While there are always a plethora of beautiful flowers booming in the Costa Rica biome, I would like to share five particularly interesting ones in bloom right now that are worth seeing.

1. Shell flower- Tigridia pavonia

These fascinating flowers grow from corms, which are like small bulbs, and belong to the iris family, Iridaceae. The flowers are approximately four inches wide and come in pink, white, yellow and red. Each flower lasts less than one day, opening in the morning and starting to wither away around five o’clock in the evening. Click here to see some of the other colors.

2. Brazilian Plume Flower – Justicia carnea

This flower is also called flamingo flower because the individual flowers are said to resemble flamingos. These shrubs bloom heavily in the spring and continue to rebloom periodically through the summer. It is in the family Acanthaceae which includes many highly ornamental tropical flowers.

3. Giant potato vine – Solanum wendlandii

I planted this vine last summer at the base of a tree and it quickly grew 20 feet or so to the top and started to hang down over the sides back down to the ground. It started blooming a couple months ago and has been blooming profusely ever since with clusters of large two inch blooms. The vine is covered in hook-like thorns which help it to cling to its host. It is in the same genus as the tomato, potato and eggplant and also the deadly nightshades.

4. Coral aphelandra- Aphelandra sinclairiana

Here’s another unusual flower from the Acanthaceae family. This flowering shrub really stands out with its hot pink blooms and emerging orange colored bracts.

5. Heliconia- Heliconia mathiasiae

This heliconia has long-lasting red colored bracts with yellow flowers that turn to dark blue fruits. They bloom on top of long slender shoots reaching eight feet tall or more.  They are often confused with bird-of-paradise, Sterlitzia, which are from South Africa. The honeycreepers, violaceous euphonias and bananaquits will all visit the bract cups for a drink of water and take nectar from the flowers.

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

           With delicate-looking flowers that sparkle in the sun as if they were formed by tiny crystals, Cattleya skinneri, or guaria morada, as it is known in Costa Rica, has a beauty that can’t quite be captured in a photograph, but rather, must be experienced in person. Thanks to a grant from the Mid-America Orchid Congress, we have been able to expand our collection of these beautiful orchids and display them in the Costa Rican exhibit for everyone to see.  

            Cattleya skinneri orchids start to come into bloom in mid March and often last until mid May. They are sometimes referred to as the Easter orchid, because they are a popular decoration during Easter holidays.  In Costa Rica, these orchids are so popular in homes and gardens that at one point they were over collected and became scarce in the wild. These orchids have since been reintroduced into the wild, and populations are stabilizing.

           Cattleya skinneri comes in a few naturally occurring flower colors. Most have pinkish to purple color but there is also a less common pure white form, Cattleya skinneri var. alba, and a white flowered form with a pinkish purple throat. We are lucky enough to now have all three of these color forms in our collection.  

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

          Like much of the rest of the world, I love strawberries. Very few things that taste as good as strawberries are also good for you. When I was a kid, I used to go strawberry picking with my family, and I would often eat a few berries right off the plant. If I knew what I know now about strawberry production, I would have waited for the strawberries to get a good rinsing before I ate them. Strawberries often receive repeated doses of pesticides, mostly fungicides, and are on the list of the twelve fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residue. These twelve fruits and vegetables are often referred to as the ‘dirty dozen." You can see the rest of the ‘dirty dozen’ and also the ‘clean 15′ here. Even scrubbing and rinsing cannot remove all pesticide residues from the soft skin of strawberries, but it can remove a good majority.

        The problem with farming strawberries is that they don’t grow well in the same spot for too long. The many diseases and insect pests that plague strawberries will begin to accumulate in the soil, reducing yields and increasing need for pesticide sprays. Many commercial strawberry growers will use harsh pesticides like methyl bromide to completely sterilize their soil in order to keep growing strawberries.  Methyl bromide is a highly dangerous gas that is injected into the soil underneath plastic tarps killing all living organism in the soil. It’s is also an ozone depleting gas. It’s use has been mostly phased out by the EPA, but it is still used for a small number of crops like strawberries.  Methyl iodide, an equally dangerous fumigant that is highly carcinogenic, was recently approved by the EPA and is being used in some places as a replacement for methyl bromide. Its use is currently being debated in California where it is currently not approved.

       Since it seems to take a lot of serious pesticides to grow strawberries on a commercial scale, you might think it would be too difficult for the average gardener to grow. In fact, strawberries are quite easy to grow and are considered by many home gardeners to be one of the easiest fruit crops to grow. The problem of soil-borne diseases and pests can be easily solved for a home gardener using crop rotation. Strawberry plants tend to lose their vigor after about 5 years and need to be replanted. Instead of replanting strawberries in the same spot, try planting them somewhere else in the garden. Amend the former strawberry bed with organic matter and plant crops or flowers that are not susceptable to strawberry pests- avoid tomatoes, peppers, and cucurbits. Another easy solution is growing strawberries in pots. Strawberries do very will in pots, and the soil can easily be changed when replanted.

       When it comes to strawberries and other members of the "dirty dozen," it may be best to grow your own.  If you can’t grow your own strawberries, try buying organic first or support local farms that use crop rotation techniques to reduce pesticide needs. Also, be wary of buying strawberries out of season as they often come from other countries where even more pesticides are used. It would be a shame to limit consumption of such a delicious fruit that also has so many health benefits.

Posted By Nate Tschaenn

              Ahh, spring . . .  so many beautiful shrubs, trees, and flowers coming into bloom, many filling the air with such delightful aromas that it makes you want to go up and smell each and every flower. That is, until you come across one of those beautiful white flowering trees that seem to be planted everywhere – and before you can even approach the tree you are overwhelmed with a terrible, somewhat fishy smell that just turns your stomach.  

      That beautiful white tree is the ornamental pear tree, Pyrus calleryana. It is a very commom tree in the landscape, especially as a street tree, because of its medium size, attractive narrow form, and its relatively low cost.  Its biggest drawbacks are usually considered to be that many cultivars are either prone to fireblight, or tight branch angles, or both. Narrow branch angles cause weak points in the tree structure and can cause large limbs to split from the tree and ruin its form. In my opinion, this tree’s biggest offense is the horrendous smell of its flowers. They have such a strong scent that there have been times when that I identified a pear tree’s prescence before acutally seeing it. So, if you are wondering why your yard has that terrible odor every spring, look around for a tree covered in white flowers and you’ll know.

     Ornamental pears aren’t the only smelly trees. Soon after the pears flower, the hawthorns begin to flower. They have a very similar smell, but not quite as strong. Plus, they are not nearly as common. Probably the worst offender is the ginkgo tree, Ginkgo biloba. It’s not the flowers that smell in a ginkgo – in fact ginkgos are not flowering plants. It is the fruits that fall in early autumn.  The fruits contain buytric acid, a chemical also found in vomit, which is exactly what the rotting fruits smell like. Luckily, the trees are dioecious and you can plant a male tree with no fruits.  

       If you can’t stomach the smell of ornamental pear but still want a nice spring flowering display, perhaps a good alternative would be a flowering crabapple. They are also very common landscape trees, but come in such a wide variety of colors, shapes, and sizes that I wouldn’t call them overused. Many cultivars also have attractive colored fruits in the fall, unlike ornamental pears which only have small brown nubs of fruit that go unnoticed by most.  A second option would be serviceberry, Amelanchier sp.. These medium-sized trees have showy but short lived flowers in early spring with edible berries in early summer. For more information on serviceberries, check out one of my earlier blogs here.  

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

Violaceus euphonia looking for nectar in the avocado tree (Persea americana)

     This time of year, there are a few trees in the Costa Rican exhibit that like to drop some or all of their leaves. It can be kind of embarrassing- and messy- to have trees in a tropical glasshouse without any leaves, but it is completely normal. Many tropical trees lose many, if not all, their leaves for a short period this time of year before putting out a new set of leaves.

    Also, not all of them are completely naked because this is also the time many trees, like the avocado tree on the left, start to flower. It makes perfect sense that trees would flower when there are fewer leaves in the way. Having no leaves when in flower greatly increases the visibility of the blooms so they can be easily seen by pollinators. The nectar feeding birds and butterflies have certainly noticed that the avocados are in bloom and have been spending a lot of time in these trees. I can already see the avocado fruits starting to form.

     In Costa Rica, December to March is known as the "dry season," and this is when many deciduous and semi-deciduous trees and plants lose their leaves (the rest of the year is known as the "green season" or "rainy season"). The sparse canopy in the dry season can reveal plants and blooms that may have been hidden during the green season and can make it easier to spot animals. The rainforest canopies are also painted with color from the showy blooms of trees like the two Tabebuia species pictured below.  Tabebuias are dry season deciduous trees that bloom while completely leafless shortly before leafing out.

Tabebuia impetiginosa	Tabebuia aurea

Posted by Nate Tschaenn 

"What frightful trouble you have taken about Vanilla; you really must not take an atom more; for the orchids are more play than real work"    

-Charles Darwin in letter to colleague William Hooker   

  As I am preparing for this year’s Orchid Mania exhibit  opening February 27, I wanted to share some history of one very interesting and perhaps most economically important orchid species, Vanilla planifolia. The vanilla orchid is peculiar because it grows like a vine. The fermented seedpods are the source of the flavoring vanillin.

        Vanilla and chocolate have a long history together and have been together long before the invention of ice cream.  One of the earliest record of the use of the vanilla bean dates back as far early 1400’s when vanilla beans along with cacao seeds, from which chocolate is derived, were part of tributes paid by the Totonacs and other Central American tribes to the Aztecs. The Aztecs, Mayans, and other Central American natives used vanilla almost exclusively to flavor and perfume a popular beverage prepared from cacao seeds. 

      In the early 1500’s, vanilla, along with its chocolate beverage, was introduced in Europe and became popular among the wealthy. It wasn’t until 1602 that Hugh Morgan, pharmacist to Queen Elizabeth I, suggested that vanilla could have other uses besides being a flavoring for chocolate. In 1789, Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassador to France, brought Vanilla to the U.S. from Paris along with a recipe for vanilla ice cream. His hand written recipe can be found in the Library of Congress.

          Many attempts were made to grow vanilla outside of Central America in the first three centuries after its discovery, but the orchids never bore fruit. In 1838, Charles Morren discovered that only bees of the genus Eulaema pollinated the flowers, and they could not survive outside of Mexico. Three years later a suitable method of hand pollination was discovered that allowed vanilla production to spread across the globe. In 1858, vanillin was isolated opening the way for the creation of artificial vanilla.

 Posted by Nate Tschaenn

                Ants are like the mercenaries of the plant world. If given a reward, they will fight to protect plants from grazing animals and insect pests. On the other hand, if the price is right, ants can also be found aiding the sap-sucking insects that feed on plants. With their great numbers and impressive strength given their size, they are certainly a formidable army. So what does it take to have an army of ants on your side? 

                 Well, if you were a plant, one of the best things you could do to bribe a colony of ants into protecting you is to provide them with a home. Many plants have specialized structures called "domatia" in which certain species of ants form colonies. These can be hollowed-out structures like stems, petioles, or spines or cavities and chambers in swollen roots and caudices. As anyone who has ever accidently stepped on a fire ant nest can tell you, ants will aggressively protect their homes.

This ant plant, Hydnophytum, has been cut open to show the chambers used by some species of ants as a nest. photograph © Alex Wild 2004	Cross section of a hollow acacia thorn. photograph © Alex Wild 2007	Cross section of cecropia branch show ants nesting in the hollow internodes.  photograph © Alex Wild 2007

                  Another method that plants use to attract ant guardians is supplying them with food. There are many different examples of plants that provide ants with nectar in extrafloral nectaries. Extrafloral nectaries are special glands that produce nectar outside of flowers. Providing ants with their own nectar source also has the benefit of keeping them out of the flowers so that they do not interfere with pollination. In addition to nectar, some plants even produce specialized food bodies that ants can collect and store in their nests.  

Extra floral nectary on the leaf of an inga tree. photograph © Alex Wild 2007	Ants collecting protein rich food bodies from an acacia tree. photograph © Alex Wild 2007	Food bodies produced a cecropia tree at the bass of the leaves.   photograph © Alex Wild 2007

            Of course, with upwards of 10,000 different ant species, not all of them are plant friendly. There are many ant species that  harm plants by aiding the sap-sucking insect enemies of plants. The insects have something ants want that is just waste to them, literally. Ants actually eat the sugary substance known as "honeydew" that is excreted from a variety of sap-sucking insects. In what is often referred to as "farming," ants will protect their insect livestock, overwinter them in their underground nests, move and position them around a plant, and even "milk" some types of insects by coaxing them into producing honeydew. Unfortunately, we see more of these enemy ants in greenhouses. It can be a real problem trying to control pests with beneficial insects because they will protect their livestock from insect predators.

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

        I’m sure many a Clevelander is affected in some way by the lack of sunlight during the winter months. Even working in a glasshouse, I still miss the full effect of the summer sun .  This time of year the Eleanor Armstrong Smith Glasshouse is still dark for the first hour that I am at work every morning, and even on the few days that it is not completely overcast, the light intensity is still noticeably less than in summer. Looking around the Costa Rica biome in which I work, it is apparent that I am not the only one missing the summer sun.

 Even the warm, wet, tropical growing environment does not spare the Costa Rica biome from plant dormancy. Plants respond to the reduction in sunlight and slow down their growth or stop altogether. Some trees will lose many or all of their leaves for a couple of months. Some plants even disappear from exhibit all together this time of the year and return again in spring when conditions are more favorable. This is the case with Maranta arundinacea or arrowroot.

    Arrowroot is the first plant to go completely dormant and has been hiding underground waiting for spring for several weeks now. New growth will reemerge in spring from rhizomes and tubers produced during the growing season. The tubers resemble white carrots and can be made into arrowroot powder, which is used in cooking.

    Heliconias, calatheas, ginger (Costus), and a number of gesneriads also produce rhizomes. Although most of them don’t go completely dormant, there is a definite lack of growth and a number of yellowing leaves before new shoots begin to grow from the rhizomes in spring.

Arrowroot tubers	Diastema comiferum	Scaly rhizomes of dormant Diastema

          This time of year corresponds with the dry season in Costa Rica. The rainforests are not as green at this time of the year but the canopy opens up, the orchids are blooming and also more visible, and many of the trees will bloom during this time, some while they are completely leafless.  

            Even though there may not be as many leafy greens in the Costa Rican exhibit as during the summer,  it is still an excellent escape from the cold winter weather. Even while some plants go dormant others come into bloom this time of the year, particularly orchids. You certainly don’t want to miss OrchidMania in March or our amaryllis display going on now.

Here are a few pics of plants in bloom right now:

This sleepy mallow, Malvaviscus arboreus, gets its name from the flowers which never quite open all the way.	This blooming browmeliad is filling in for a dormant arrowroot.	One of my favorite gesneriads, this Kohleria spicata, produces long spikes of red flowers.
Oncidium ‘Twinkle’ – This extremely fragrant orchid can be found blooming throughout the exhibit this time of year.	Panama rose, Rondeletia leucophylla- This shrub is my favorite winter bloomer. Blooms heavily for months starting in late December.	Laelia anceps - The first of several laelia orchids to start blooming this season.

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

WinterShow Amaryllis Display

    The elegant, breathtaking blooms of the tropical bulbs of the genus Hippeastrum, referred to by the common name amaryllis, have made them a staple of the holiday season. The immense popularity of amaryllis bulbs and cut flowers during the holiday season has lead to the development of hundreds of cultivars. The bulbs come in a variety of colors and patterns, including different variations and combinations of white, red, salmon, pink, peach, and even shades of green and yellow.  It was only appropriate that we made festive flowers part of our WinterShow displays. This year we are showcasing a variety of colors and cultivars of amaryllis interplanted with the tropical plants in the Costa Rica biome of the Eleanor Armstrong Smith glasshouse.  New plants and new cultivars will be added to the display every week during WinterShow, so you can be sure that any time you come during WinterShow, you will be seeing bulbs in full bloom.

     

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

      If you live in the Cleveland area, you may have noticed that there are a lot of acorns this year. I’ve certainly been noticing them as they have been falling on my head or crunching under my shoes.  Reports from other places in Ohio are a little more spotty, but we certainly have a good supply here from almost all of our different oak species. What you probably didn’t notice is that last year there were very few acorns to be found in this area.  While you might not give them much notice, acorns can have huge impacts on wildlife and that can affect us or our gardens in turn.

      Squirrels certainly aren’t the only wild animals that eat acorns. More than 90 animal species, including deer, turkeys, mice, and a number of birds and insects also rely on acorns as a vital food source in Ohio. Acorns are highly nutritious, and abundant supplies can increase wildlife populations both in number of animals surviving through the winter and in number of offspring. This, in turn, affects carnivore populations, such as our birds of prey.

    Acorn crops can vary greatly from year to year for a variety of reasons, not all of which are completely understood. Some species of oaks tend to produce large crops in cycles of 2 to 7 years.  It is in the best interest of oaks to produce a ‘bumper’ crop of acorns after a year or two of relatively small crops. Wildlife populations that feed on acorns, especially insects like the acorn weevil, will decrease following years of small crops increasing the odds that acorns produced in a boom year will have a chance to grow.  

     So what does this all mean to us?  Well, a good acorn crop is going to be a good thing for us for now. As long as there are acorns on the ground, the deer are going to stick to the woods and be less likely to be munching in you garden, and the squirrels might just leave your bulbs in the ground.  But populations are also going to increase in the long run. It might be good news for hunters, but if the acorn crops take a sudden drop while populations are high, you can expect to have lots of hungry deer leaving wooded areas, eating your plants, and wandering into traffic.

Posted By Nate Tschaenn