Blooms of the Drought

Adaptations of plants are fascinating.  At times when we would least expect a plant to bloom, some species will be full of blooms.  So, why is that?

In the Garden’s Madagascar biome, we stopped watering as of October, and many of the plants have begun to lose their leaves and go dormant.  During this period, the Madagascar plants stop all growth until the spring rains return or, in our case, the spring sprinkler. The plants go dormant to conserve their stored water and nutrients; the best way to help them go into dormancy is to stop watering and fertilizing.  Do not overwater succulents or cacti at this time because most of the roots have shriveled up or are absorbing minute amounts of water. 

Why would a plant subject itself to the extra stress of producing blooms? Blooming is an aggressive act of reproduction. For those plants that do bloom during this otherwise dormant period, their flowers become a limited resource for insects and, therefore, they have a better chance of being pollinated. Blooming now also gives them a jump on the other species of plants in the spring. By being pollinated during the drought, these plants’ seeds are formed in time for the spring rains.  When the other plants are flowering, the seeds of these plants will already be rooting. These crazy plants aren’t so crazy after all.

"Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

A botanical garden is in many ways a living museum – a museum of plants. Part of a garden’s mission is to aid the protection and preservation of rare and endangered plants. Botanical gardens also educate and inspire.  I recently came across an article  on Madagascar and found it rather disturbing.

It is always amazing how quickly things can be destroyed and yet how long it takes for them to recover — if they even can. Extinct is forever.  Madagacar had a growing ecotourism base under that country’s last president.  Now that has all changed.  We should consider ourselves lucky to have such an intact slide of Madgascar here in Cleveland. The five native Madagascar baobab trees are a poignant reminder that these striking trees may not exist forever in their homeland. Hopefully, with good care, we’ll at least be able to keep ours for future generations to enjoy and appreciate.

Posted by Joe Mehalik

Winter Sucs!

Overwintering Your Cacti and Succulents

It’s time to start thinking about winter. I not a fan of winter, but knowing what to do with your cacti and succulents during this time is imperative. So many questions: Do I let them go dormant? Should I water them over the winter? Do they need artificial light? When do I bring them inside?  Let me tell you right now that you shouldn’t let them go dormant.

Temperature: I do not allow my tropicals/succulents to go below 40 degrees. Freezing/frost is 35 degrees and lower. Some plants like the Century plant (Agave americana) can tolerate a high to low 20’s, but you need to check the species. Once you get into the later months of October and November, your weather station should be on hourly. I will leave most of my succulents outside until November unless we get an early cold snap. In Cleveland, the weather can change quickly so you need to be prepared at any time to bring them in.

Water: Once we get into the fall, the wet cool rains usually persist. If you have already allowed the succulents and cactus to go dormant or leaves are yellow and falling off, you cannot leave them wet. I let my plants keep growing no matter how slowly until it is time to bring them in. The plants can tolerate the damp as long as they are not dormant. If the plant is dormant and you leave it wet, it will rot and die. This is because the roots have shut down and the plant is no longer processing any materials.  They simply drown in their own pot. Once inside I shut my plants down (dry them out) completely and only water them if they show signs of desiccation. I only will give them enough water to swell back up to normal, not enough to grow or rot them. If you have a greenhouse, you can keep some growing throughout the winter; but in order for most succulents/cactus to bloom some kind of a dormancy period is required.

Light: Getting to know your plant is the key to its survival. A coworker calls my house’s storage area "the basement of torture" for plants.  I leave my plants in the dark, in the cool, without water until I say otherwise. You cannot do this with all plants. Some species of succulents are winter growers; others do not really go dormant and will get very stretched out growth or a limp look. So knowing what your plant’s exact requirements are is very important.  Knowing what they need leads to knowing what you don’t have to give them and, therefore, my basement of no light works out for what I grow. Fluorescent lighting can be very beneficial and give you an edge in keeping them alive over our long, dark winters. Just because I may not use fluorescent lighting at home does not mean it is incorrect for you. The best motto to live by is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

I hope you have found these tidbits helpful. They also give you a sense of plant care strategies we use to keep the Garden’s desert plant collection in the Madagascar biome flourishing through the winter months. Just because we have plants in a glasshouse doesn’t mean we can change the rules either. So just hang in there and wait until the snow melts. Just like the Cleveland Browns — there is always next year!

The Lush-est Desert in Cleveland!

Lush and desert are two words not normally together. If you haven’t seen the Madagascar exhibit at the Botanical Garden lately, you are missing out. Over the last 5 years of growth, a few care adjustments and many new plant additions have produced a biome filled with succulents.

The Spiny Desert is actually a scrub forest. Succulent plants and trees stretch above grasses and lower shrubs creating a tangled web of branch and vine. Madagascar may seem very different to a Clevelander, but in many ways it performs and acts like a forest here. Instead of snow the desert has drought. Same effect though. Plants lose their leaves, stop growing and wait for the return of rain, or in our case, the snow to melt. Once spring arrives, the plants can "grow like weeds." People believe it takes a tremendous amount of time for succulents to grow. This may be true of some species, but add lots of heat and water and you can achieve substantial growth in a short period of time.

How does this happen in the Madagascar biome? The answer is Monsoon Joe. October represents the end of the growing cycle in the Glasshouse. I stop watering plants until April. Come April/May I act like the monsoons that drench the island of Madagascar. The array of hoses, sprinklers and watering cans soak the forest for weeks. Dry soil (our mix is coir, pine fines and Hydrocks) actually repels water, so it takes a tremendous amount of water to re-saturate it. It takes over a month to get the soil moist to a proper depth in the garden after the dry winter. Plants, such as the Uncarinas, can grow over three feet in a season during this time, and the rain brings on a whole host of blooms. The plants have many ways of dealing with this change from water to drought. Underground tubers, lack of leaves, spines, and water-retaining stems help them to survive the harsh desert regions of Madagascar. So, I hope everyone, especially my fellow succulent growers, stop by and see the lush flush.

Enjoy the garden

New this summer in the Madagascar Desert glasshouse we’re creating a fun exhibit that showcases many new cacti and succulents that resemble coral. Tentatively titled ‘Seaside succulents’, you’ll see really cool, diverse and unique cacti that look like they’d be at home underwater or in a clay pot. I was inspired last year when talking to colleagues at a public garden conference to do something fun with cacti like this display. Also, I found a great book- Designing with Succulents by Debra Lee Baldwin. She has an entire chapter dedicated to the ‘undersea succulent garden’. Why not do a fun container on your own patio this summer using cacti that look like corals? Using drought tolerant plants in containers is very trendy right now and think of the conversation piece it would be! I think all desert plants are weird and wonderful, don’t you? They have adapted to some of the most extreme weather conditions known on earth. Imagine not seeing rain for years at time! Here in Cleveland, we begin to worry when it hasn’t rained for a few weeks! Beginning next week, come by the Glasshouse again and see our new, cool seaside succulents!

Some cool Euphorbias — or are are they corals?