alexintx’s Non-Carnivores
Jun 13, 2018 16:51:43 GMT -5
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meizzwang, sunbelle, and 2 more like this
Post by alexintx on Jun 13, 2018 16:51:43 GMT -5
I’m surely not the only person here with lots of non-carnivorous plants. I guess I’ll document them here.
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This is an interesting place to grow plants — we’re right on the border between subhumid and subarid climates. We’re at the meeting point of a bunch of different habitats. This leads to there being a large number of interesting native species, some of which are endemic. This is about as far west as many Southeastern plants get, as far east as many Southwestern plants get, as far south as many Great Plains plants get, and as far north as some Mexican plants get. I’ll start with some of my natives.
First up is the prickly pear common around here — Opuntia engelmannii var. lindheimeri. Lindheimer was one of the botanists who spent a lot of time studying this area, so lots of plants here are named after him. This cactus is a cutting from a seedling I pulled up ages ago. It gets pretty yellow flowers and has pretty huge spines (a couple inches long) and lots of glochids.
Next up are some seedlings of a really cool native understory tree — Mexican buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa). This is the eastern edge of its range. It grows in virtually solid rock, gets pretty flowers and neat seed pods, is incredibly drought tolerant, is easy to grow from seed, and will begin flowering in its second or third year! It also gets neat fall color. I kind of planted these seeds on a whim — I stuck some seeds that’d overwintered in seedpods on branches (they normally fall out late summer and sprout in the fall) in a pot and they grew!
Next is a bald cypress seedling I picked up from my local nursery for $1 a couple years ago. I stuck it in the ground to thicken the trunk so I can make it into a bonsai, but our fig has pretty much overtaken it (oops).
Next up is a kind of palm. Currently, our county has only one kind of native palm — Sabal minor (dwarf palmetto). This is a different kind of palm — S. mexicana (or S. texana, depending on who you ask). Currently, this palm is only native as far north as the Rio Grande Valley. However, there’s accounts from the Spanish that claim that this palm was native all the way up many streams and rivers in central Texas. It grows and naturalizes incredibly well here — there are volunteer seedlings all over the place and they can grow to a significant size very fast here and never show any winter damage. This palm was commonly used for things like piers — and was thus cut down. Also, specimens were dug up for landscaping in South TX. There was also a series of super hard freezes in the late 1800s that may have wiped out any remaining native stands north of the RGV. Anyways, I consider it to be a native. I grabbed these seeds off the ground of my local nursery (where they would’ve rotted). They’d sat out all winter — and this one was cold. They still sprouted great!
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Now, for some non-natives. Many people around here primarily grow natives. I get it — they grow great here. But sometimes, it’s fun to experiment and see what is possible in our challenging climate. We’re just a bit too cold in the winters for many tropicals, yet we don’t get enough cold for some temperate plants. Our summers are also challenging for all plants — the high heat and erratic rainfall isn’t friendly to many plants. Our soil is also pretty bad — very thin, very rocky, alkaline, and full of caliche. But, even with all those challenges, we can grow lots of non-native plants well.
First up is something I’m pretty haply about — our pomegranate. Pomegranates are very common in landscapes here — they’re super tough, take no care, and produce pretty flowers. Ours finally has fruit on it! It was getting too much shade, but Harvey (the storm) took care of that by knocking over a tree. It gets no care beyond water from our sprinklers, and it had a bunch of fruit earlier. Unfortunately, something tore up some of the others (even though they’re super unripe) and made them fall off.
Next is something I got on a whim because it was cheap at the nursery — tea. Now, tea doesn’t like too much heat and it prefers acid soil. But, it was cheap ($5), so my dad and I thought we’d try. It’s actually grown well since we put it in! It’s in a shady place to keep it cool, but it still wilts during the middle of the day (as you can see from the photo). It’s put on several inches of growth, even though it’s only been in the ground for a month or so.
You know the amaryllises you get around Christmas? Well, those grow fantastically well in the ground here. We started with several ones from Home Depot, and we’ve made hybrids. We’ve got a small bed of all of them, and let them naturally pollinate each other. I grew out a bunch of seedlings this year — these came from a dark red plant, though most of our hybrids have orange/peach tones:
Even though our winters are a bit cold, I decided to put a jacaranda in for fun. I got a bunch of seeds at Caltech, and they’ve grown pretty fast. One spot at our house is pretty terrible — it’s facing south, with walls on three sides, so it gets really, really hot in the summer. Fortunately, jacarandas love heat, and this will provide some protection in the winter. It’ll probably be killed to the ground once every 3 or 4 years, but they (supposedly) grow fast from the roots. I might as well see (it’s a 100% free experiment — the seeds were nothing, and this spot gets watered anyway).
Another plant that’s marginal here is citrus. Generally, mature citrus can live through our winters with some damage, but immature ones can’t. I like grapefruit, and citrus come true from seed, so I planted some:
Sago palms are popular in landscaping here, and sometimes make volunteers. I like cycads, and this is a volunteer sago:
Podocarpus are sometimes used in landscaping, and I think they’re pretty. I pulled up a couple volunteers and potted them.
Last, but not least, is a plant that’s done amazingly well. It gets no care at all — not even water. Yet, it thrives. It’s the Chinese yellow banana — Musella lasiocarpa. It’s cold hardy enough that we get flowers in most years (though this winter was cold enough that I think the pseudostems died back too far to flower). It makes a spectacular, long-lasting, yellow flower. It has great, greyish-green foliage that looks super tropical. Here are my two clumps:
This is just a small sampling of some of my plants — I’ll put other stuff up here eventually.
-----
This is an interesting place to grow plants — we’re right on the border between subhumid and subarid climates. We’re at the meeting point of a bunch of different habitats. This leads to there being a large number of interesting native species, some of which are endemic. This is about as far west as many Southeastern plants get, as far east as many Southwestern plants get, as far south as many Great Plains plants get, and as far north as some Mexican plants get. I’ll start with some of my natives.
First up is the prickly pear common around here — Opuntia engelmannii var. lindheimeri. Lindheimer was one of the botanists who spent a lot of time studying this area, so lots of plants here are named after him. This cactus is a cutting from a seedling I pulled up ages ago. It gets pretty yellow flowers and has pretty huge spines (a couple inches long) and lots of glochids.
Next up are some seedlings of a really cool native understory tree — Mexican buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa). This is the eastern edge of its range. It grows in virtually solid rock, gets pretty flowers and neat seed pods, is incredibly drought tolerant, is easy to grow from seed, and will begin flowering in its second or third year! It also gets neat fall color. I kind of planted these seeds on a whim — I stuck some seeds that’d overwintered in seedpods on branches (they normally fall out late summer and sprout in the fall) in a pot and they grew!
Next is a bald cypress seedling I picked up from my local nursery for $1 a couple years ago. I stuck it in the ground to thicken the trunk so I can make it into a bonsai, but our fig has pretty much overtaken it (oops).
Next up is a kind of palm. Currently, our county has only one kind of native palm — Sabal minor (dwarf palmetto). This is a different kind of palm — S. mexicana (or S. texana, depending on who you ask). Currently, this palm is only native as far north as the Rio Grande Valley. However, there’s accounts from the Spanish that claim that this palm was native all the way up many streams and rivers in central Texas. It grows and naturalizes incredibly well here — there are volunteer seedlings all over the place and they can grow to a significant size very fast here and never show any winter damage. This palm was commonly used for things like piers — and was thus cut down. Also, specimens were dug up for landscaping in South TX. There was also a series of super hard freezes in the late 1800s that may have wiped out any remaining native stands north of the RGV. Anyways, I consider it to be a native. I grabbed these seeds off the ground of my local nursery (where they would’ve rotted). They’d sat out all winter — and this one was cold. They still sprouted great!
-----
Now, for some non-natives. Many people around here primarily grow natives. I get it — they grow great here. But sometimes, it’s fun to experiment and see what is possible in our challenging climate. We’re just a bit too cold in the winters for many tropicals, yet we don’t get enough cold for some temperate plants. Our summers are also challenging for all plants — the high heat and erratic rainfall isn’t friendly to many plants. Our soil is also pretty bad — very thin, very rocky, alkaline, and full of caliche. But, even with all those challenges, we can grow lots of non-native plants well.
First up is something I’m pretty haply about — our pomegranate. Pomegranates are very common in landscapes here — they’re super tough, take no care, and produce pretty flowers. Ours finally has fruit on it! It was getting too much shade, but Harvey (the storm) took care of that by knocking over a tree. It gets no care beyond water from our sprinklers, and it had a bunch of fruit earlier. Unfortunately, something tore up some of the others (even though they’re super unripe) and made them fall off.
Next is something I got on a whim because it was cheap at the nursery — tea. Now, tea doesn’t like too much heat and it prefers acid soil. But, it was cheap ($5), so my dad and I thought we’d try. It’s actually grown well since we put it in! It’s in a shady place to keep it cool, but it still wilts during the middle of the day (as you can see from the photo). It’s put on several inches of growth, even though it’s only been in the ground for a month or so.
You know the amaryllises you get around Christmas? Well, those grow fantastically well in the ground here. We started with several ones from Home Depot, and we’ve made hybrids. We’ve got a small bed of all of them, and let them naturally pollinate each other. I grew out a bunch of seedlings this year — these came from a dark red plant, though most of our hybrids have orange/peach tones:
Even though our winters are a bit cold, I decided to put a jacaranda in for fun. I got a bunch of seeds at Caltech, and they’ve grown pretty fast. One spot at our house is pretty terrible — it’s facing south, with walls on three sides, so it gets really, really hot in the summer. Fortunately, jacarandas love heat, and this will provide some protection in the winter. It’ll probably be killed to the ground once every 3 or 4 years, but they (supposedly) grow fast from the roots. I might as well see (it’s a 100% free experiment — the seeds were nothing, and this spot gets watered anyway).
Another plant that’s marginal here is citrus. Generally, mature citrus can live through our winters with some damage, but immature ones can’t. I like grapefruit, and citrus come true from seed, so I planted some:
Sago palms are popular in landscaping here, and sometimes make volunteers. I like cycads, and this is a volunteer sago:
Podocarpus are sometimes used in landscaping, and I think they’re pretty. I pulled up a couple volunteers and potted them.
Last, but not least, is a plant that’s done amazingly well. It gets no care at all — not even water. Yet, it thrives. It’s the Chinese yellow banana — Musella lasiocarpa. It’s cold hardy enough that we get flowers in most years (though this winter was cold enough that I think the pseudostems died back too far to flower). It makes a spectacular, long-lasting, yellow flower. It has great, greyish-green foliage that looks super tropical. Here are my two clumps:
This is just a small sampling of some of my plants — I’ll put other stuff up here eventually.