Anthurium Rugulosum ‘Chocolate’

                        Anthurium rugulosum ‘Chocolate’

I purchased my Anthurium rugulosum ‘Chocolate’ for the pebble-textured leaves in a local shop. While I paid, the shop owner started talking about wanting to add a refrigerated cloud forest display case to their shop. That was a big red flag. One, that I enthusiastically ignored.

The native Anthurium rugulosum grows in high altitude cloud forests in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. This plant wants cooler temperatures with a night time cooling with higher humidity. When I looked it up on The Exotic Rainforest website it warned: We do not recommend anyone other than a botanical garden with adequate facilities attempting to grow this species.  It must be kept damp and cool at all times. 

Well, shit. What had I gotten myself into? 

Fortunately, I had lucked out because I live in Washington state and the conditions of my studio match up with what it wants. My plant prefers to sit in my studio window, under a grow light in winter, with a little water in the drip tray at all times. I keep my studio at 73 degrees during the day and 65 degrees at night in ambient humidity. The new leaves continue to size up. The only trouble that it has given me was when I put it in my grow tent for one night and two leaf tips turned brown. It was humid, but too hot for it.

In my conditions, I have found the Anthurium rugulosum ‘Chocolate’ to be a joy to grow. You can find it for sale online. Ecuagenera sells several different rugulosum around the forty dollar price point. But, even they include a warning in their plant description: It is an exotic and beautiful species; only a few can grow.

Sparkle Like an Anthurium Red Crystal Blush

In fourth grade, collecting stickers was a huge fad and I knew kids that had photo albums filled with them. They were ‘collectors’. I had one small humble half sheet sized album that held my stickers. I chose ones with sparkles around the edges and as a young gymnast that was often mistaken as a boy, the stickers made me feel girly and giddy. 

One afternoon, I accidentally forgot my small sticker album at a friend’s house and she decided to ‘improve’ my stickers by cutting all of the sparkly edges off of them. She had ruined my collection and I threw them away. No more sparkles for me. 

Until now.

Anthurium Red Crystal Blush F1 bred by Lindsay Sisti

Now, I’m feeling giddy at the pink and silver sparkles on my Anthurium Red Crystal Blush F1. The vivid emergent is cute, but becomes special as it fills out. And the hardened off leaf looks classy like a black velvet cocktail dress with the right flourish of jewelry.

Lindsay Sisti at All the Plant Babies has bred a masterpiece and you can find them available for purchase on her website, www.alltheplantbabies.com. 

Because it’s never too late to sparkle.

Let’s Begin

 

Anthurium carlablackiae from NSE Tropicals

If we are lucky, there are many love stories in our lives. The people we love, pets, hobbies, making art, and our calling. I’ve never felt a calling to one thing, it’s always been to everything. To me, life is a buffet to be sampled. In my outdoor garden, I want to grow everything: to try all of the plants. And I know that I’m doing a good job because nursery owners know my name and are always happy to see me (and my credit card).

For this reason, I’ve always envied gardeners that loved a specific genus of plants. I ask them to give me a blow by blow of how they fell in love with their favorite plants. I watch their eyes go misty as they detail the first clematis they purchased with the wrong plant tag and how that led to a nationally accredited display garden. And I hang on every word. Every damn time.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wished for my favorite genus to finally reveal itself to me, to feel the pull and fascination towards one type of plants. I have searched and searched, hoping that the next plant would be the one. I’ve gone to great ends to find it.

I volunteered for many years as a master gardener, trained master gardeners, taught gardening classes for the community college’s community education program, garden coached, wrote several different garden blogs, and won different awards. None of it leading to my dream genus.

No, it took a surgeon seriously looking into my eyes and warning me that I had an internal injury (from gardening) that could kill me at any time and that lifting over 15 pounds would definitely kill me. “You shouldn’t be alive right now,” he said confidently. 

I hated him immediately, but also believed him. And so, I’ve been working through my What I Want To Do, Just In Case I die List, as I lose the necessary weight before my repair surgery this winter. Yes, the surgeon scared me and put me on a diet; we will never be friends. 

With the fifteen pound lifting limit and the political nightmare that took over this country, I turned to indoor container gardening. And that little red blooming IKEA anthurium was a gateway plant that has  changed my life. I tried looking up a book on anthurium care at the library and found, Welcome to the Jungle by Enid Offolter.  

And here I sit, writing to you 10 months later, with 95 anthurium species in my collection. I found my genus! It happened for me. My wish finally came true. This blog is my love letter to anthuriums and the journey to successfully select, purchase, and grow them. There are over 1000 species, so I’m going to be busy growing them for a long time. Let’s begin.