Plant Rule #17

Every mounted Staghorn needs at least one companion...

Live Arts

Scadoxus and I visited Live Art Plantscapes this past Monday and saw some really neat plants.  We learned that the nursery is giving away 150 queen palms because they don't have the space for them in their new location.  The palms are in 30" boxes and are 20 feet tall.  If you want any you would have to pick them up in Northridge by December 31.

Palms make great hosts for orchids, bromeliads and other epiphytes.

Haul from Live Art Plantscapes...

Clockwise from top right...

Neoregelia Zoe
Neoregelia More Pepper Please
Neoregelia ampullacea
Neoregelia Medusa

Also saw this nice NOID Euphorbia...

It would potentially make a great phorobana.

Update: It's Euphorbia punicea... Jamaican Poinsettia

Village Green Plant Swap

On 21 October 2018 there will be a plant swap at Village Green.  I plan to attend!  There are lots... and lots... of plants that I'd like to share with others.  The question is... which plants are people interested in?  I'll post potential plants in this entry and in the Village Green Thumbs (VGT) group.  If you would like me to bring a plant for you then please let me know!

Seedlings

When I sow seeds I usually sow the seeds of a few different plants in the same pot.  This hedges my bets that something will germinate.  Usually there's decent germination so pretty much all the seedling pots will need to be divided.  The expectation is that people who receive a community pot (compot) will share any extra seedlings with other VGTs.  There's also the expectation that updates on the seedlings will be shared in the VGT Facebook group.  It will be very interesting, and informative, to see how much variation there is among the siblings.

Hoya Seedlings

These seedlings are from seeds that Tom gave me when we visited him in August.  I sowed the seeds on 15 Aug.  Here's a pic of the mother plant's buds, leaves and seeds...

Hoya Seeds

Here's a pic of the flowers...

Hoya Flowers

Does anybody recognize it?

Each pot might have the following seedlings...

Vriesea - John Arden hybrid (seeds from Sarah)
Anthurium schlechtendalii (seeds from Sarah)
Echeveria rosea

Columnea Elmer Lorenz

Not sure what its "real" name is... maybe it's Columnea crassifolia?  The leaves are certainly very succulent... for a Columnea.  My plant mentor Elmer Lorenz gave it to me several years ago and I've been really happy with it.  This epiphyte is exceptional because it stays in bloom for almost the entire year.   My friend Dave says the same is true of Columnea schiedeana.  I wonder which one would grow the best epiphytically.

Mixed Seedlings 5 Aug

I have 5 hanging baskets/pots that might contain the following seedlings...

Anthurium schlechtendalii (from Sarah)
Begonias cane type including Mabel's front porch (from Chris)
Echeveria ballsii - might be crosses with Echeveria macdougallii
Echeveria rosea
Kalanchoe uniflora
Orchid - most likely reed stem Epidendrum
Sinningia cardinalis - might be crosses with Sinningia leucotricha (from Michelle)
Vriesea - John Arden hybrid (from Sarah)

Quite a few of the seeds still haven't germinated. 

Mixed Seedlings 9 July 

I have 12 pots that might contain the following seedlings...

Begonia NOID

Begonia thiemei/carolineifolia (from Fernando)

Bletilla striata (from Fernando)
Echeveria (gibbiflora x rosea?)
Fern gametophytes/sporelings (from Monica)
Ruellia brevifolia
Ruellia elegans

More seedlings to follow!  Watch this space and the VGT Facebook group!

Plants

Lemmaphyllum microphyllum

This miniature fern from Japan is growing on a big bunch of New Zealand Sphagnum moss around three stories up on my tree.  Here's a closer pic...

I have 18 pots with small divisions of this fern.  The pots might also include small seedlings of the following...

Sinningia piresiana (my favorite Sinningia)
Vriesea John Arden hybrid (from Sarah)
Aloe hybrid (distans x bainesii?)
Aloe pluridens (maybe crossed with variegated arborescens)
Aloe nyeriensis (maybe crossed with kedongensis)
Aloe kedongensis (maybe crossed with nyeriensis)

The pots might also contain gametophytes of the following...

Dicksonia antartica
Cyathea australis
Blechnum nudum
Todea barbara
Lemmaphyllum microphyllum
Microsorum punctatum

The spore from the first four are from Laura and Patrick.

Begonia NOID

I grew this from some really old seed... does anybody recognize it?  You can't quite tell from the photos but the leaves and stems are kinda fuzzy.  I refer to it as my "Burnt" Begonia because it grew from its seedling pot into the lamp and its leaves would get singed.

Aloe cameronii

If it gets enough light this Aloe will color up nicely when it's cold/thirsty.

Tillandsia albertiana

It doesn't seem like there are many Tillandsias with red flowers.  In the pic you can see Tillandsia albertiana blooming on my tree.  When I visited Pat he shared a nice big clump with me, so I have extras available if anybody is interested.


More plants to follow!  Watch this space and the VGT Facebook group!


Cuttings

Plants that easily grow from cuttings are the best.

Kalanchoe uniflora

My favorite Kalanchoe!

Clerodendrum ugandense

Also known as Rotheca myricoides 'Ugandense'.

Solandra maxima

Commonly known as the Cup of Gold vine.

Epiphyllum oxypetalum

If you pollinate the flowers they will produce a fruit that is a little smaller than a dragon fruit.  Also, the flower petals are edible, they can be used for soups or salads.  The plant itself does not have any spines.

Selenicereus macdonaldiae

This climbing cactus produces what might be the largest cactus flower.  The stems have spines on them.

Hylocereus costaricensis

Dragonfruit!  This variety has red flesh.  The plant has spines and wants to climb.  Needs sun.

More cuttings to follow!  Watch this space and the VGT Facebook group!


Seeds

Delicious Epiphyllum

Julia shared an Epiphyllum fruit with me and it was so tasty that I very reluctantly decided to stop eating it and save the seeds. 

Pink Plumeria Tree

Scadoxus took this photo of a big Plumeria tree at Gary's place.  She happened to spot a seed pod which he gave to me.  I've sown a few of the seeds and they germinate pretty quickly.


More seeds to follow!  Watch this space and the VGT Facebook group!

Coherent Communities

In the thread that I created about growing succulents epiphytically, Stan replied and asked me about living walls.  Naturally I thought about my friend Erik Van Zuilekom.  He lives in Melbourne Australia and designs living walls.  We met on Flickr in 2013 when he sent me a private message asking me about watering the plants on my Cedar tree.  Here's his Flickr page. 

Erik and I are also friends on Facebook but it's been a while since I've checked out his personal page.  Recently I did so and found this pic...

Here's what he wrote...

Rainy day image. Rarely do I grow a single plant in a pot. Companion planting holds secrets. As I observe these species in habitat, it’s evident evolution is not about the individual, rather responses to relationship. Bromeliads collect water that overflows to their root base, where mosses and hepatics grow, further stimulating seed germination and eventually the influx of vascular plants.
The community of species is more resilient than the individual. - Erik Van Zuilekom

Exactly!

Thanks to this thread in the forum for Epiphytic Myrmecophytes, I learned that Stone Jaguar created a website... Exotica Esoterica, which contains many treasures such as this Bonsai Diorama.  I first learned about his exquisite companion planting when he shared it in this thread of mine in the Agaveville forum. 

What's the difference between grouping people and grouping plants?  In both cases, some combinations are certainly better than others.

Here's a pic of my tree in 2011...

The tripod is there because I was trying to take a picture of the orchid seeds that germinated on the bark.  You can see that the rabbit's foot fern (Davallia) was making its way to the sunny side of the tree.  At that point I think it had already smothered, and killed, a couple of orchids so I ended up removing it completely.  The variegated Monstera hadn't killed any of the other plants... yet... but it was quickly taking up more and more space that could be used by a wider variety of plants.  I didn't remove it entirely but I did remove the portion of the stem that was in the ground.  This slowed it down... and it survived for several years... until the drought caused me to reduce summer watering of the tree from 3x to 2x a week at night.  This was the last straw for the Monstera.

In this short-time lapse video, you can see Jerry, Gene, Fernando and I removing a Monstera from the base of Jerry's big Catalpa tree.  This freed up a lot of space that could be used to grow a wide variety of other plants.  The same thought came to mind when this past weekend I saw Gary's Jacaranda tree covered in monstera...

It's a matter of getting the balance right.

One of the most important parts to get right for companion planting is the host.  Pretty early on in my epiphyte experimentation I cut some large branches which I suspended and attached numerous orchids to.  The branches lasted for several years but eventually they deteriorated and the orchids had to be removed and remounted.  It's convenient to be able to use large hanging branches... so what's the solution?  What about Ficus?

Here's a companion planting that I created on Aug 16 this year...

It's a largish branch from my Cedar tree that has the following plants attached to it...

Ficus thonningii
Kalanchoe uniflora
Microgramma vaccinifolia
Platycerium willinckii (from Barbara Joe)
Worsleya procera (from Dave)

The Ficus was a well-rooted cutting that had been happily growing in a pot.  I removed it from the pot and washed off the dirt from its roots.  Next I tightly attached it to the Cedar branch and added quite a bit of New Zealand Sphagnum moss around its roots which I covered with shade cloth.  I stapled the shade cloth closed and cut a square on one side where I placed the Platycerium.  Not sure if it was necessary to remove a portion of the shade cloth... I'm guessing that the Platycerium would have rooted through it.  Before using fishing line to attach the Platycerium, I placed the Kalanchoe, Microgramma and Worsleya partially behind it.

I suspended the branch in the small area that I water most frequently and the Ficus pretty quickly started growing new roots.  Here, if you look closely, you can see one just starting to poke through the shade cloth...

The Kalanchoe roots, on the other hand, are going in the opposite direction.

So far the exposed Ficus roots have been "air-pruned"... but more and more of them keep poking through the shade cloth.  How much progress will they make over time?  Will they be the root equivalent of stalactites?  For those of you who still haven't seen it, the Ficus thonningii at the LA Arboretum has by far the best aerial roots of any tree in California. 

What will happen to the Worsleya procera?  It's a super nice, and quite expensive, bulb.  Dave was really generous to give me two seedlings that he grew from seed.  I put each one in pretty much pure pumice.  So far they've both been very slow... but one is faster than the other.  Somehow, even though it was on a second shelf, some cats managed to knock over the slower one.  I decided to give it more peat... and it seemed to respond to the additional moisture... but then I started getting nervous about it not having enough drainage during the winter.   When I unpotted it for inclusion in the companion planting, I noticed that the roots didn't look so great.  Now it gets frequent water but the drainage is excellent.  Not too long ago a new leaf started to emerge.   It might be because of the moist moss... or maybe it's because it now gets a lot more sun... as you can tell from the photo.

One potential problem is that the Ficus roots will quickly "use up" all the moss and not leave any for the Worsleya.  The two ferns will slowly make new medium but I think the Ficus will probably compete it away from the bulb.  The bulb would have faced even more competition for limited medium if I had included an orchid.  But there are some orchids that aren't very vigorous rooters so I might add one or two of those.

The Kalanchoe can get by without much medium.   Check out Erik's Kalanchoe uniflora.  Wow!  I wonder how much medium it has. 

By the time the Cedar branch starts to fall apart... will the Ficus branch be developed enough to carry the community?

The next month, on 20 Sept, I created another Ficus-based mount for the piece of Vanilla that Julia shared with me.  I met her through the LA/OC trading group on Facebook.  She easily has the biggest house-grown Vanilla that I've ever seen.  Here it is outside...

Here's the piece that she shared with me...

Here's a context photo...

The branch was freshly cut from my Ficus lutea tree.  To get the moss to stay on the branch I covered it with shade cloth which I stapled to the branch.  Here's what I included in this planting...

Aloe bellatula hybrid? seeds (from Julia)
Aloe Lavender Star seeds (from Julia)
Aloe tabletop NOID seeds (from Julia)
Ficus rubiginosa (from Julia)
Kalanchoe uniflora (one mine and the other from Sarah)
Microgramma vaccinifolia
Vriesea John Arden hybrid seeds (from Sarah)

Julia has a big beautiful Ficus rubiginosa tree that has aerial roots growing from relatively small branches.  She gave me a good-sized branch with lots of aerial roots.   I divided the branch so that each stem had aerial roots.  Here's one example...

Even though the divisions had plenty of aerial roots which were in plenty of New Zealand Sphagnum moss that I watered every night, the stems lost their leaves and appeared to desiccate.  My guess is that I cut the rooted portions of the branch too short.  : (   However, Julia also gave me plenty of seeds from her Ficus so I can sow those on the mounts.

Which Ficus would result in a better balance... thonningii or rubiginosa?  Chances are good that some other Ficus would be a better companion/host.  Recently Gene gave me some cuttings from three of his Ficus.  Hopefully they will root and I can experiment with them.

The Ficus lutea branch is still alive so there's a chance that it will root into the moss.  So far the Vanilla hasn't started to grow but it's perfectly turgid, thanks to the few aerial roots that it has in the moss.  Now really isn't the best time of year to try and get a Vanilla established outdoors.  Plus, the commercial varieties aren't big fans of our winters.  Back in Dec 2014 I was pretty surprised to see this Vanilla happily growing on some wood in Dave's patio (he lives in Eagle Rock)...

You can see in the foreground the main plant that was potted.  Dave wasn't exactly thrilled with having the Vanilla climbing where it was... so maybe he tried moving it?  Or maybe the cold deterred it.  In any case it is no longer there.

So far it seems like the best Vanilla for growing outside in SoCal is Vanilla chamissonis.  Here it is growing on Jeff's house in Echo Park...





That pic was taken in 2011... not sure whether it is still there.  The SBOE has this species for sale.

I have no idea how many different "clones" there are of the commercial variety of Vanilla... but there's going to be some variation in cold tolerance.  Maybe Julia's Vanilla is more cold tolerant than most?  Maybe it isn't.  Then again, maybe a mounted Vanilla would do better over winter than a potted one.  I might bring the mount inside or give it to somebody with a greenhouse.

The day after creating the Vanilla/Ficus mount I created an Aloe/Ficus mount...

On a freshly cut branch of Evergreen Pear (Pyrus kawakamii) I added the following plants...

Agave - very sad plain green miniature
Aloe bakeri
Aloe bellatula hybrid? seeds (from Julia)
Aloe ‘Carmine’
Aloe - hanging (from Geoff)
Aloe Lavender Star seeds (from Julia)
Aloe - miniature green lineata
Aloe - miniature green rounded
Aloe - semi-pendulous (from Elmer)
Aloe - tabletop colorful
Aloe - tabletop NOID seeds (from Julia)
Aloe - tabletop white (x 2)
Gasteraloe? - slender leaves (x 2)
Ficus rubiginosa
Ficus thonningii
Pyrrosia - nice one from tree fern

The Pyrus might root into the moss... but I doubt it.  The Ficus rubiginosa hasn't fared so well but the thonningii quickly established, even though it only had a few short roots on it.

For some reason the Aloe seeds haven't germinated yet.  Or maybe they have... but they are still inside the shade cloth? 

Usually I sow different seeds together.  For example...

There are seedlings of Bletilla striata and Begonia thiemei/carolineifolia from seeds that I received from Fernando.  I sowed them in July of this year.  If anybody local is interested in having one of the nine pots with these seedlings, I can bring them to the upcoming plant swap at Village Green. 

Right now the Village Green Thumbs group on Facebook has 7 members.  It has the potential to grow and produce some very exciting companion plantings. 

Growing Succulents Epiphytically

For Agaveville Forum

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

Ever wonder why humans are exceptionally intelligent?  My theory is that it's because walking upright gave us the ability to simultaneously carry many things, and deciding what to carry is cognitively challenging.  Correctly discerning what to keep, and what to discard, depends on using more brainpower to process more information.  I collect relevant passages... jettison... here's one that I found on this forum...

Also, I recall reading a post somewhere a few years back written by someone who said he knew DW, and went on to describe how DW had thousands of hybrids, and saved the best, and discarded (believe it or not!) MANY of his "rejects" into a canyon off his property. The story goes, he did this until he caught wind that others were scrounging his castoffs in that canyon, after which he started destroying them instead. - Spination, A couple more new to me hybrids

Recently I separated a bunch of Echeveria rosea seedlings...

I'm pretty sure that most of the larger seedlings have Echeveria gibbiflora as their father.  It was blooming at the same time in the same area as rosea.  Am I going to destroy any of these seedlings?  Nooooooo.  Echeveria rosea is my very favorite Echeveria, so I really want everybody to grow it and/or its hybrids.  I'm going to give all the seedlings away next month at the Village Green Thumbs plant trade.  My friend Scadoxus and I recently created that Facebook group for plant enthusiasts in her area (Culver City) to trade/share/sell plants.  One person's trash is another person's treasure.  

Echeveria rosea is primarily an epiphyte, but I've found that it isn't a drier grower.  It slowly declined  on my tree when I reduced watering from 3x to 2x a week at night during summer.  Echeveria gibbiflora, on the other hand, is not an epiphyte but it is a drier grower, so the seedlings on my tree had no problem with less frequent watering.  Unfortunately they tended to slowly break their own necks.  Here are a couple exceptions that are starting to spike...

These are more compact than the typical form, all of which broke their necks.  In the photo you can also see an orchid blooming and a dragon fruit blooming.  The dragon fruit is actually growing on the fence.  Here's a pic of the orchid...

Rhynchovola Jimminey Cricket (Brassavola nodosa × Rhyncholaelia digbyana) is a strong grower that blooms more often as it gets more pseudobulbs.  The flowers are pretty big, but they aren't very long-lived... and the color white really doesn't stand out on the tree.  Ideally when an orchid blooms on a tree every hummingbird in the neighborhood should be drawn to it.  

This orchid is definitely a relatively succulent orchid.  But I'd prefer if this thread was primarily about growing non-epiphytic succulents epiphytically.  For example...

Plectranthus spicatus has succulent leaves and does quite well on the tree.  You can see another Plectranthus that's thriving... but it isn't nearly as succulent... I don't know the name of it.  

In Feb 2016 I sowed a bunch of Golden Barrel Cactus (Echinocactus grusonii) seeds together with seeds from Reed Stem Epidendrums.  It turned out that birds really like to eat the cactus seeds.  Fortunately I didn't keep all my eggs in the same basket.  I put a few pots in buckets covered in clear plastic, here's one of them...

If you look closely you can see one reed-stem seedling... it's the only green thing in the pic.  The cactus won this round, maybe because the medium was too big for the tiny orchid seeds.  

I also sowed some of both seeds behind a mounted Platycerium, here's a recent pic...

There are actually quite a few seedlings competing for very limited resources.  Here's another mount that I sowed some of the seeds on....

In this case I think most of the cactus seeds, or seedlings, fell off.  Neither of these mounts were watered frequently enough for the reed-stem seeds to germinate and/or grow.  

Some of the cactus seedlings in pots are much bigger than the mounted seedlings.  But it's not like I really have the space for a mature Golden Barrel cactus.  The mounted seedlings won't get very large.... they will essentially be bonsai'd.  Well, in theory!

On Flickr I created a gallery of accidentally epiphytic cactus and here's a gallery of accidentally epiphytic succulents.  Anybody recognize this Aloe?  I'd love to know what it is because it's sure thriving on that tree.  Some of the stems of this Aloe are much longer and thicker than I realized when I first saw the pic.  I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I only just recently mounted my first Aloe... Aloe bakeri.  

For some reason you can't add your own photos to your own galleries, so I created an album for my photos of accidentally epiphytic plants.  There are a few succulents in it.

Three years ago at the Huntington I took this pic of an Aloe accidentally growing on a big cactus...

Anybody recognize the Aloe?   

Daniel Gledhill, who is very knowledgeable about tree Aloes and runs the Tree Aloe group on Facebook, said that he's seen Aloe thraskii growing epiphytically before.  He also informed me that Thomas Cole's Aloes of Uganda mentions that Aloe lukeana can be found growing on trees.

Why aren't there already the Aloe equivalents of epiphytic cactus?  Maybe it's because Aloe seeds are less likely to end up on trees than cactus seeds.  

Thanks to the Pinoy Epiphyte Addicts group on Facebook, I indirectly learned about a thread created in this forum for Agaves growing epiphytically.  Not sure how I managed to overlook that thread.  I didn't overlook the 2009 thread that Stone Jaguar created in the Growing on the Edge forum for Yucca lacandonica.  A Google search revealed a somewhat blurry picture of Agave mitis growing epiphytically in a cloud forest (Tamaulipas).   All these pics have got me really curious how a nondescript miniature Agave I have would do epiphytically.

A few years back, in the XericWorld forum, I created a thread for the same topic of growing succulents epiphytically.  I, and others, added quite a few pictures and links to the thread... it was really great!  But then one day the entire website was gone.  Evidently the owner decided that it was no longer worth carrying.  It was obviously his prerogative to make that decision, but his decision certainly wasn't informed by my valuation of my threads and other people's threads.  He knew the cost and benefit of the website for himself, but he didn't know the benefit of the website to others.  As a result, his cost/benefit analysis wasn't correct. 

Whether we're talking about a plant forum or an Aloe hybrid, correctly determining the actual worth of something depends on giving everybody the opportunity to share their valuations of it.    

Let's Have An Online Plant Show!

In this recent PalmTalk thread I shared a link to my previous entry as well as a couple ideas for plant societies...

1. create outdoor grow lists (ie Hoyas, Anthuriums)
2. have on online plant show

Tracy responded to the thread with some thoughts and this pic...

Platycerium superbum and Fernando

Wow!!!  I replied to Tracy that this Staghorn fern on a tree in SoCal is a perfect example of why we really need to have an online plant show.  Here's another perfect example...

Schomburgkia superbiens and Phil

Wow!!!  Phil shared this pic with me when he came over for a tour last week.  It was taken at the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate, which I've visited many times, but somehow never when this specimen was in bloom.   I was fortunate though that I was able to see another specimen in bloom at the SBOE...

Laelia gouldiana

How many trees in Southern California should have orchids, ferns and other epiphytes growing on them... but do not?  Too many!!!  So let's have an online plant show!

Ideas For Plant Societies

Bundles aren't inherently bad.  This entry, like most of mine, will bundle a few different ideas and topics together... but they will all be more, or less, relevant to the topic of plant societies.

My friend Monica is a member of the Epiphyte Society of Southern California (ESSC).  A few weeks ago she invited Dave and I over to see her place.   Dave is another ESSC member.  Last year she saw his collection but he still hasn't seen hers.  Unfortunately, he couldn't make it this time... so I asked another ESSC member, Scadoxus, to join me instead.  We'd both already seen Monica's nice collection but it's been at least a year so Scadoxus and I figured that it would be worth it to see it again.

The day before we visited Monica, Scadoxus and I had driven down to Cerritos to attend our very first meeting of the LA/OC plant trading group on Facebook.  In my previous entry I listed a few different seeds and cuttings that I was offering to anybody in that group who was interested in them.  The meeting started at 10 am and it was held in a public park.  It seemed like over 50 people showed up with a wide variety of plants to share and trade.  Some people also brought food and drinks.  Plus there was a plant raffle.

After the meeting ended at 11 am, Scadoxus and I drove a few miles away to attend a begonia sale that was being held at a private residence in Lakewood.  Scadoxus wasn't sure if it would be worth it to attend because it had started at 9 am and she figured that all the nice plants would be gone.  She was wrong though, we found a really nice thick-stemmed begonia (Begonia dichotoma?) for only $5 dollars.  Plus, she ended up getting a good deal on a burgundy plumeria.

The owner of the residence was a really nice lady by the name of Chris.  She gave Scadoxus and I a tour of her collection.  I'm grateful that she did!  Her collection was nicely balanced.  In her shade house she had a specimen Nepenthes that she generously shared cuttings of.  Plus I saw some especially nice Begonias...

Begonia 'Spotted Medora'

I really liked the form of this Begonia.  It was wonderfully shaped like a little tree, so of course I'd want to attach a few miniature epiphytes to it (ie Tillandsia tricholepsis).  I learned that this form is referred to as "standard".

Begonia 'Gryphon'

I really liked this thick-stem begonia, it reminds me of Begonia 'Kudos' (not its real name).

Begonia 'Joy Blair'?

So nice!  It looks like a relatively drought tolerant Begonia.  The label says "Joy's Garden, Joy Blair" but a Google search didn't reveal any relevant results.  I'd really love some seeds of this when it blooms.  Chris did let me collect some seeds from her nice cane Begonias.

After Scadoxus and I finished at the sale, we drove a few blocks away to visit ESSC member Steve.  I'd been to his place a few times before but Scadoxus had never been.  One of Steve's very favorite things is variegated plants... he has many many many different ones.

Steve's Front Yard

Lawn!?  He says that each year the border moves a foot.  From my perspective the rate is too slow.  There should already be a variegated Aloe Hercules right in the center.

Adenia perrieri

Steve had recently acquired this really cool plant with variegated snowflake leaves.

Even though Steve and Chris both love plants and live only a few blocks away from each other for many years... they didn't even know of each other's existence.  Let's say that they had become friends as soon as the second one had moved into the neighborhood.  How different would their collections now be?  I think it's a given that their collections would be better... otherwise there'd be no point in making plant friends!

My first job was working in a privately owned orchid greenhouse.  It was the summer after my freshman year in high school and my task was to divide and repot Cattleyas.  The owner of the greenhouse didn't have any mounted orchids, neither did he have any orchids outside the greenhouse.  I asked him if any of the orchids in the greenhouse could grow outside but he didn't know.  He did however very generously give me a couple big garbage bags full of backbulbs.  I remember excitedly attaching them to the trees in my backyard.  Alas, they all died... except for one Oncidium which managed to put some roots on the tree... which were promptly eaten by slugs.  Still, the fact that I had managed to achieve even a little success fueled my interest in growing orchids on trees.

It was several years later, probably when I was in my senior year of high school that, after lots of trial and error, and after many orchid causalities, I learned the reason why the all the other orchids in my first batch had died.  It had nothing to do with them being unsuitable for growing on trees... it was simply because I didn't attach them tight enough.  And in the case of the Oncidium, I had attached it too low on the tree.

Some time after college I joined the Orchid Society of Southern California (OSSC) and I took the opportunity to look through their collection of old AOS magazines.  I found a really excellent article by Susan M. Stephenson... Orchids Outdoors in Southern California.  It turned out that, at the same exact time that I was an ignorant but enthusiastic kid struggling to grow orchids on my trees... just on the other side of town there was a fellow by the name of Bill Paylen who had lots of orchids happily growing on his trees.  We didn't even know of each other's existence.  If we had, I'm sure that my collection would be a lot better than it currently is.

After finding Stephenson's article I digitized it and sent it to the AOS so that they could put it on their website.  It's been a decade since they did so... how much difference has the article made?  How much difference will this blog entry make in a decade?

The day after attending the Cerritos plant trade, the begonia sale, and visiting Steve's garden, Scadoxus and I visited Monica on the westside.  She has several trees covered in bromeliads, orchids, ferns and all sorts of other plants.  Somehow I didn't take any pictures.  I should have taken pictures.

When Monica visited my place a couple weeks earlier she told me that on her way to work she passed a house with a tree that had big bromeliads in it.  I asked her if she had ever talked with the owners but she said that she was always running late.  When Scadoxus and I were about to leave Monica's place, I asked her how far away the house with the bromeliad tree was.  She said that it wasn't far and told us the street that it was on, but she couldn't remember the closest cross street.

Scadoxus and I decided that it wouldn't hurt to check it out.  We found the right street and and shortly afterwards we spotted the right tree...