2014 Collection: Euphorbias

Yikes, it's been almost two weeks since I posted! I started my thesis this past week. It's a lot of work and I'm still going through all of my references before getting to the meat of the thesis. But it's officially started and if all goes well, I will graduate in May! Then I'll have to change the title of this blog because I won't be in graduate school anymore. Anyway, this time I'll show off my Euphorbias!

 This is Euphorbia anoplia. I don't know much about this species. I bought it just because I thought it looked cool with the way it twists as it grows.

 Now this guy is Euphorbia meloformis. It's pretty neat, striped like that. It also makes these flower stalks that look kind of fat. I don't have a picture of those. In fact, there's one on this plant right now and I'm not sure if it's just a flower stalk or a baby plant. I didn't think these were self-fertile so I'm leaning towards flower stalk.

 This is Euphorbia milii. My variety blooms yellow, as you can see, but the traditional variety has red blooms.

 Here's the whole plant. Euphorbia milii is known as Crown of Thorns, and traditionally is considered to be the plant that the crown of thorns Jesus wore during His crucifixion was made of. 

 This is the first Euphorbia I ever bought! It's Euphorbia obesa, the Baseball plant! It is round and smooth, with that nice striping on the sides. You can see mine is flowering. Mine flowers year-round, but it's not self-fertile so they never make babies.

 Here's the top-down view of Euphorbia obesa. It's so nice and symmetrical!

Lastly, this is Euphorbia trigona var. rubra. It's a bit hard to tell from this photo, but this plant is mostly red! It grows those leaves and then they fall off. It's a weird plant but very, very pretty.

2104 Aloe Collection

Here is my Aloe collection. I also have two big old Aloe vera plants that I didn't take pictures of. 

 This little beauty is an Aloe aristata. It is dark green with that slight red blush from the high light. It is really pretty and has stayed in this rosette form.

 This is Aloe buhrii. I bought it randomly on a whim. It is growing some more leaves so it will be interesting to see how it grows.

 Here is Aloe juvenna. I almost killed it last winter but I was smart this year and brought it away from the window before it got too cold. It's still very small but it is a neat little plant.

Lastly is Aloe vaombe. This is another plant that I bought randomly and don't know a whole lot about. It's grown some new leaves recently so it seems happy and I'm looking forward to seeing it grow.

2014 Adenium Collection

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your 2015 is an excellent year and that all your plants grow happily. I'm going to try and get all of my 2014 plant collections posted in the next month or two, before my thesis writing reaches epic proportions and eats all of my time. So to start off, this is a smaller collection of mine, the Adenium group, as well as one Adenia. 

 This is my Adenia glauca. It's looking a bit sad right now. I've just fertilized it in hopes that it just needs some nutrition, but who knows. It's not rotting, I know that so I'm not sure what the issue is.

 This is my Adenium arabicum. It actually has leaves at the moment. This plant is really sensitive to changes in temperature, light, or the vibes of the house because it will drop its leaves at a moment's notice.

 This is the top of one of my Adenium obesum seedlings. I started ten seeds, six germinated, and four plants have lived for about two years now. This is their second winter. Some of them are starting their leaf drop.

 Here's another seedling that has dropped most of its leaves for the winter. They grow back every spring so it isn't anything to worry about. Just stop watering them if there's no active leaf growth.

 Here's a closeup of the caudex of one of the seedlings. The reason I chose to try seeds instead of buying a cutting is because Adenium obesum cuttings don't usually get the big interesting caudex that seedlings do. I like the neat caudex so I decided to take the challenge of growing from seeds.

Here are the four seedlings that have made it to their second winter! Hopefully they will all make it and keep growing happily this upcoming year.