An organic Valentine :)

Worried about being stiffed with overpriced roses, chemically enhanced and flown in from halfway across the world? There is a solution :)

Find a few blooms in your garden


put them on the breakfast table and say


I love you :)

Dedicated to WW - my love for ever xxx :)

PS: Check out the Organic Consumers Association for more ideas.

Transplanting a Zephyr Lily

We got these flowers from our aunt in Pontian, and they have kept alive but not always thrived – with no help from Gambit as a puppy, who liked to dig up everything! They have got better recently and started to bloom more often.

I managed to identify the variety quickly in Plants for Tropical Landscapes, which is one of the books I have. It’s a good one as it has pictures for all the plants, and is organised according to categories – with basic information on each plant – preferred conditions, and growing pattern.

It grows very attractive flowers which last a long time when cut and put in water (by a long time I mean two days, which is maybe not so long when I think of it – but they keep their shape and colour nicely).

It’s a Zephyranthes candida; also known as Zephyr Lily, Fairy Lily or White Rain Lily. Like the Calathea Lutea it is also originally from South America. It’s an annual in the northern climes, but over here it grows all year round – we have it in a wide round pot, but I suspect it is not deep enough as the flowers/green stalks don’t stand up well. The book and others sites recommend light shade, which may explain why ours never grows that well – I think before it had too much shade, and now it may have too little, being in front of the house.

WW decided to transplant some to under the frangipani tree – maybe it will be better there although there is not so much shade there either. As you can see, they grow from bulbs.

Always water in transplanted plants well – as my mother taught me. WW also chops off the stalks to promote growth in the roots while it’s settling in.

It will hopefully add a burst of colour under the tree – further updates in a month or so, I guess :)

There are also different coloured varieties of this flower – Zephyranthes grandiflora (purple), and Zephyranthes citrina (yellow). I can imagine that mixing these up in a flower bed could be very nice.

Calathea Lutea - bract and flower

I only knew that this was a kind of Calathea, and after much searching, I finally got the right one (tip – try Google Image instead of all the taxonomic databases!). It’s a Calathea lutea. There are some photos from a Malaysian here, and A Neotropical Savanna has some detailed information – apparently it is native to South/Central America (for example, Costa Rica), and the leafs can be used to cook tortillas in! Over here, banana, bamboo and pandanus leafs are often used to cook things in.

Apparently, this branch of the Marantaceae family are also known as ‘prayer plants’ because the leaves fold up at night. I never really noticed this, but now that it’s mentioned it makes sense, I’ll have to check it out though.

The red part of the ‘flower’ is a ‘bract’, and the little yellow flower is, well, a flower :)

They are useful as shade along the front fence and have no problem with direct sunlight – they are often used in landscaping around buildings and roads. Ours do need a lot of regular pruning to avoid unsightly dying and dead leaves. I reckon it probably needs a well fertilised soil, and will grow to about 1.5-2m – it spreads by rhizomes and has grown new clusters easily enough.

Oh and, by the way, meet Gambit :)

Flowering lotus

I find my lotus - in a pot in a heavily sunlit area - flowers about once every 3-4 months. It works in cycles, with it dying down and most of the leaves dying, then the leaves come back and then the flower comes. I use a fertiliser recommended for lotus and always try to keep the water full. Usually there is only one flower at a time, but once I had two.

Here is one lotus blooming. From start to finish it took about 12 days, but the final full open blossom only really lasts a day or two. It's always very nice though :)