Linda Lucky bean is the common name. Castonospermum is the botanical name. They are native to Australia I believe. I love these plants and have a big pot of them. They are large trees in the wild with red flowers I believe, but probably no flowers for us :(. I keep mine in medium or even low light. It's sitting in a north window and coming into active growth now. If you try it in high light acclimate it b4 because it looks like it would burn easily. I would recommend that you keep them moist all the time or at least let it moderately moist with very slight drying. Mine dried out completely and it was almost a complete disaster. Fortunately I caught it. I lost a lot of foliage and the stems shriveled up. It was a close call. It took a loooooooong time to bounce back after it dried out. These are by far some of my favorites. This is just my experience. Btw the "bean" will fall off especially if they dry out. I dont think at this stage its doing anything to the plant; it just helps it sell! Lol. Mine are about two feet tall and no longer have the bean. Kyle

howdy Rick, I was thinking about growing my plants soilless, I refer you to the links below http://www.ponddoc.com/WhatsUpDoc/Plants/Soiless.html http://bonniesplants.com/how_to/soiless_planting.html (Why do you want to grow them bareroot ?) to keep dirt out of the pond and to avoid problems of soil going anarobic (Once they start to reproduce it will be so hard to separate the extra plants from the rocks.) Even if the rocks are big? egg size or larger? (Once the plants start growing their roots will cover the top of the pots so the fish cant remove the dirt.) I have dirt now in the pond because of them tipping over haven't even though about goldies removing dirt, so far they don't even seem interested. (Whatever you decide , do it now in the fall so you dont disturb the roots in the spring.) I don't have a lot of neutrients in the water now so I was thinking I should wait till the spring and let the plants use the soil now, undecided as to what's best. (Make sure you get larger pots . I raise pond plants so what I do is use the cheap black plastic pots you buy them in , put a layer of plastic over the holes on the bottom so the dirt doesnt come out and stick your plants in with a little fertilizer.) Would you not end up with anarobic soil like this? (Make sure you have some fish in that pond or you'll be loaded with Mosquitos.) Got some goldies in there. (You might also have a problem with all those pretty rocks on the shelf . It looks nice now but a lot of dirt will get stuck around them making it hard to clean . Also as soon as your algae starts growing , they will be covered and if you have Koi , when they get big they'll knock those to the bottom. Rick) No to Koi, plan on goldies and blue gills. I plan on squirting those rocks when I add water, kind of flushing them out. I plan on using most of them to anchor plants and hide pots. I am going to do an experiment. I have 3 irises: #1 I'll repot soilless now #2 repot in the spring soilless and #3 I'll leave in it's pot with soil. we shall see how they do by summer next year. RexAnne

Please know that they are photoperiodic, and will go out of bloom for a long while until the conditions for day-length (more appropriately stated night-length) are met again. So don't worry that something is wrong when it does. The blooms last for a good while, though. I used to grow them with my poinsettia crop and dark phase them simultaneously and mine are blooming under naturally shortening hours now.

I agree with the others, wait until our short frost season is over before trimming any damaged growth. For the bougies, just wait until they start re-growing and cut above a nice fresh green shoot. Unknown #3 is a white flowered trailing lantana (L. montevidiensis). I'd use a hula hoe to keep those weeds under control. It's basically a scuffle hoe that "shaves" the weeds off at ground level. Do it on a warm sunny afternoon and they'll croak right away. Plus it's kind of fun. Getting some type of mulch around the lantana will help control weed seedlings too. Unkonw #4 is a Ruellia, sometimes call Mexican petunia. They bloom spring through autumn. You can trim them if you like, or leave them be. Again, I'd wait until after the short frost season is over. Keep us posted! Happy gardening! Grant