WITH GOOD REASON, FAMILIES MIGRATE AROUND MY GARDEN
(Excerpt from The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, available directly from this website, signed, or from the usual sources.)
Who is Coming?
How many families am I having over to the vegetable garden this summer? I have to plan their seating arrangements.
I’m talking about plant families. An example of a plant family is the Mustard Family, known botanically as the Cruciferae, and including among its members cabbage, broccoli, collards, and Brussels sprouts. Their similarly pungent flavors and waxy, bluish leaves might also have earmarked them as being in the same family. Then again, the different parts eaten—the swollen stalks of kohlrabi, the leaves of cabbage, and the flower buds of broccoli— might indicate otherwise.
Most important in uniting this family, and the primary characteristic that botanically unites members of any plant family, is Read more
THE DARKER SIDE OF TINKERBELL
They’re Cute, Though
The bugs is comin’! The bugs is comin’! Just as sure as the sun is rising higher in the sky each day, the hope of spring is awakening all sorts of pesky little buggers on houseplants. One by one, they are showing their faces: mites, aphids, mealybugs, scale insects, and white flies.
I’d actually consider whiteflies — the target of today’s hunt — to be cute if they weren’t plant pests. The same surely could not be said for drab mealybugs and scale insects, or for mites, the latter because you can hardly see them at all.
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AND THE REAL SPLIT-LEAF PHILODENDRON IS. . .
Doppelgangers
Ask for the real philodendron to stand up and you might be surprised at what plant does not rise. The still-seated plant I’m talking about is Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa), often called split-leaf philodendron.
Swiss cheese plant is sometimes called split-leaf philodendron, a common name it shares with a true philodendron (Philodendron bipinnatifidum) because both have similar looking, large glossy, incised leaves and aerial roots. Like the real philodendron, Swiss cheese plant also has a hardy disposition within the limitation of being tropical, and tolerates low light, dry air, and neglectful watering as well as do other good houseplants.
Philodendron bipinnatifidum
Where the cousins part ways visually is in the “Swiss cheese” aspect of the plants. Read more
