Today's deep thoughts about plants

[Azuleja]

Oh, so this is how hundreds of sansevieria are propagated at once. Instagram link

[Gee.S]

Yup, that's how hundreds of trifasciata are propagated.

[Spination]

Tropical paradise, year round growing, big greenhouse. Check, check, check. Nice.

[Azuleja]

Here is one of my ovatifolia seedlings that I moved out of a 6-pack into 4-inch pots 2 months ago. I'm happy to see that it doubles its roots.

[Azuleja]

I don't have a seedling thread but here are two cool ones. One has two heads and the other has three.

[Azuleja]

I wasn't planning to transplant these until spring but with so many roots growing out the bottom of their transparent plastic container they seemed to be asking me to. So now they're 3 per cell in 6-packs with much more vertical space.

Eta these are A. parviflora seedlings from seeds I got from GeeS. Some or all may be hybrids with something else from his yard, A. desmettiana? They are 6 months old.

[Stan]

I was reminded lately of my Dyckia platyphylla. It brought back a memory of my first planting it in full sun in my front yard. For awhile when it was in a pot I had it in part sun. So,when I planted it in ground in summer,it burned. Shriveled a bit too. Didn't look good. So fine, then one day I go out there and decide after a year or so to literally yank it out by hand. It was a small clump of 3-4 plants by then. I grabbed thinking it would come right out. It held. Ok,now Im really going to put muscle behind the next try..it didnt budge. I mean all my effort did nothing. I gave up. In another year or so it acclimated and looked fine. short growth,satin looking foliage.

Now here's my wonderment. How do shrub roots truly become one with soil? Is there some micro glue they use to fuse to soils? It cant be "just roots" or any bare root planted plant would also be impossible to get out of the ground a minute later. Tree's ok-- huge heavy roots. But Dyckia? I could pick up a 10 gallon bucket of dirt. Yet,combine that with a shrub and Earth and suddenly its impossible.
Any botanist know?

[Azuleja]

At least someone is enjoying the December weather.

[KLC]

At least someone is enjoying the December weather.

I am enjoying the December weather. I went outside today in shorts and a t-shirt and washed the car, cleaned up the leaf litter in the front garden, watered the agaves in the nursery and chatted with the next door neighbor in the garage for a while.

I still enjoy agaves and pokey things but I cannot tolerate anything that won't grow here on it's own. I had to eliminate the tender stuff so I/we could reclaim the hours and hours of work to keep them alive. One of the things I eliminated today was a good sized group of titanota-ish/FO-076-ish agaves in the garden. 15 minutes with a shovel and a trash bag was all it took.

Sorry to hear about your weather troubles.

How's everything else doing?

[Azuleja]

Had a community xmas parade today. Must've been ten vehicles long. Santa had a bunch of tattoos.

It's actually pretty warm here in the day, though I didn't see anyone in shorts. High pressure ridge in the pacific is keeping us exceptionally dry. Definitely good weather for yard work. We've had to water too. Broccoli, kale and cabbage in the garden. The tomatoes and peppers finally froze.

[Azuleja]

Some updated seedling photos. The A. ovatifolias did fine outside without protection.

[Spination]

Very impressive work - awesome!

[Melt in the Sun]

Those are some really white ovatifolia! And, what's the green one poking in from the left?

[Gee.S]

Seedlings all look terrific!

[Azuleja]

Thanks! MITS, green one is just a young blue glow.

[Azuleja]

Here is another ovatifolia seedling. MITS, as you can see my three A. arizonica pups all survived and two are making pups of their own. At the bottom is A. macroacantha. I have several A. macroacanthas and all were pretty severely cold damaged and a little one even bit the dust. My first fatality.

[agaveDan]

Great looking seedlings!
Makes me excited to see mine grow up!

How many months old are they?

[Azuleja]

Thanks Dan, yours will get there. The smaller ones are 8-9 mos and the ovatifolias are 16 mos.

[Azuleja]

I wanted to show you how these A. kerchovei seedlings have a way of knitting themselves together. This happened to a different one and it tore itself up a little when it pulled open.

[Agavemonger]

Fascinating!

Great photo!

The Monger

[Gee.S]

Agree 100%. Little guys like that don't usually have much in the way or marginals. On one hand, that looks REALLY wicked! But on the other, I believe Agaves expend a great deal of resources on marginals, so those guys will be SLOW...

[Spination]

I'll third that. This is the 4th or 5th time I've come back to look at that photo. Great shot and definitely most interesting.

[Azuleja]

I believe Agaves expend a great deal of resources on marginals, so those guys will be SLOW...

Well, now that you mention it they're a couple months shy of a year old and most only have 4 or 5 leaves. I don't know if they'll be as cool when they're full grown, but they make fun seedlings. Look at the first photo, to the left. This one has a spine growing out of its leaf surface. Oops.

[Stan]

I saw Kong Island and the creatures there weren't half as scary as those seedlings.

[Stan]

A thought I had that comes to me every now and then: When you have a small yard? Plants seem to always fall into two category's, 1 Grows too fast. 2 Grows too slow. I notice things like that...