Tag Archives: mystery plant

30Jul / 2010

This week has been full of:

Look at all those spikes!

I’ve had my eye on this spooky-looking plant in my parents’ front yard for a while. It finally bloomed!

This flower looks like it might be carnivorous.

These pears make me think of big ol' grapes.

The pear trees out front have been weighed down with these tiny, sweet pears for the last couple of weeks.  The limbs were almost at the breaking point when I finally got out there to pick them.

Have you ever had pear cake? If not, you're missing out.

These spotty little apples are some of the sweetest I've ever tasted.

Thanks to my Nana and our neighbor, Granny, I’ve recently come into a lot of apples.  There’s no way I could eat or bake them all into something, so I decided to can them.  Come October when the four of us are 500 miles away and getting homesick, maybe pie made with these apples from home will make us feel better?

We've also got lots of figs.

Our neighbors and family members (the ones with the cows that Chowder and Maxine love to watch) have a couple of fig trees covered in figs they aren’t going to use. We couldn’t live with ourselves if we let all those beautiful figs go to waste!

We're drowning in baby figs.

As well as big ass figs--this is not a pear.

We will more than likely be packing and moving next week, but hopefully I’ll still be able to share the sweet treats I’m making with all this beautiful fresh (and local, and free!)  fruit.

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23Jun / 2010

Mystery Solved: Bryophyllum crenatodaigremontianum!

So, I was slightly wrong in my previous post about this mystery plant.  My Nana pointed out that Granny actually referred to this as a teardrop plant (and not a tear plant), and upon googling teardrop plant I quickly found the information I was looking for.

this looks just like my teardrop plant to me

In my online research I’ve also seen it called mother of millions (or thousands), Mexican hat plant, and chandelier plant.  The forums at gardenweb.com were especially helpful in pinpointing the exact plant that I have.  They directed me to bryophyllum.com (which has some very informative pictures!), where I learned that my plant is called bryophyllum crenatodaigremontianum.  It’s a cross between b.crenatum and b.daigremontianum.   I’ve discovered that the mother of millions (the name I prefer, naturally) is a particularly invasive succulent that’s been known to grow on almost any available surface (including bare bricks and pine straw).  Many people consider this plant a weed, and it should be kept out of reach of pets as it’s leaves and especially its flowers are toxic when eaten.  Apparently, this plant won’t think twice about choking out another plant it happens to share soil with.  Because of this, it’s wise to keep these away from other plants altogether.  The rosettes on the leaves are indeed the baby plants, and they can fall into neighboring pots and take them over if you aren’t careful.  Therefore, total isolation is recommended for the mother of millions.  A windowsill by itself or a big pot on the porch both seem like good places to me.  I have yet to see them, but according to both Granny and the internet the mother of millions produces pretty lavender flowers.

(photo: bryophyllum.com)

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21Jun / 2010

Mystery Plant: Tear Plant or Hen and Chicks?

We had a lot of fun on vacation, but it’s really nice to be home.  One of the first things I did (after bringing in my bags and kissing Chowder and Maxine) was go outside to see how my plants fared during my absence.  I’m happy to report that my Nana took good care of them.  One plant seems to have done especially well.

tear plant when first transplated on 6-11-10

During my visit with Granny (a neighbor, family-friend, and phenomenal gardener) a couple of weeks ago, she gave me this very visually interesting plant that she called a tear plant.  She said that growing up she’d also heard it referred to as hen and chicks.  Now, I’ve seen hen and chicks at greenhouses and they don’t look anything like the plant she gave me.  And after googling tear plant I’m equally stumped–all I got was pictures of leaves dripping water that looked like tears.

tear plant today, 6-21-10

I transplanted the big plant she gave me pretty soon after I got it.  At that point there were very few “babies,” but I transplanted the bigger ones to some old (not nearly as attractive as the one above) pots.  You can’t really tell from the pictures, but the big one really grew while we were on vacation!

this is what i mean by "visually interesting"

Very few of the leaves had these on them when I left, but now they’re covered up.  These things fall off sometimes, and from what I can tell they become the babies?  I could be totally wrong about that.

babies that aren't quite big enough to transplant yet

I’ve already transplanted three or four of the larger babies that were pretty big when Granny first gave me the plant.  These sprang up while I was on vacation.  I’ll have to transplant them and find good homes for them, too.  Any takers?  Also, have any of you seen or heard of this plant called by any other names?

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27Apr / 2010

A Stupid Thing

These look a lot like... chamomile?

I’ve had this mystery plant growing in my garden for what must be several months.  It is growing in this big pot along with some salad greens I started last winter and then totally neglected.  I don’t even recall watering them–they just languished on my front porch through the winter and perked up and started growing like weeds as soon as I started watering them regularly this spring.  I recognized the big leafy things in the background as some kind of lettuce (buying a mescalin seed mix isn’t always a good idea if you don’t know your salad greens–I’ve concluded that the more delicate varieties died out while the bitter, hardy ones hunkered down for the winter).  I assumed that the increasingly tall leafy things were just another kind of salad green.  Within the past few days several little buds have come up, and every time I’ve walked past I’ve thought to myself, “I’m going to f ind out what those things are.”

Well, I figured it out today!  I was looking at the new little blooms and thinking, “Hey, these are pretty cute.  I’m glad I let them grow even though I didn’t know what they were.”  And STILL, it wasn’t until later in the day when I was watering my tiny little chamomile seedlings that I noticed the leaves.

Those spindly leaves! How could I have missed it?!

I’ve tried to grow chamomile several times in the past couple of years.  One time the seeds never sprouted.  Another time the cold killed them when they were still tiny.  In all my dreaming about growing beautiful chamomile I had never actually seen a chamomile plant (tea doesn’t count), and I had absolutely no clue how leggy they are. Gangly might be a better word.

Yes, my porch rail is so broken.

Those lettuces are bitter and inedible (at least the last time I checked), but I’m leaving them because I like the way they look.

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18Apr / 2010

Thrift Store Find: Canning Jar Pitcher

You know those moments when someone picks up something you want at a thrift store or yard sale, and you have to play it cool and hang around the item nonchalantly until they put it down and walk away before you can scoop it up? Well, that happened to me with this pitcher. Twice. While I was looking at other dishes and things, I saw someone pick this pitcher up. I slowly made my way over while she debated with her companion as to whether she needed it or not. I was keeping my fingers crossed, sending mental signals that said “not, not, not, not.” However, by the time she had put it down someone else had picked it up, forcing me to play the same waiting game all over again. Finally she put it down, and I barely waited for her to turn around before I snatched it up.

After taking this picture I had to move these up on a high shelf because Chowder kept trying to eat the leaves.

As side note: It seems like every day there’s something new blooming in my backyard. I’m not sure what those beautiful yellow flowers are called, but they’re new as of yesterday. Does anyone recognize them?

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