Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day-May, 2014

Seriously? I haven't done one of these since November?? I was thinking February, at worst January. Sheesh. Well, happy GBBD, everyone! I am doing a super abbreviated tour of my yard today, but first, here's what's blooming in my house!

I'm not sure what kind of orchid these are, but they are part of a bouquet that hubs brought home about a week ago. 

I love that they look like somebody cartoon painted them and then sprinkled them with gold and silver fairy dust.

OK, let's go outside because one of my favorite flowers is blooming today! It's a daylily, and that's about all I can tell you. That, and it smells fabulous. Here you go:

 

When I went outside at 6:11 this morning, she was just thinking about waking up to greet the day. Looks like she got a little fairy dust on her as well. 

An hour later she was pretty much wide awake...

and just needed that extra half hour for the sun to warm her up and make her shine. Did I mention she smells fabulous?

You know what doesn't smell fabulous? A corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum. No, I don't have one of these in my yard, but Foster Botanical Garden has three, that's right, three, that are blooming right now, so I'm going to cheat a little bit and show you what's blooming in their gardens today (well, OK, yesterday, but still).

Corpse flower inflorescence-if you zoom in on the diagram (or click on the "corpse flower" link above), you can see that the plant goes from a tuber into either a reproductive (flowering) stage or a vegetative stage. On the right-hand side of my photo, you can see the leaf (which looks like a tree) of one of the plants in the vegetative stage. The crazy thing is (like there’s only one crazy thing), this growth cycle, into miniature tree or giant flower, only takes about 2 weeks (talk about progression obsession-you know I'd be all over documenting that)! 

This flower has just bloomed and is already starting to close back up. OK, technically, the spathe (the pretty petaly-looking part) has just unfurled. The actual flowers are all on the inside at the base of the spadix (the tall part in the middle...for which the flower is Latinately named). The pot on the left has an Amorphophallus konjac (voodoo lily) that has put out a leaf instead of an inflorescence.

Side view: In the background, you can see another plant that bloomed a few days ago, and the spadix has already started to collapse.

Collapsing spadix, spathe falling off, flowers, both male and female, on display for all the world to see. It’s hell gettin' old.

Flowers at the base of the spadix-male (top, yellow) and female (bottom).

The actual flower parts of a corpse flower. Also, kind of stinky when you start getting this close. Or downwind. I would recommend staying upwind-they don't call them corpse flowers for nothing!

I went back a little bit later and caught some afternoon light coming through the spathe. Obviously, I played around with some of the light and color balances-it didn't look this dramatic in person, but the drama was definitely there, just waiting to make an appearance.

Since I don't have one of these in my yard to obsessively photograph, you can check out some time-lapse videos that other people have made of corpse flowers blooming.

To check out what else is blooming today, or to show off your garden blooms, please visit our hostess, Carol, at May Dreams Gardens and enjoy today's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts!

My Latest Progression Obsession: Keeled Treehoppers, Part II

Previously, I introduced you to some keeled treehopper nymphs, spikey little alien-looking critters that had invaded my tomato plant. Well, after a while, being a spikey little adolescent takes a toll on a critter, and, like a lot of us, they eventually decide to just mellow out and become smooth, green, tank-like adults. OK, I need to work on that a little, but you get what I'm saying.

Unfortunately, the picture quality in this series is not quite as good as it was in the last one (but you can still click on any picture to enlarge it)--I took this set of pictures before I took the set of pictures in my previous post, and I hadn't quite perfected the iPhone macro shot yet. Also, I was sitting in a dark room. Wearing a headlamp. Don't ask, just...be impressed that they came out as well as they did, OK?

Anyway...here's how you go from this:

to this:

in just 20 short minutes. (This is, like, the best make-over ever!)

First, you wriggle out of your old, spikey shell, with your little wings all folded up behind your head like little white spitballs.

It's OK if they start to unfurl a little bit before you're all the way out. Just keep your head down and keep going.

Whew! Now that you are out of that cramped little space (how did you get by in there for so long??), you can really start working on those wings.

Almost there...

They're all nice and fluffed up, now make them just a tiny bit longer. (Oh boy, there are going to be some disappointed people landing on this page through key-word searches!)

Perfect! Now you can start elongating that helmety-looking bit with the orange racing stripe.

Good, good, now bring it down a little.

A little more...

Keep going...

Perfect! Looks good! 

Very streamlined.

"Hello...Are you my mother?"

Now, turn around, face down your past, and prepare to go out into the world and wreak havoc on my tomato plants.

Yep, just like that.

So, whaddaya think? Pretty cool, huh? I mean, not for my tomato plant, but from a transformation perspective, it's pretty impressive. The only bummer about this is that they don't seem to have any natural predators. I did get a lizard to eat one of the adults, but it didn't seem very impressed; and the nymphs are just as pokey as they look. I wouldn't want to eat one! My tomato died, and the treehopper numbers started dwindling. A few started showing up on other, smaller tomatoes, and I couldn't let another population explosion occur, but I couldn't bring myself to squish them or spray them either. I ended up picking them off and dropping them onto the lanai. I was hoping to lure in more lizards, but they're no dummies; they weren't interested. I figured if any treehoppers made it back across the lanai and up into a pot, well, maybe I'd just let them be.       

"Do I look like some kind of dummy to you? I'm not eatin' one of those things."

My Latest Progression Obsession: Keeled Treehoppers

I figure if aliens ever invade, this is what they will look like (click on any of the pictures to enlarge):

Sooo...maybe they're already here. Cool. Well, not entirely cool--they did decimate the biggest, baddest volunteer tomato plant I've managed to accidentally grow yet, but if that's the extent of the damage they plan on doing, I suppose we can all live with that, right?

What, exactly, are these things? At first I though they were aphids because I noticed a bunch of little black things crawling around on my tomato. But then they kept getting bigger. And bigger. And spikier. And more tank-like. And I thought, Hmmm...what the hell kind of aphids ARE these?? So, I brought them in for a photo shoot (that's a peppercorn for scale).

and then proceeded to check my favorite on-line source for bug identification, What's That Bug?. And it turns out I have treehopper nymphs, or baby/adolescent treehoppers. Cool. Except, not really. I kept reading about how much damage they do, and I could find no information about natural predators. At this point though, my tomato plant was still thriving, and I was intrigued. So I let them live, and I became their personal paparazzi. Also, I kind of liked their personalities. When I went outside to put these guys back on my tomato plant, one of them walked right off, but the other one was sort of in play dead/paralysis mode. The one on the move walked over, tapped the other one on the back with one of its legs, and kept on moving. As soon as it got tapped on the back, the act-like-a-rock one was like, What? Oh, OK, I'm coming, and moseyed off. It was kind of endearing. Anyway...photo shoot!

Some of them were shy.

"Nope. I do NOT want my face splashed all across the pages of your blog!"

While others took advantage of some photobomb opportunities.

"Photobomb, yo!"

But all of them were spikey. No wonder they don't have any natural predators!

Ants farm treehoppers like they do aphids. They sort of round them up and protect them and gather the honeydew that the treehoppers secrete. Treehoppers are like cows, but for ants. In this picture you can see a good representation of the different sizes they come in and you can see a little droplet of honeydew being secreted (halfway down, on the left-hand side of the stem, there's a little droplet on the pointy end of...a butt). You can even see a few little farmer ants in the picture.

One day, I caught one of these guys molting, so I brought it inside and documented the process while I watched TV. This is probably highly inappropriate behaviour (as if taking pictures of their honey-dew secreting butts wasn't), but I was curious. I hope our new alien overlords can forgive me. The pictures below show a little tank turning into a bigger tank. The photos are of two different bugs because the first half of the pictures I took with the first bug didn't come out very well, so the next day I found me another bug at the same stage and began documenting again, but, I can assure you, the process was very similar. As the critters grow bigger, they have to molt because their exoskeletons don't grow with them, so they bust out of their old, colorful skins, and they come out looking like this:

"Hang on, I gotta put on my face."

Not terribly exciting at this stage, are they? 

A mere 90 minutes later, though, and they look like this:

"OK, I'm ready to go!"

And since you all know I am obsessed with how things progress, here's the progression:

Cool, huh? Next I'll show you what an adult looks like when it comes out of that spikey little shell--it looks like a green tornado-chasing vehicle, and its transformation is just as cool, maybe even cooler. Join me then, won't you?

Progression Obsession-Monstera deliciosa leaf

My obsession for watching things transform has been fairly well-documented here*, but I haven't done it in a while. When I was outside the other day, taking pictures for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, I saw a new Monstera leaf preparing to unfurl, so I figured that would be a good place to pick things up. So, for anyone who has ever wondered, how a plant like this starts out, here you go!

Helping me with scale today: Mocha

March 15-Helping me with scale: a big lizard (big for a lizard, small compared to Mocha).

March 16: No lizard today, but the super-tight bundle of foliage is starting to unfurl.

March 17

March 18

March 19-Helping me with scale today: a smaller lizard (which makes the scale thing kind of confusing, but I take what I can get)...(the lizard is to the right, in the sun).

March 20-a pale, tender new leaf, ready to face the world!

 March 21-Aw, look how small it is! Well, small compared to what it will become, anyway!**

(Helping me with scale: Me. Which is why I couldn't get far enough away to get the whole leaf in the picture).

This monster of a plant, Monstera deliciosa is also called the Swiss cheese plant. It does produce a flower and fruit, but it is a slow process. We planted these plants in November, 2008, and I discovered the first flowers in October, 2012. According to my research, the fruit should be edible sometime in the next 7-13 months.

*If, like me, you like to see how plants progress (or not, in the case of the coconut tree), check out some of my other posts.
Moonflower opening
Puakenikeni-flower to fruit
Amaryllis and a purple leafy plant
Variegated hau-color change throughout day
How to disassemble a coconut tree
Bleeding heart (Clerodendrom thomsonae) imitating a corkscrew

**Edited 7/9/13 to say that I'm not actually sure if this little leaf will become a big leaf, or if it will stay a little leaf. Big leaves might unfurl as big leaves, but I can't remember ever seeing one start out quite as big as the one in the bottom picture. Each plant has several different sizes of leaves on it; the smaller ones tend to be near the bottom, closer to the ground, and the bigger ones tend to be closer to the middle and top of the plant. I'll keep an eye out for giants unfurling in the future!