We really, really want some of the larger, more fragile mums for the Japanese-garden pondside, and I have searched the web for spider mum or football mum *plants,* to no avail.
What I did find was the way to propagate them from a bouquet. It’s really pretty simple. Get a watertight container and some sand. Fill container. Take longstemmed mum from bouquet and snip off the cut end, just to ‘freshen’ it, then cut off the flower, leaving about eight inches of stem and leaving 2-3 leaves on the stem as well. Prepare a mix of Green Light Root Stimulant. Take a pencil or chopstick, make a hole in the sand, insert your 8″ stem into the hole, then saturate (do not overflow) the sand with Root Stimulant water mix. Place in good semi-sun area, and cross your fingers.
You can float the flowers in a dish, to enjoy them.
This is the same method you use propagating a tree or bush: willows particularly take to this. And I would not be surprised if it wouldn’t work on most anything that has a jointed or segmented stem: the new growth at the joints can manifest as either roots or new branches/leaves, depending on its situation, and is probably driven by the water-movement plants do. So far our sprigs’ leaves are crisp and healthy-seeming. So far so good.
I’ve started grapes from cuttings (prunings, actually), minus the root stimulant, which they don’t like.
For grapes, you want at least three buds on the stem, and it has to go into the soil (sand works; so does potting mix) in the same direction it was growing, that is, with the tip end at the top and the root end down. (Leave just the one bud sticking out.)
It’s a slow way to get grapes, though.
One of these days I’m going to get off my bum and try to start some of the somewhat exotic seeds I’ve acquired over the years. I have sequoia seeds from when I visited Muir Woods, and packets of Australian things like kangaroos’ paws and various banksias. Problem is they must be regularly watered, especially in small starter pots, and the Australian seeds are notoriously slow to start. Still for many oddball things, it’s the only way to get them. I’d like to start some cacti which should love our climate, but the last time I tried with some lithops, nothing came up.
Please, please. please call your local department of agriculture or similar agency before planting! Foreign plants can run amok without their local predators and controls. Kudzu is a major problem in Florida, and many other species have created severe problems in other places.
Here’s a recent Nova program on the problem:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1098841639/
These plants were going to be specimen plants, not for resale or even giveaway, and without more like them in the area, no viable seeds. If I got anything out of them, I was going to leave them in planters as bonsai. I have my doubts about if the sequoyas are going to be happy in our climate, so they will probably be a bust.
Love Lithops,they hate my heavy handed watering. I now grow the
water lovers. Sequoias need high humidity. Aren’t mums also call-
ed Chrysanthemums? I know that the Spider Chrysanthemums are
a variation of the Chrysanthemum morifolium, also known as the
‘Florists Chrysanthemum’. Hope it helps!
Chondrite.
You are probably right about the sequoias, But was the Australian stuff really, directly, from Australia? And has the stuff gone wild already where you live. Otherwise don’t import it.
A lot of destructive exotics got their start from things like cleaning pots and asexual forms of reproduction.
And the Kudzu example? It’s a nightmare throughout the deep South, as anyone driving through can testify as they look out at sometimes whole roadside forests strangled by the stuff.
But maybe no problem. Just give your county agricultural extension agent a call. They’re there to help you, and all counties, even urban counties have them.
I just looked it up: The Cooperative Extension Services are run by the land-grant institutions in each state; Cornell in New York, U of Arkansas in Ark, etc.
Here’s the URL: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/ Then click on your state on the map to find your local office. Or you can access other online info as you desire.
Never really used the websites, don’t know how good/helpful they would be about individual plants.
Again, you can usually contact the local office re: any type of plant, including house plants. Your luck there is of course partly dependent on the quality of the local staff and the support they are given by the various governments involved.
It’s been a few years, but in my experience as a reporter, I found them very helpful and dedicated.
Non sequitur: I just read about a database of medieval soldiers, for those into heredity:
http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/soldier/database/
The search link is a little subtle:
“A pilot project database is now available for searching.”
Cuttings are the preferred way to propagate mums. Once they are rooted plant them in pots in a loose well drained soil. I use a 15-15-15 fertilizer until the plants are well rooted and growing in their pots. Don’t forget to pinch! This seems like a brutal step but it is the way to get healthy, full plants. When the plants are a good size use a little super phosphate or a fert with a high middle number. to get big flowers disbud all but the healthiest looking bud on each stem. Mums are heavy feeders so don’t be afraid to use fert. Hopefully you will have plants in about three months. Spiders are fairly fragile and don’t winter well here so I assume it’s the same for you. I winter plants over inside with grow lamps. Anything you pinch off can be rooted as a new plant and hopefully you will get stolons as well.
Ummmm..I was involved in a fairly large chrysanthemum garden for many years, so this may be more than you really want to know.
Good luck and I look forward to photos from Jane.
Delighted to have the info…concurs pretty well with our research. If I can get these ones to live, I may leave one out but mulched next year, and bring the rest in. Our backyard with a high, solid fence, 40 foot high hemlocks just beyond, house wall, garage wall, and a bermed pond, seems to create its own climate, which is just a little milder in heat and higher in humidity than the world outside the garden. We are running trial on some species. Chrysanthemums are new to me: I’m pretty allergic to them, but the real pollinators seem to be the button mums. The spiders are much quieter.
I’ve always wanted to grow a sequoia, but they do like high humidity.
I’ve done some (supervised) digging in an eocene site up Republic (Stone Rose), where the local museum is cataloging species found in a shale hill that used to be a pond. Our pretty certifiably really native species up here in Washington, are largely sequoia and magnolia species.
Germination rate on saved seeds goes way down after the first year, especially if they’re just lying around the house. Metabolism never totally stops, and the higher the humidity, the faster it proceeds, using up the stored food in the seed. If carefully dried (WITHOUT heat), sealed, and put in the freezer, they’ll stay viable for years, depending on species. http://tipnut.com/store-seeds/
On the other hand, they did successfully germinate some lotus seeds found in an Egyptian grave.
But lotus seeds are tough as all get-out.
I think these are sufficiently tricky that Ag Inspection let them go through, and some seeds are for plants we already have in nurseries. The same catalog I got the seeds wouldn’t send me some other seeds I had ordered because they were verboten where I live (I didn’t realize this), so between that and my monitoring, there shouldn’t be too much chance for escape to the wild. We already have miconia and paperbark eucalyptoids as an example of how not to handle imported plants; I have no wish to add to the terror.
A few Australian species thrive here in the states, but a lot would be hard to grow, I’d think. I remember pulling up in a parking lot somewhere in Western Australia, and there was a huge bush of banksia (pompom flower) that are so pricey here. I’m remembering it in among other things like that tall plant with a spiky head that looks so like a person when it’s off in silhouette in the distance. And I was told those things reproduce like the redwoods, with fire.
But things like ironwood (I recall my host had a dining set made of that stuff, and when you took hold of a chair to move it back from table, it felt as if it really was made of iron. Heavy!) So many beautiful flowers. And things like Bird’s Nest Fern we can grow, but only indoors. Mine got pretty ragged outdoors this summer, and immediately on being brought in is much, much happier.
There’s one South American species I’d like to replicate, for one thing because they are so threatened in their native habitat, and are somewhat marginal here—and in Scotland: monkey-puzzle. They used to be here in Spokane with the sequoias and the magnolia. Araucaria, I believe is the scientific name. They are now limited to a threatened range somewhere in SA. Absolutely prehistoric-looking, at full size, which takes years, but they don’t reproduce easily…a good thing, in an imported plant.
But two fast-reproducing imports that are a pain, definitely kudzu, and definitely Mr. Johnson’s pernicious grass that outcompeted native grasses clear across Texas and Oklahoma: Mr. Johnson thought this lovely, lush grass would be great cattle fodder. I suspect that in its native Africa, even elephants and rhinos won’t touch it.
My great uncle had a monkey puzzle tree in his garden in Wiltshire, England. I loved it, it was the coolest, most bizarre looking tree. I don’t know how old it was, it was easily 40 feet tall.
Most of our invasives are flowers/trees brought over from European colonists (I live in Ontario, Canada).
First one I ever saw was a huge one in Strathclyde, Scotland. I asked everybody at the hotel what that tree at the corner was and vowed I’d try to get one. There are 2 I know of in Strathclyde, one at another hotel, the other on a private lawn, both huge. You can get them, but only at about a foot tall. I think it would take decades to produce those trees.
I figure that, as in the case of banksia, if they import them as flowers or fruit, the Ag folk can’t object to the plant. The seeds come with them. Banksia, lotus, etc, not to mention custard apples, which must have a thousand seeds per fruit.
A Pox upon Mr Johnson! His grass has resisted all attempts to contain it. Note I didn’t say eradicate, but contain. It has runners underground at a considerable depth and will propagate from next-to-nothing.
I had a lawn patch of it so stubborn I got a hypodermic and injected weedkiller directly into all the roots and stems I could reach—
You guessed it. It thrived.
I tried: 2 brands of weedkiller, saltwater injected, boiling water, and covering it with pavement. It still lived, and crept from under the pavement.
Custard apples! Yum. I haven’t had any in years.
Custard apples were my favorite discovery in terms of food in Australia—well, and the endless breakfast buffet in Perth, and sushi, Aussie-style: most I ever had, but I introduced my hosts to it, and they ate so much they were sick…I think your system has to get used to the idea of raw fish.
Stangely, custard apples are native to Ecuador and Peru and were introduced to Australia (I had to look this up – google.com.au). Still, very yummy.
Very, very yummy. I don’t like mangoes or papayas. But in the tropical fruit category, definitely kiwis and custard apples and bananas. I don’t know if you can count avocados, but they’re on my good list, too.
What are custard apples?
See http://www.custardapple.com.au for the Custard Apple Growers Association. Or, just google custard apple on http://www.google.com.au and pick the Australian sites.
Here in California they tend to be called cherimoya.
I can’t believe that no one has yet said anything about spider dads.
Well, when I first saw that title I immediately thought of a female spider weaving her eggball.