My order from one of my favorite orchid dealers (Oak Hill Gardens, in Dundee, IL) arrived today. I received five plants, in pristine condition, for under $100, including shipping. All five are species, although Oak Hill has a lot of hybrids, as well. They are:
- Oncidium splendidum (the one with the thick leaves, back left)
- Oncidium zelenkoanum (back right, with the wispy bloom spikes)
- Biermannia bimaculata (the cute little one, front right)
- Brassavola perrinii (the one with tall, terete, skinny leaves)
- Cattleya schilleriana (the one mounted on the wood slab, at bottom)
The latter two smell wonderful when they bloom; I’m not sure if the others are scented at all, but will find out, sooner or later.
Help me Rusty-Wan Kenobi! You’re our only hope!
I just posted this in my blog:
****
We were just weeding the back gravel-patch where we park, and discovered a Weird Plant that we’re guessing grew through the fence from our neighbors’ yard.
It looked like a long thick stalky thing with a cattail-like clump of growths at the top. The stalky thing was brownish, and white at the root, and kind of waxy-looking. The growth clump looked like a cluster of tiny bell peppers, orange and yellow and green.
I know fuck-all about gardening. There’s maybe a dozen flowers I can identify on sight. My one horticultural experience was the time I planted tulip bulbs, and they returned for the next several years mostly because I ignored them.
So I have no clue about this thing in our backyard. Anybody know what the hell it might’ve been?
Should we be alarmed? Is it poison? Is it illegal? Is it some alien seed that took root here and will grow until there’s six-foot pods and strange vegetable monsters take over our bodies as we sleep?
Help!
*****
… and thought it couldn’t hurt to ask you, too!
Do you have a picture of it?
A couple of things come to mind that have that general growth pattern: Kniphofia (red-hot poker, or torch flower), and Bulbinella (no common name is listed in my AHS Encyclopedia for it). Both are members of the lily family. Kniphofia is very common in the catalog offerings from Park Seed, and the like, and has many different varieties, some of which do produce multiple colors on the same flowerhead. The individual flowers, though, tend to be tubular (some long, others shorter), rather than berry-like. Your description of the flowers being like tiny bell peppers is what has me a bit baffled.
Anyway, just by flipping through the pages of my American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia, and looking at the pictures, those are two possibilities that I noticed. Both would grow fine in rocky areas in the Pacific Northwet [sic]. If it is an escaped garden plant, it’s more likely to be Kniphofia than Bulbinella.
Of course, if you can see over or through your neighbor’s fence, and see something like it, you could always just ask them what it is.
It’s a high fence … all I know is they have an apple tree back there that also regularly drops fruit on our side, and they have a shop where they hammer/saw/drill at strange hours, and they’ve got about fifteen probably-Russian immigrants living in the house with about a thousand kids, none of whom speak very good English … I would feel kinda weird going over there with this dead stalky-thing (assuming I could even un-dig it from the mulch pile, where by now I’m sure it has merged with the big scary white fleshy mushrooms in there to make something new and even more bizarre) and knocking and holding it up at them.
But I looked up some pics online for those two you mentioned, and probably you’re right that it’s the K-one. The coloring and pattern looks the same.
Thank you for solving the mystery! 🙂
I’m glad I was able to help.
My AHS Encyclopedia is a wonderful reference book. It’s almost as thick and heavy as my Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. The only thing about it that can be annoying at times, is that plants are listed alphabetically under their botanical name’s genus, and sometimes within that, their species. Case in point: if I want to look up firethorn, I’ll find it under Pyracantha. Similarly, holly is listed under Ilex. Often, I just flip through it, looking at pictures, until I find a few things that look like possibilities.
It sounds like you have some lovely neighbors. Just as well it’s a really tall fence. 😉