Three questions

From: Adam Black paleoart at digital.net> on 2001.01.07 at 15:02:53(5819) Any help with the following questions would be greatly appreciated. Question 1: I purchased an young Alocasia last spring that was labeled Alocasia sarian. +More I have also seen mention of this plant as Alocasia "Sarian". Is this a species, cultivar, variant, hybrid??? Where is it from? Does it form offsets? Any other information about this plant would be appreciated. I have it growing in a tub of water, and in ten months it has grown from a foot high to about five feet high. Question 2: I have recently built a greenhouse with pressure-treated wood frame. Will the pressure treating chemicals that leach out of the wood during irrigation be at a level that would harm my plants that are in the ground at the base of the framework? I would also like to encourage Philodendrons and other vining aroids to climb up the pressure-treated wood posts, but I assume that their anchoring roots would absorb the harmful chemicals. I remember when I was a kid in Miami we had Monstera, Syngonium, Epipremnum, and Philodendron growing up the supports to our deck, but they may not have experienced any harmful effects due to weathering of the wood with age. Any info or experiences would be appreciated. Question 3: I would like to grow my epiphytes in my greenhouse epiphyticly, and would like to construct a tree using artificial and or natural materials. I am hesitant to use natural branches, as I am worried they will rot within a year or so. In the conservatory at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami, I liked the way they constructed their bromeliad tree, which consisted of PVC "branches" covered with sections of cork bark. Since cork bark is expensive, I am wondering if anyone else has tried any other methods of displaying and growing epiphytes in a natural looking manner. Thanks in advance for all your help. Adam Black

From: "brian williams" pugturd50 at hotmail.com> on 2001.01.07 at 23:38:08(5822) Hello Adam this is Brian Willimas. for your first question on Alocasia Sarian. I have looked up as much as I can on it and it seems no one really knows what it is. Most think it is a hybrid? I also have never had any babies form the mother plant. But intertest to here yours is growing in a tub of water? +More As for the wood in your greenhouse i am also interested to here what people say about it. The wood in mine is treated. I dont think it would hurt the plants but who knows. As for the artificial tree I have a few of them in the plans for my greenhouse. Here are the ways i have heard to do it. First the fairchild garden way wich works very well but does coast alot. One way to help say is put long fiber moss were the plants will be and put a lot of plants on it. Also cover the parts that will be seen. You could also use a dead tree it wil rot but can be used for awhile. Also their are the cement trees which usually wont look right unless the person building them is very talented. Hope this helps some. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

From: Neil Carroll zzamia at hargray.com> on 2001.01.08 at 03:30:44(5824) You could also use a dead tree it >wil rot but can be used for awhile. If ever to a coastal area in the east......a dead red cedar or cypress would be very resistant to rot. the cedar would be of a more branched and managable size though Neil

From: Ron McHatton rmchatton at photocircuits.com> on 2001.01.09 at 01:08:36(5827) Hello, this is Ron McHatton. As to the question of pressure treated lumber......I have been growing orchids, aroids, and other stuff for about 35 years in various pressure treated wood-frame greenhouses without any apparent problem (ones which I can attribute to the wood). At first, the conventional wisdom was that roots which came in contact with the wood would die back from chemical burn. This may be true with wood treated with treatment chemicals like the ones used for telephone polls. Using wood treated with chrome copper arsenate (all the pressure-treated wood products available through home improvement centers and the like) doesn't seem to be a problem. The treatment chemicals are not volatile and they also don't seem to be leachable. At least with epiphytic orchids, they will easily root to this sort of wood and, since I try to grow under cloud forest conditions, I grow substantial stands of moss on the wood without any apparent problems. I wouldn't worry about the framing. Cork oak bark is used for artificial trees because nothing else lasts like that material. The initial investment is staggering (depending on the size of the tree obviously) but amortized over time, its fairly reasonable. The problem with other materials is longevity and the destruction of the root systems when you have to get the plants off to rebuild. Tree fern has a life time of about 5 years (and when it goes, it turns rapidly septic), long-fiber moss in a wire mess frame is a nightmare to refresh the moss as it breaks down. I have had plants on cork bark for over twenty years and the bark is still holding up. If you can supply sufficient humidity and water, you might try cement/ +More -----Original Message----- From: brian williams [SMTP:pugturd50@hotmail.com] Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 6:38 PM To: Multiple recipients of list AROID-L Subject: Re: Three questions Hello Adam this is Brian Willimas. for your first question on Alocasia Sarian. I have looked up as much as I can on it and it seems no one really knows what it is. Most think it is a hybrid? I also have never had any babies form the mother plant. But intertest to here yours is growing in a tub of water? As for the wood in your greenhouse i am also interested to here what people say about it. The wood in mine is treated. I dont think it would hurt the plants but who knows. As for the artificial tree I have a few of them in the plans for my greenhouse. Here are the ways i have heard to do it. First the fairchild garden way wich works very well but does coast alot. One way to help say is put long fiber moss were the plants will be and put a lot of plants on it. Also cover the parts that will be seen. You could also use a dead tree it wil rot but can be used for awhile. Also their are the cement trees which usually wont look right unless the person building them is very talented. Hope this helps some. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

From: Ron McHatton rmchatton at photocircuits.com> on 2001.01.09 at 01:10:10(5828) You need to be very careful of cedar, cypress, and things like walnut (black). These woods are very acidic (the source of their rot resistance). Many epiphytes will not grow well attached to these materials. It's worth a try, just watch the plants and replace those that don't do well. +More -----Original Message----- From: Neil Carroll [SMTP:zzamia@hargray.com] Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 10:31 PM To: Multiple recipients of list AROID-L Subject: Re: Three questions You could also use a dead tree it >wil rot but can be used for awhile. If ever to a coastal area in the east......a dead red cedar or cypress would be very resistant to rot. the cedar would be of a more branched and managable size though Neil

From: Jonathan Ertelt jonathan.ertelt at vanderbilt.edu> on 2001.01.09 at 01:11:45(5829) My apologies if this is a duplicate - I sent this response to Adam Black and to the aroid listserve, which means that I should have received a copy back from the latter as a subscriber, but I never saw it posted. This may mean that there is once again confusion regarding which terminal I'm sending from, even though my name and email accounts are the same on both. Thought that this was resolved six months ago - anyway, this may just be a glitch. I did think that the ideas presented might be of some interest to other folks on the list as well as Adam, so am resending below. Again, sorry if it is duplication. +More At 9:04 AM -0600 1/7/01, Adam Black wrote: >Any help with the following questions would be greatly appreciated. Adam, I have no answer without research for Questions 1 and 2. However, regarding question 3, I have two answers. >Question 3: >I would like to grow my epiphytes in my greenhouse epiphyticly, and would >like to construct a tree using artificial and or natural materials. I am >hesitant to use natural branches, as I am worried they will rot within a >year or so. In the conservatory at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami, I >liked the way they constructed their bromeliad tree, which consisted of PVC >"branches" covered with sections of cork bark. The first answer is that the expense of cork bark is a relative thing - when I last built epiphyte trees using cork, I started with a bale of small tubes and a bale of large tubes, ordered at roughly $100 each from the Maryland Cork Co. From the bale of small tubes I was able to successfully reassemble more than half a dozen branches, several of them eight to ten feet long. Using rebar (or pvc like they did at Fairchild) as a frame and then adding structural strength by using the polyurethane-isocyanate (expandable foam) you can make impressive branches that will last a long time and be home to numerous epiphytes. (I used the bale of large cork tubes, mostly broken in half and then "sewn" back together, to form the three foot plus diameter of the tree.) If even the large quantity of cork bark sounds like too much, look for native or introduced "weed" trees in your area that are hard woods with bark that doesn't immediately slough off. Sassafras is one good and fairly well known possibility. Another possibility perhaps less well-known is the osage orange or hedge apple (_Maclura pomifera_, a temperate member of the fig family). Definitely not a true orange, with large green brain-like round fruit and impressively spiney/thorny new shoots, older branches last an impressively long time hung up with epiphytes - easily ten years or so in many cases. Though for temperate trees in the fig family, this is the only one I know with this character -- certainly the common mulberry trees do not hold their bark like this once the brances are cut off. Good Growing. Jonathan Ertelt Jonathan Ertelt Greenhouse Manager Vanderbilt University Biology Department Box 1812, Sta. B Nashville, TN 37235 (615) 322-4054

From: Ron McHatton rmchatton at photocircuits.com> on 2001.01.09 at 01:13:20(5830) Another alternative, if you can get your hands on one, would be a dead citrus tree. The bark does not come off, most epiphytes grow well on citrus and the wood is hard as nails and seems to resist rot rather well. +More -----Original Message----- From: Neil Carroll [SMTP:zzamia@hargray.com] Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 10:31 PM To: Multiple recipients of list AROID-L Subject: Re: Three questions You could also use a dead tree it >wil rot but can be used for awhile. If ever to a coastal area in the east......a dead red cedar or cypress would be very resistant to rot. the cedar would be of a more branched and managable size though Neil

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