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A friend first told me about this Boojum Tree (Fouquieria columnaris) in someone’s frontyard in Saratoga, California. I went for a revisit recently and took some pictures of this weirdly wonderful plant. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in Baja California, more than 500 miles to the south of Bay Area.

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Hiding behind the big IKEA and Home Depot shopping mall near University Avenue exit on highway 101 is this cute little Vietnamese buddhist temple. I visited there several years ago since its architecture has a lot of Chinese design element. About a month ago, I made another trip to see their water lotus in huge tubs, which I did not photograph last time. My disappointment of not seeing any water lotus on display quickly dissipated when I found this healthy Bohdi tree on their ground. Continue reading →

The topic today is a beautiful orchid Dimorphorchis lowii, which is native to the jungles of Borneo. As if its long pendulous chain of flowers is not eye-catching enough, there are actually two types of flowers competing for viewer’s attention. A few female flowers near the top are bright yellow wtih red spots, while all other male flowers below have cream background almost completely covered with maroon spots.

One web page mentioned that in 1883, a particularly well grown specimen was displayed by one French Baron’s gardener. It was 8 feet tall with an 8 feet leafspan. A total of 11 flower spikes draped down around the plant, averaging 9 feet in length.

This story reminded me of some of the most floriferous orchids I saw while I was attending regular meeting of my local Malihini Orchid Society. A lot of these orchids were Cattleya hybrids that had over 50 pseudobulbs in big wide pots with over 30 flowers all open at the same time. They were all grown using a special fertilizer called Jerry’s Grow. Mr Jerry Rodder is a member of that society. Being an inventive chemist, he discovered that a little methanol would work wonders with orchid growth. He used to have a website jerrysgrow.com that sells his patented fertilizer, but that site seems to be down. I guess an alternative is to feed a little beer to plants, and the gardener can treat him/herself with any extra.

As far as growing Dimorphorchis lowii, I have not had much problem since acquiring this one in 2000. I give it regular watering and fertilizer during the warm months, stop fertilizing and hold back on watering during winter. Repotting usually happens once a year. My specimen first started blooming in 2004. Since then it has been blooming once every two years. The flowers are waxy and long-lasting, slightly fragrant too. In 2004, I cut the flower spike about one month after it started blooming and took it to the Horticulture Department at Foothill College, where I was studying. A fellow student from Brazil quickly made an impromptu necklace/lei with that spike. I think it will make a good gift for my wife this time.

The Pearl Orchid is a tender perennial native to Southern China. It has a dry scientific name: Chloranthus spicatus, meaning greenish yellow flowers on spikes. This description is quite accurate but its other Chinese common name is much more visual and memorable: Chicken Feet Orchid. How could both pearl and chicken feet be used to describe the same plant? I challenge anyone to think of another plant with such a pair of contradicting names. Granted in China chicken feet do not have the same stigma as here in the U.S, but my point still stands. This plant is also called “Golden Millet Orchid”, alluding to the color, size, and shape of individual flowers. Continue reading →

My wife found this amazing website that can create a music video/slide show. The way it works is that one first upload a bunch of photos, then pick some music from their library or upload your own. Their program will do an automatic mix of your photos and music with their choice of effects. If you are not satisfied with the result, you can remix the video but the only thing you can control is the sequence of images. My favorite part is that the animated showing of the photos is synchronized with the rhythm of the music. Continue reading →

Cycas debaoensis is a rare cycad first discovered in 1996 in Debao county, GuangXi province in southern China. Photo to the right is my very own precious specimen bought last year (2007) from Palm and Cycad Exchange in Southern California. It is easily the most expensive plant I have ever bought, and my wife was very understanding even though I did not tell her the price beforehand. This particular one was grown from seed in Costa Rica and was then imported to California with all the leaves and roots chopped off. The seller re-established a number of them but he told me that he had sold a lot of those bare cycads (sort of look like a small deformed pineapple) to many people who paid in advance, even without a guarantee of viability. Continue reading →

Even after over 100 years of exploration and collection, botanists are still discovering new plants in China, especially in the southwestern Province of Yunnan. Most amazingly, some of these new discoveries are fabulous ornamental plants that are sure to become wildly popular and thus widely available. In this first article, I will discuss Trachycarpus princeps and in the next one I will talk about Cycas debaoensis. Continue reading →