The Shadehouse

next week:

four more aroids to add to my collection and ill finally get around to blogging my orchids!

ant plants are weird

but that never stopped me.

plants adapt to their environment in strange, varied and wonderful ways; many connect their roots to fungi to supplement their nutrition, some house bacteria in their roots for nutrition, some take their nutrients from the air, some capture and digest animal prey and excrement for nutrients and a few have poorly developed root systems and let ants bring them their nutrients.

these last ones are called ant plants.

ants find the plant and set up a colony inside. its true mutual symbiosis: the ants have a home with chambers catering to their needs and the plants have guardians making sure their house is healthy by fending off possible herbivores and bringing the plant nutrients from the outside, from far further than the plants roots could ever reach.

within the ant plant are chambers called domatia. some domatia are set up to be ideal nurseries for baby ants, some are set up to be ideal royal chambers fro the queen, and some are set up as graveyards and landfills, where the ants deposit dead matter for the plant to take up and live off.

EVOLUTION, YOU SO CRAYZAY

MY ANT PLANTS

i have three ant plants, two Myrmecodia beccarii and a Hydnophytum moseleyanum.

i didnt have a uniform code for all my plants til this year so the dead ones are left out of my records RIP

i had two Myrmecodia spp. and a Hydnophytum moseleyanum a year ago, but only one M. beccarii survived winter 2011 :(

i call it Myrmecodia beccarii 1a

snails ate a chunk of its caudex, but it perseveres :)

this year i bought two more ant plants to replace the dearly departed:

Myrmecodia beccarii 2a (stem close-up)

(whole plant)

and Hydnmophytum moseleyanum 1a (so pissed of about this one; it was healthy and big and the pictures on ebay were accurate, but then the seller sent it in a small box and had to bend the stems to fit it in the box, so the plant arrived with snapped stems. im fuming)

the best thing about these ant plants is that theyre NATIVE!

they come from QL not my home of VIC but still native is native right??

and at any rate if i can successfully grow an endangered species im doing my part for conservation :D

NATIVE SPECIES TRADE WITHIN AUSTRALIA

a lot of my native things come with permit numbers if they were collected in the wild

if a forest is condemned to be chopped up, for instance, some nurseries take out a buttload of permits and go around ripping endangered stuff out and selling their excess on ebay, the resulting plants are sold with their permits attached. this happens mostly for slow growing stuff like Xanthorrhoea spp. and tree ferns or collectibles like orchids and ant plants. i think its a good system because the nursery conserves the otherwise-destroyed genotypes and it gives us home growers a chance to try a hand at conservation ourselves

so yeah, ant plants.

IF IM RAMBLING AND NOT MAKING SENSE ITS BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN DRINKING AT CROWN :)

<3

persona-4:

“Lay down and die already!” - Kanji.

oh kanji, why cant you be real and australian?

i hate having fictional crushes

off topic, but what of it come at me bro

</3

Deliveries: watch me fit $46.50 into the space of $2

two deliveries arrived over the last week, and my Amorphophallus spp. collection continues to grow! (IM SO PUNNY! HAHA!… )

first to arrive was a big A. paeoniifolius tuber weighing 702g. i have two other small ones, but this big one showed up on ebay n i humoured myself a $21 bid. luckily there happened to be no competition for it so i scored a bargain :D

meet Amorphophallus paeoniifolius 3a:

a few days later another A. paeoniifolius tuber auction by the same seller ended. that one weighed 2.2kg and went for $130! oh snap!

my next arrival is something id been looking forward to ever since i started collecting aroids, so despite how underwhelming it appears, its fricken magical in my eyes.
with the diametre of a $2 coin and weighing a whopping 3g, meet Amorphophallus dunnii 1a!!!

im so excited about this one!! the auction was intense too, but i got it in the end, so i laugh last >:D

<3

Hi, cool blog! I also grow Amorphophallus, and I chronicle (to some degree) my adventures with them on blogspot (weirdflowers). I've tried tumblr a couple of times, but can't keep it going for long. Anyhow, looks like you've got a good Amorphophallus collection there, and your Stapelia are beautiful as well--happy growing, etc :)

chlorophantastyc

thanks a bundle, really :D
ive also got some orchids, carnivores n cacti that i havent gotten around to cataloguing yet so bear with me
which country are you from btw?

my first follower who isnt a friend or spambot yay!

tomorrow: the world

aroid dormancy continues: Amorphophallus konjac 2a and 3a

Amorphophallus konjac 2a just went into dormancy, with good news!

here it is:

last year it was 42g, now its 115g!

no offsets on this guy, but hes done a good job almost tripling in size :)

well done, Amorphophallus konjac 2a!

and later in the day i dug up this guy:

Amorphophallus konjac 3a was 191g last year, and today its weight came in at 874g!!

HOLY BALLS!

THATS MORE THAN FOUR TIMES THE PREVIOUS WEIGHT!!

LOOK:

(oh yeah i outline each dormant tuber when i dig them up so i can have a record of the shape/diametre growth each year)

there are two offsets that will probs fall off soon, so ill re-record the weight once those have fallen off

and speaking of the offsets, i noticed a weird jelly leaking from the side of one of the offsets. is that a horribly bad thing? is that why so few offsets are surviving? are they simply leaking away to nothing? is the jelly catching rot?

theres a hole in the side and thats where the jelly is leaking from, so maybe its some insect thing happening. the jelly smells like fish eww

anyway its probs not flowering size just yet, i give it another year, i think they start flowering around the 1.5kg mark, but i guess ill find out in years to come

its my biggest tuber so far!

<3

dormant aroids!

my aroids are going dormant, not just the Amorphophallus spp. but also my Typhonium/Sauromatum venosum are having a brief dormancy before taking off again

photos and stats!

some of these were only bought through the summer so havent actually grown under my care yet, others are still growing since the last set of pictures.

*asterisk means theyre showing signs of waking up from dormancy, which worries me because im heading into winter :s

this list is only ones dormant right now, all others are omitted

GO LIST KAPOW:

Amorphophallus bulbifer
4 a 164g (down from 348g last dormancy :s)
b 18g (new offset from 4a)
Amorphophallus coaetaneus
1 a (no photos or records yet because i dont want to disturb it while it wakes up)*
Amorphophallus hirsutus
1 a 10g (fairly recent purchase, no previous records)*
Amorphophallus kiusianus
1 a 4g (fairly recent purchase, no new records)*
2 a 6g (forgot to take a photo sorry, but it has a massive split in the tuber, looks like pacman from above, should i worry about this? also no previous records)*
Amorphophallus konjac
1 a 352g (up from 97g as stated in my post before)
Amorphophallus muelleri
2 a 310g (no previous records) Amorphophallus opertus
1 a 14g (no previous records)*
Amorphophallus paeoniifolius
1 a 3g (this ones weird, i got it 2010/2011 summer, but it grew through winter, stupidly i didnt take any records of it, but it grew pretty well, going dormant right before spring. when this last summer came up i thought it would emerge with the rest of them, but instead it just rotted through, leaving a tiny 3g tuber left, its waking up so im not disturbing it for a photo)*
Amorphophallus prainii
1 a 51g (no previous recods)*
Typhonium/Sauromatum venosum
1 a 18g (down from 26g last year, i think i reduced watering these ones too soon and sent them into early dormancy, the old tubers are still attached)*
2 a 21g (still 21g from last year, but last year it was a single tuber. old tuber still attached)*
3 a 39g (down from 54g last year, old tuber still attached)*

and there we have it, my sleeping aroids. a lot of my other A. spp.are in the process of falling asleep, so ill make another post later with dormancy records and photos of the ones not included here

<3

eetan