece that I attached to her tree.  She also won a piece that I auctioned, which I attached to a piece of wood...

Largish plants are generally easier to bundle...

This bundle, which went on Carol's tree, included Hoya bella, Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, Hatiora gaertneri and Hoya carnosa Chelsea.

Today I made a couple bundles of mainly small plants...

It was rather painstaking to try and avoid putting the fishing line directly on top of any leaves.  Part of the problem was that I probably included too many plants!  

In terms of plant selection, naturally you want to bundle plants with more or less the same requirements.  Some disparity in requirements is ok because conditions change, which is why the only survivor of my 1st Epiphyte Grand Prix was the Anthurium scandens.  It was more drought tolerant than its competition.  

In theory it might be a good idea to include the least related plants in a bundle...

Since then, many experiments have shown that multi-species plots are more productive. Cadotte's experiment showed for the first time that species with the greatest evolutionary distance from one another have the greatest productivity gains. 

[...]

What's going on isn't mysterious, Cadotte says. Distantly related plants are more likely to require different resources and to fill different environmental niches -- one might need more nitrogen, the other more phosphorus; one might have shallow roots, the other deep roots. So rather than competing with one another they complement one another. - Productivity Increases With Species Diversity, Just as Darwin Predicted

Plants I typically include in a bundle are...

Aroid - ie Anthurium scandens

Cactus - ie Rhipsalis

Crassulaceae - Kalanchoe uniflora

Fern - ie Microgramma vaccinifolia

Gesneriad - ie Columnea Elmer 

Hoya or Dischidia - ie Hoya serpens 

Peperomia - ie Peperomia pecuniifolia

One of each is a pretty good bundle.  

Typically I don't include orchids, since most of my favorite orchids are safer without moss, but there are some exceptions... such as Dockrillia pugioniformis.  If I had enough of it I would probably include it in most bundles.  

In terms of Begonias, I don't usually include any in bundles.  There has to be a good one for SoCal bundles but I haven't found it yet.  Maybe the closest that I can think of is Begonia fisheri.  Looking at the above list though, all the example plants are more or less trailers, which B. fisheri is not.  Begonia solananthera is a trailer but I somehow killed the cutting that Michelle gave me and I'm too embarrassed to ask for it again.  

I'm finally growing Begonia radicans!  Hopefully it will become the one Begonia that I typically include in bundles!  

The main motivation for this blog entry is that this week I sent some plants to my new friend Keith in Tampa Florida...

Orchids...

Dockrillia lichenastrum x teretifolium

Dockrillia pugioniformis

Encyclia nematocaulon seed pod 

Epidendrum Little Miss Sunshine

Epiphronitis Veitchii 

Lambara Five Aces

Laelia anceps division from seed germinated on tree

Laelia (lundii & purpurata) 

Laeliocattleya Clayton Waglay 

NOID seedling germinated on tree 

Prosthechea vitellina x Green Hornet

Psychilis macconnelliae X Myrmecophila thompsoniana aurea

Others…

Anthurium lanceolatum 

Anthurium scandens (xerophytic)

Columnea Elmer cutting x 2 

Columnea schiedeana cutting 

Crassula spathulata cuttings x 6

Dischidia sp Irian Jaya

Echeveria rosea 

Hoya australis keysii

Hoya serpens 

Kalanchoe Orangery (K. manginii × K. jongmansii)

Kalanchoe Tessa (K. gracilipes x K. manginii)

Kalanchoe uniflora x 2 

Lemmaphyllum microphyllum (from nursery)

Lemmaphyllum microphyllum (from my tree x 2)

Microgramma vaccinifolia x 2 

Peperomia pecuniifolia

Peperomia villosa

Rhipsalis clavata 

Rhipsalis NOID Puerto Rico x 2 

Selenicereus inermis

Tillandsia aeranthos x 4

Tillandsia albertiana 

Tillandsia bandensis 

Tillandsia capillaris

Tillandsia capillaris 'Pitchfork' 

Tillandsia edithae

Tillandsia funckiana 

Tillandsia ionantha 

Tillandsia myosura (adult and seedling)

Tillandsia Mystic Albert (albertiana x stricta)

Tillandsia retorta 

Tillandsia tricholepis

Tillandsia usneoides

Vriesea flammea

He initially asked me for some recommendations of orchids to attach to his tree.  I ended up becoming too curious about how some of my fav epiphytes would do Florida.  I told him about my bundling technique but figured that it would be worth it to post some pics.  Voila!

Hopefully you've all been inspired to attach bundles of plants to all the branches in the world!  Please let me know if you think of a more effective or efficient way to attach a wide variety of plants to trees.