Poinsettia Chronology
tsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
12 years ago
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Comments (143)
ninecrow
6 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
6 years agoRelated Discussions
houseplant lifespan question
Comments (22)A quick review of the second paragraph in my post above will reveal that cuttings tend to retain the growth phase of the material they are taken from. Your cuttings, taken from sexually mature parts of the plant retain the ontogenetic age of the parent material, so are sexually mature. If your plant was to produce a basal sprout, regardless of the plants age,and you severed/rooted it, you would have to wait for the basal sprout to move through the growth phases before the leaf form changes; this, because the basal part of the plant is ontogenetically youngest and the cutting would retain the more juvenile growth phase of the plant part from which it was taken. Most of the variegated houseplants we would grow are chimeral or pigmentary in nature, but a few (Abutilon) might be viral, and several are commonly the result of reflection (mostly the gray variegates). Trees have an expected life span for a couple of reasons. The first is, we know how fast they usually grow, and the second is, we know the limits of the tree's ability to move water and nutrients to distal parts of the tree. Trees genetically programmed to grow slowly and with the ability to move water efficiently to distal parts grow oldest. Trees die from mechanical injury, dysfunction, or energy depletion, but not old age, per se. Aging in animals is measured in the rate of cellular autolysis (breakdown):cell restoration. Trees are much different because they can't regenerate cells in the same spatial planes, so we look to the ratio between the volume of living wood being walled off and the volume of living wood with cells being generated. To understand this concept, you would need to be somewhat familiar with how trees compartmentalize injuries. A tree must be generating more cells than it is losing through compartmentalization, shedding, and mechanical disruption every growing period, or it is dying. In situ trees usually die from energy depletion, which is often resultant of mechanical injury. The ratio of dynamic mass to non-living mass and infected mass is important to survival. Young trees are nearly all dynamic mass and have a very strong 'will to live'. Old trees exhibit a much lower % of dynamic mass & exhibit a reduced ability to resist mechanical injury, stress, and strain. Trees don't often die as a result of mechanical injury, dysfunction, or energy depletion alone; these processes start them along the road to death. After a certain point, the trend is irreversible, dysfunction systemic, and there will be a wide variety of agents using energy stored by the host. In consideration of the above, we can see why bonsai trees are able to survive for centuries, where their counterparts in the landscape are only able to survive for a fraction of the time a bonsai can. This plays directly on the ratio of dynamic mass & the number of cells being generated, vs static mass & the trees inability to regenerate. Al...See Morepoinsettia
Comments (23)The biggest difficulty people have in keeping poinsettias alive is that they need A LOT OF LIGHT. If you are able to provide that, the rest is relatively easy. Most houseplants are rainforest epiphites growing on the lower branches of trees shaded by the canopy, or else small trees adapted to lurk for decades on the forest floor in very deep shade waiting for a big tree to die so they suddenly begin ultra-rapid growth and join the canopy. That's how our tropical houseplants can get by in the very low light conditions of most homes. Poinsettias are not that; they're native to slightly drier, less-shaded areas with more seasonality. In the house they should be in a very bright South-facing window. Outdoors, where you can set them in the summer, they should be in light shade. They especially need a lot of light because the colorful red or pink leaves are not photosynthetic. The second most difficult thing about poinsettias is that they are pretty sensitive to moisture levels; they don't like to get bone-dry, but they do get root-rot very easily if they are wet. To save a newly-bought poinsettia after you are done showing it, re-pot it in a well-draining pot with a tray (the tinfoil wrapping they come in holds the water too deep and can drown the roots) and put it in a bright window. It may go dormant, but in my experience this can be brief. As for getting them to re-bloom, it supposedly occurs when they start getting exactly 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark in a 24-hour period. This happens with natural sunlight in March and again in October. In my experience it happens with shorter light periods than that. But it also doesn't necessarily happen to the whole plant at once in the artificial conditions of a home; each branch is "triggered" individually. So in my experience what happens is that, for whatever reason, one branch or half of the plant will enter the bloom phase and start producing red leaves, while the rest of the plant is still green. The colored branches are most commonly the ones closest to the window. I think it may be because indoor lights prevent the inward-facing branches from getting the proper 12 hours of dark. (I'm sure you know that the colored part of the plant is leaves, not flowers, yet they still always occur along with actual flowers, which are small, yellow and sticky and occur at the end of the stem.) In any case, you don't want your poinsettia to bloom too often, because that's very taxing on the plant and the most likely time that the plant will die. Sometimes when poinsettias drop their leaves and begin to recover, you're still in the period of short days in early spring, and will find that the plant's first new leaves are also colored, which is very bad because the plant is using the low remaining energy reserves it has to produce leaves that aren't photosynthetic. The plant can potentially go into an irreversible collapse, trying to save itself with progressively weaker leaves that form then drop and are useless to the plant because they aren't green. For this reason I don't like to force re-blooms. I just like to grow it as a green houseplant and let it surprise me when the conditions are just right and it blooms. It will not look the same as the store-bought plants because there will still be more green on it; there will be a small shock of red at the end of each green-leafed stem, but I think that's a good thing because it's safer from the cascading collapse that I described....See Morenew Senecio Barbertonicus
Comments (7)Thanks for the info Dz! I brought him in & treat him like a Jade. I'm glad to know it was the right thing to do -_- I hope putting him in a gritty mix will work for him, cause that's what his feet are in now. So far, he looks exactly the same as in the last pic. No signs of stress. I like his wavy trunk & though it's currently the thickness sharpee, maybe it'll make a good tree-like container plant for me. I'd love to see pics of yours. Is yours kept indoors or are you in a warmer climate than I? The most I've been able to find is google-wise is in different languages, sometimes, info just doesn't translate well. He *is* quite unusual, isn't he :) What I can't figure out is what the hell was he doing here at an average garden center on Long Island? It's not a high end nursery & they usually carry the usual plants, nothing untried, shall we say. The original price was 17.99 or so for 1 qt container & it *did* say annual. Maybe it was leftover landscaping material, because there's a wholesale landscape supply business at the same location. He looks like a Dr. Seuss tree to me =) and his funky habit led me to sedum multiceps. Sheesh. My collection is growing in leaps & bounds, I'm going to have to start a trade list aren't I? Antoinette...See MoreOlder hybrid teas and floribundas
Comments (26)Lovely pictures of some classic beauties! I drool every time I see a picture of Dainty Bess...not sure why I've never grown it, but need to add it to my wish list. Most that I grow have already been pictured, but here are a few that haven't: Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria (1891) Francis Dubreuil (1894) Gruss an Aachen (1909) Night (Lady Sackville) 1921 Rubyait (1946) Fragrant Cloud (1963) Electron (1970)...See Moreninecrow
6 years agoninecrow
6 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
6 years agoninecrow
6 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
6 years agoninecrow
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoninecrow
6 years agopuglvr1
6 years agoninecrow
6 years agopuglvr1
6 years agoninecrow
6 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
6 years agoThe pink & cream are doing well. The solid cream one is taking its time, however.
tj
ninecrow
6 years agoninecrow
6 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
6 years agoninecrow
5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
5 years agoninecrow
5 years agoninecrow
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
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5 years agoninecrow
5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
5 years agoninecrow
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
5 years agoninecrow
5 years agoninecrow
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoninecrow
5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
5 years agopuglvr (9B)
5 years agoMy very first Poinsettia tree, I've never seen one with a single trunk before. It's just starting to color up now :o) thanks for looking!
ninecrow
5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
5 years agoThe cream one was so tall (nearly 6 feet) and too close to the lights that only a few bracts on the very top turned.
Here's one of the other ones...
tj
ninecrow
5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
5 years agoninecrow
5 years agoninecrow
5 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
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4 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoninecrow
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3 years agotsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
3 years agoninecrow
3 years ago
ninecrow