Winter!

From: Don Burns <burns at mobot.mobot.org> on 1999.01.03 at 17:35:13(2868) Hi Aroiders! This list has be silent so long I thought I'd throw my two bits in by asking those of you in the midwest what you are doing for fun with two feet of snow on the ground. Here in zone 10b it is 78degF today and after a rainy couple of days the sun is breaking through the clouds. Weather here has been extraordinarily warm and wet for this time of the year (normally our dry and cool season), but we have alot of rain and its been quite warm. Christams day was 84F. The Anthuriums which normally flower and fruit this time of year are especially prolific at the moment. I have a number of Amorphophallus that have awakened from dormancy, apparently due to the warmth and wetness - very confused plants. And Amorphophallus titanum is typically doing its own thing with a couple of plants going into dormancy at the moment while another seems to be awakening. Dewey Fisk has just finished moving his entire Anthurium collection to another shade house where he has considerably more room. But the old story about _never_ having enough room is still true. He is rapidly running out of space again! In any event, the plants are now spread out sufficiently to allow one to better observe. So, for those of you planning to come down this way to thaw out, make arrangements with Dewey to visit. That's all for now. I am going _outside_ to do some repotting. Don +More Don Burns Plantation, FL USA Zone 10b

From: "Jaime Rodriguez" <jaime at matnet.com> on 1999.01.04 at 00:57:50(2869) Alaska isn't exactly the Midwest, but I'd love to let you know what is happening here in the truly frigid north. Over four feet of snow has fallen at my house, but a windstorm turned most of that into capricious drifts a week ago. The outside temperature has varied from 25F to -28F. Today we are holding steady at 0. My Aroid collection has grown enormously thanks to Aroid-L and the Arisaema Enthusiasts Group. I wish I had kept better records of where all my new plants came from. Most of my records were email archives that were disappeared when my computer crashed in mid 1998. I have several Amorphophallus species that have gone into dormancy this month. A. bulbifer keeps increasing. The last leaf is just now fading. A. odoratus went dormant a month ago. I couldn't resist checking it out, and discovered it had increased from one to 5 tubers. A. konjac from Sue Zunino has been dormant for 4 months. I have no idea how long I will wait to see it again. The seeds of A. henryi that I sowed a year ago have finally just germinated, and one is sending up it's first true leaf. My seed grown Anthurium clarinervium have been blooming but not setting seed. A. Scandens v. leucocarpum has been blooming like crazy, and is setting seed. The opalescent pink berries are very pretty. I should have quite a crop of seeds in a month or two. Some of my Anthurium seedlings were attacked by mutant aphids this fall, and I lost all but one A. amnicola and one A. gracile. I managed to save 3 A. bakeri. I had seedlings of Dracunculus canariensis and Sauromatum venosum growing in flats outside this summer, and some pesky magpies pulled all the tags out of the pots, and even uprooted some of the plants. They are all mixed up now, and I won't know which is which until they mature and perhaps bloom. They have continued growing indoors under lights, and as they go dormant, move them to my extra refrigerator, pot and all. They both seem to be spider mite magnets, and it has been quite a battle staying ahead of those little monsters. Same for my Arisaema seedlings. Some of them came out of dormancy just as the snow started falling in October, so I moved them indoors under lights. As they go dormant they get moved to the fridge. I did have three A. triphyllum bloom the second year from seed. They bloomed sequentially through October and November. The first two flowers were either male, or withered. The third flower appears to have set seed. I suppose pollen from the first two could have been floating around in the dust of my house, or perhaps the flower was hermaphroditic and self fertile, or perhaps the seeds are sterile. I am new at this and don't have a clue, but it is fun to watch. My Spathyphyllum isn't blooming, the Aglaeonema is. The Zantedeschia and Colocasia are dormant. The Arisarum vulgare and A. proboscideum are growing under lights, but no signs of bloom. The best news is that last week I was able to rescue a small shoot of Philodendron erubescens 'Burgundy' that had separated from the parent vine and some offset tubers of Alocasia chantrieri 'African Mask' from a neglected public planting. Happy New Year everyone. I hope you all get an Amorphophallus titanum to bloom this year. Jaime Rodriguez. +More Wasilla, Alaska USDA Zone 3 & 4 -

From: Jmh98law at aol.com on 1999.01.04 at 01:04:51(2870) In a message dated 1/3/99 9:23:34 AM Pacific Standard Time, Don Burns [burns@mobot.mobot.org] writes: << Hi Aroiders! This list has be silent so long I thought I'd throw my two +More bits in by asking those of you in the midwest what you are doing for fun with two feet of snow on the ground. >> I have missed the postings. Although the taxonomic discussions are sometimes quite intimidating to this novice, I always find them fascinating. Here in Traverse City, Michigan, where we have had about 16 inches of snow or more in the past 36 hours, we are getting out the Kabota tractor with the snow blower and opening our 700 foot driveway and plowing the two-track that is our only access to the outside world. [As you can tell, that's the "royal 'we' " --- actually Glen's out there, and I'm in here where it is warm.] [For 17 years we were the only family living here year-round, now there are two families, and we clear their driveway, too. Of course, it is Sunday, and once we get the two track open, we are only on a narrow gravel county road that is a "last class" road --- meaning that the road commission plows it if and when they feel like it. That means they never plow it on weekends or holidays, and it is the last road to be plowed any other day. We, of course, don't care, as we both work from our home-offices. But the new neighbors have children to get to school. We also get to avoid such things as a 115 car pileup on I-75 December 31 during a whiteout that left, miraculously, only one person dead, only a few serious injured and about 35 others injured, treated and released. But there were 115 cars, sports-utility vehicles, pickup trucks, snowmobiles trailors (and the snowmobiles), trucks, tractor-trailers, etc. off the road, some crushed ---- lots of damage. Law enforcement and EMS personnel from about 5 counties assisted, and the lovely town of Grayling hosted hundreds of stranded people while they got themselves squared away. In these long winter days, when I am not working, I read books on various kinds of gardening --- shade gardening and collectors' plants, [both Ken Druse books], [we live in a beech forest, and have a few openings for specialty gardens], ornamental grasses, moss gardening, hellebores, primulas, etc. I look longingly through tons of catalogues. I make up my wish lists for the coming spring, pare them down, go through the catalogues again, then pare the lists once more. I try to locate specimens of exotics that I "need" for the Japanese garden or the English garden or the water garden, or something relatively shade tolerant [5-6 hours of sun per day] that we don't yet have for the grass garden. Presently, I'm trying to locate an out-of-print book on Arisaema that I would love to have --- I've tried all six of my usual OOPS on-line sources, and have had no luck. I guess I'll have to use an interlibrary loan to read it. Inside, I can tend to the orchids in the greenhouse, soothing work --- mostly Paphiopedilum, Phalaenopsis, Phragmapedium [some species, some primary hybrids], Brassia, Ondontoglossum, Oncidium, a Zygopedilum that hasn't bloomed in 5 years : ( Vanilla, and a wonderful night-blooming Cereus [Hawaiian, and VERY different from the Florida species, cuttings of which I brought back December 1997]. The bloom on the Hawaiian Cereus is much larger, far more fragrant, and much more beautiful. This plant threatens to take over the greenhouse, and almost looks a likely suspect to feed uninvited door-to-door salesmen to [not that many find us!]. Anyway, it's very "Dr. Zhivago"-like beautiful here, as we've had no wind, and the trees are laden with snow. Perhaps we'll go out to cross country ski past the neighbors' cherry and apple orchards, while keeping a watchful eye for our erstwhile companions the red fox, the barred owl [cute "little" devil --- likes to sit in the tree and watch us, fly ahead and wait for us to catch up], and the bunnies --- [who like to slide down the hills on their bottoms, leaving troughs in the snow --- then scamper off into the beech trees]. Sound idyllic? It is ---- all 20 degrees of it --- so long as the wind is not blowing us into a 30 below wind chill factor. Jeanne Hannah

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