viherkasvi – Owlnature

Amaryllis & schlumbergera

It was a bit warmer again out there for a few days and water was dripping, and especially yesterday it rained a bit, but for many hours, but it still didn’t melt the snow we’ve had on the ground for four weeks (that’s a month!) now. And then it sleeted late in the evening. Today the weather’s a bit colder again and they say that it ought to stay that way now and that it ought to snow again as well.

So, now it’s been the perfect time for flowers inside the house! 🙂

My amaryllis is flowering now. Biiig flowers… First it had two flowers.

The jungle here… and, oh, a black panther there, up there in the picture… The black with white markings, a funny type of black panther. 🙂

The colours of this amaryllis are lighter than the colours of my previous amaryllis. I didn’t know what colour my amaryllis would be, or I knew that it has two colours, and I assumed they would be red and white, but the actual hue was a surprise. It turned out to be charming, sweet.

Schlumbergera or Christmas cactus flowering, too. This plant moved here with my amaryllis after Christmas, my boyfriend decided to buy this plant. I like schlumbergera, too, very much, and I love the name – I think that it sounds beautiful. 🙂

Since yesterday my amaryllis has four flowers.

Why am I, all of a sudden, taking pictures in the corner of our living room…? Because on the usual spot we have now a plant light, a real plant light, purple light. Purple light is nice and decorative and good for the plants, but plants in pictures taken ‘under its spell’… not exactly natural, the colours they have under that light… I’ll have to think of something – I don’t like this corner that much, the way it is now, when it comes to taking pictures here…

The purple light… But look, that tiger up there looks pretty natural!

So, it’s already been snowing a bit, too, today. Here’s a couple of pictures I took just before publishing this blog post.

-Leena

My new houseplant – identification needed

EDIT: I got an answer: this plant is Dizygotheca, Dizygotheca elegantissima or Plerandra elegantissima – isoliuska-aralia in Finnish. Thank you Anni, for the answer! I also found these common names: false aralia and, indeed, spider aralia. 🙂

I bought a new houseplant from a supermarket called Prisma in the town of Rauma on Saturday. And I still don’t know what the plant is called! 🙂

This plant has some interesting features…

This is the name tag that the plant has: dizoigotea. I googled it… and, oh dear… Google doesn’t know this either! It only gives me “dizygotic” stuff, when I search just this name in this name tag, and when I use quotation marks with the name, Google doesn’t find anything! But other people have searched this word, too, because it appears in the Google search box when you start writing it there. What IS this…? 😀

Some sort of different spider plant?

The leaves of this plant… what do they remind you of? I must admit that the leaves of this plant caught my attention. 🙂 The ‘leaf groups’ all have the same shape, just the length varies… this ‘leaf group’ in the picture is middle-sized one…

The other side of the leaves is a bit purplish.

The petioles are spotted…

…and the stems are a bit woody, the lower parts are light brown, but the middle and the upper parts of the stems are dark brown, as dark as can be seen in the earlier picture – the dark next to the petioles. (How difficult can this be…? ;D)

Some short stems and younger leaves growing, too.

Hmm… just hoping that this is a strong plant – I would like to keep this.

-Leena

Amaryllis leaves

My amaryllis today… She had four big flowers in total, during the second blooming in early February.

Already two leaves (the shortest ones) have turned brown, got rotten and dried up. I don’t know why… But there’s also a new leaf growing, again. And the longest leaf…

Well, the longest leaf is… long. 🙂 Hopefully it stays this way. At least I’ve been trying to take good care of my amaryllis… I’ve been trying to give it reasonable amounts of water and fertilizer.

So, just hoping now…

-Leena

Amaryllis blooming again

My amaryllis today:

She really did it! 🙂

The bud was so thin that I thought that there would be only one flower and I believed that the flower would be tiny and poor, but… wow! There’s already two big flowers, and too new buds as well.

I wonder if this now is the last time my amaryllis has flowers… 😮 And it had three leaves growing, but one of them (the shortest one) has now turned brown, and it’s not even dry, just rotten… As I said before; I’m not at all confident…

But yes, this now… As majestic as ever…

It’s been freezing cold again and there’s still snow. But the sun’s been shining and it truly is warming nicely during the daytime! And it’s so bright…

-Leena

Amaryllis after the first flowering

A surprise and some doubts. My first ever amaryllis had seven big flowers in December and in early January. And two short but broad leaves that were having a bit more length at the end of the flowering. And then suddenly a new flower stem started to emerge. I wasn’t expecting that.

Whoa, too fast! 😀 – It really was. I’m actually not at all confident with plants that have bulbs – confident with the bulbs – they always become soft (=normal?), no matter how you water the plants. My amaryllis bulb has become a bit soft, of course, too… And… how much can you actually peel the bulb then? 😮

Okay, first I thought I wasn’t giving my plant enough water, because I really was paying attention to the amount of water I gave her during the flowering. And yes, now I’m thinking that perhaps I now have given my plant too much water – when I last gave her water, because the flower stem got so wild. 😮 But I know that I should now fertilize this plant, its bulb, a bit.

Some fertilizer into this original pot with poor potting soil that my amaryllis still is in, or should I now put my plant into a new pot with nutritious potting soil that I bought yesterday…? I think I’ll choose the latter – I should have done it earlier, I know. 🙂

Okay, let’s just see what happens, I really was only hoping that my amaryllis would start to grow her leaves, but then this surprise happened. 😀 But yes, now there’s also a third leaf growing.

-Leena

New Year, amaryllis flowers, freezing cold…

Now some more amaryllis flower pics. The first four pics I took on New Year’s Eve.

The second flower was opening.

And the snow we had, melted, the day before – can be seen through the window…

The scent of the amaryllis flowers is gentle, sophisticated, lovely…

The last pics of Christmas hyacinths, on New Year’s Day.

And yes, it snowed again, on New Year’s Day! It snowed a lot at one point. 🙂 And the snow is still there today.

The scent of my four hyacinths was at its prime – marvellous! I’m dreaming of a yellow hyacinth for the coming spring…

The second amaryllis flower… and the third and the fourth opening.

I heart…

A majestic plant!

The next two pics I took today.

Four flowers. And still one bigger bud and two smaller buds. I honestly thought that there would be three flowers. A fairly nice surprise. 🙂

Okay, we think about (and try out) the growing of amaryllis as a green houseplant, here in Owlnature, a bit later, after this flowering…

It’s freezing cold today. The temperature’s been between -15 degrees Celsius and -20 degrees Celsius – the last mentioned was at night and in the morning. But the sun was shining today as well! The sunlight even felt slightly warm on one’s face. 🙂

The funny black sister to her tiger brother: “I’m sorry I punched you in the face when I was hungry…” (“And, by the way, I’m not as fat as I look in this pic…”)

Yeah well, she’s not, I confirm, but oh… oh my, this really happened on New Year’s Day! – These two were lying side by side on the couch! 😀 Here in my blog you’ve always met these two separately – that’s just the way it is, they don’t normally sleep together anymore – when they were younger, they often did, but nowadays, no no, only, like, two or three times a year at most we see this. Okay, they started off 2017 like this. 🙂

And yes, that princess is in the habit of punching (not scratching) her brother in the face, with her claws, when she’s hungry or bored, or whatever… She just does it – out of the blue and randomly. But our cats do play or fight with each other,too. They have always lived together – really a sister and a brother. 🙂

-Leena

Calathea or Prayer Plant or…

This plant has many names – which one is the most correct, or common… Calathea, I guess, and this is said to be a Prayer Plant in English, too, as this plant closes or raises its leaves for the night-time and opens or lowers them again in daylight. In the Finnish language we actually understand this to be the act of sleeping – this plant is called nukkumaija in Finnish, meaning like Maija (a Finnish female name), who goes to sleep. 🙂

These tropical friends, Calatheas, originate from South America. They are very strong plants.

As houseplants…? Well, it depends… 🙂 Calatheas like water, but they don’t like drowning. They like some light, but they don’t like full sunlight. Calatheas like a bit of warmth, too, and humidity – they like some misting with a spray of water. (Which I did for the first time before taking these pics. :)) Jungle plants – not too much light, but humidity.

So deep, it’s like black… I saved this plant from a supermarket the other day. For half the normal price. I knew what this plant is called and what it is. I had a different-looking Calathea before, but it got too dry because of my life situation at that time. (I was away from home for too long.)

However, in the supermarket, I was a bit worried about the colour of the leaves of this plant. – They were so purple, so black, also the top sides, and almost all of the leaves (and it has many leaves) – is the plant already at its end…? – Some of its bigger leaves were not in so good shape anymore (-half the price). First I thought I should leave this plant there, but I had already chosen her (or she had already chosen me! 🙂 ), so I just couldn’t leave it behind. And I even tried to google a bit while in the supermarket, but couldn’t find any answer. But yes, at home I had a bit more time and peace to investigate, and I found out that Calatheas come in so many colours, this very deep one as well. And this plant also has many tiny leaves (under the bigger leaves, can be seen in the first pic) – a fairly big flower pot might be necessary.

Now I should buy fresh potting soil for my Calathea and for some of our other houseplants as well – we have many houseplants (and more coming… ;D ) And by the way, I’m planning on taking pics of all of our other houseplants, too, in future.

Some green and pink, too! 🙂

And hopefully some more pics of my Calathea in future as well.

-Leena