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WEIRD BUT LOVABLE
BY There are a number of us who have been labeled “plant crazy”. We snoop around constantly in logical or not so logical places to find a plant we have never had before. When we do find one it is likely to be the only one of its kind in the store and shoved to the back of the shelf or table. Many of my most interesting plants have been this way. Quite often there are not instructions for care, amount of sun or shade, etc. It may or may not have a name tag but perhaps enough so that I can find it in my encyclopedia.* If you like to make your own jewelry, get some “Jobs Tears” (Coix lacryma) seeds. They look like corn coming up. You treat it the same and it will get to about 3 feet tall. The “tears” are the seed and when ripe are about 1/2 inches long, hard, shiny, and drop shaped. They can be white, gray, or purple. They have a hole in the middle of the seed so all you have to do is string them together or you can paint them. A Buckeye seed every so often really looks nice with them. Save some of your seeds to plant next year. If you don’t pick all of the seeds before winter, I can guarantee a thick crop next spring.
This spring I found a Brazilian Firecracker (Manettia cordifolia)
that is a dainty vine that grows 6 to 12 feet tall on a trellis.
The blooms will be a bright red tube about an inch long with a
yellow mouth from Have you ever grown Kangeroo Paws (Amgozanthos sp.)? I have had both yellow and red paws. Red, hairy never branched stems came up about 18 inches (in my pots). The flowers with 2 lips are hairy, tubular, about 2 inches long and curl like a paw.
Adenum obesum, the Desert Rose, is one of my favorites because it
is so different. The
“obesum” part comes from its stem as this is where it stores water
during the rainy season in
Redbirds in a Tree (Scraphularia macrantha), a native
of New Mexico, is humming bird friendly, bright red about 3 foot
high and 18 inches wide. The
stem has at its very top a length of tubular flowers and with a good
imagination you can think of them as tiny birds, and the tip as an
“indented “head” with a white tip. I have not had it last for more than
2 years and usually can not find a new one very often here in
Last year BJ found an Allamanda (Allamanda carthartica)
somewhere. It is not hardy here so spent its summer in a pot and in the
garage all winter. Luckily I
have a two car garage that is insulated and only one car, so a number of
large pots do well with two 300 watt bulbs on at least 12 hours a day.
The Allamanda is a shrub from Three years ago I found a very small plant called “Pink Octopus” with a few strange looking blooms. Now it isn’t very tall, 18 inches by 24 inches wide. This Campanula (I don’t know the species) has bell flowers that are split about halfway down and then curve upward (supposedly the octopus arms). The tag said Campanula but no species name. My encyclopedia* says there are 300 species and I already have other ones so I will probably never know just who it is. It certainly is different and fun to see.
In one of my pots I have a Copyright 2012 *Reference: The encyclopedia I refer to and quote from quite often is: “American Horticultural Society A TO Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants” Copyright 1996 Pages 1-1095 have many photographs of the plants in color. “American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers” First American edition fully revised and updated. Copyright 2002 Original edition copyright 1989 This large book with 719 pages contains a listing, with full description, characteristics, and cultivation of more than 8,000 plants and that are suitable for growing in a temperate garden worldwide. More than half include colored pictures.
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