Jaltomata procumbens is a plant species native to Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. It grows as a weed in agricultural fields and other disturbed locations, but in many places the people protect it because of the edible fruits it produces.
Jaltomata procumbens is a spreading, trailing to ascending herb forming many shoots from a single root. Leaves are broadly lanceolate, up to 20 cm long, dark green. Flowers are rotate, pale yellow-green with darker green spots toward the center. Berries are dark purple, spherical, about 1 cm in diameter, with a strong scent resembling that of grapes (Vitis spp.).
The fruit has a pleasant taste and aroma and is prized as a food source by many peoples. The Tarahumara and Pima Bajo (Mountain Pima) peoples of the Sierra Madre Occidental of northwestern Mexico recognize the species when it grows in their agricultural fields, but protect it and encourage its growth. Many crop historians believe that many other species now recognized as crops began the process of domestication under similar circumstances, as volunteers in fields planted to other species.
Petunia exserta is a rare member of the genus Petunia, endemic to the Serras de Sudeste in southern Brazil. First described in 1987, only fourteen plants were found in the wild during an expedition in 2007. In the wild, the plant is found growing only in shaded cracks on sandstone towers. It is the only Petunia species that is naturally pollinated by hummingbirds, and the only red flowered Petunia species.
P. exserta has a bright red corolla with distinctive exserted stamens and stigma, the latter which are typically associated with hummingbird pollination. It share the erect habit, and similar corolla, pollen, and stalk attributes as Petunia axillaris and Petunia secreta. The flowers have no fragrance, which is not necessary for attracting hummingbirds, who have little sense of smell. The red color is due to several anthocyanin pigments, which are different from the cause of red color in modern hybrid petunias.
In addition to its very limited range, P. exserta is also threatened because it so easily hybridizes with other Petunia species in its native range, especially with Petunia axillaris, thus producing offspring that are hybrids rather than the species. The plant is increasingly being sold in horticulture, so the threat to its survival is only in its native habitat.
Cestrum parqui, commonly known as green cestrum, green poison berry, Chilean cestrum or willow-leaved jessamine, and is sometimes incorrectly referred to as deadly nightshade, is a species of flowering plant in the family Solanaceae that is native to central and South America.
It is an upright, straggly, woody deciduous or semi-evergreen shrub 2–3 metres (6 ft 7 in–9 ft 10 in) tall with one or more brittle green stems. Light green leaves are alternate and shiny green to 12 cm (5 in) long, giving off a foul rubbery smell when crushed. It has sprays of small, fragrant, tubular yellow-green flowers approximately 2.5 cm long on the ends of the stems, flowering from late spring to autumn. These produce clusters of small, black egg shaped berries during summer to autumn.
Green cestrum is highly attractive to birds, and seedlings are often found growing under perching trees, along fence lines and on creek banks. It is also dispersed by water.
Spread by birds, it invades gardens, rural lands and bushland. It has a deep and persistent taproot. This weed is considered a major problem because of its toxicity to livestock (especially cattle) and poultry which eat green cestrum when there is a shortage of other feed. All parts of the plant material, stems, leaves, berries and even partly burnt roots pose a serious threat to livestock. Death is usually rapid and painful. The plant is also known to be toxic to other livestock and humans.
This species is defined as a noxious plant in New South Wales under the Noxious Weeds Act, 1993 and all plants must be destroyed.
In cultivation in the United Kingdom, this plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Scindapsus pictus (satin pothos, silver vine) is a species of flowering plant in the arum family Araceae, native to Bangladesh, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and the Philippines.
Growing to 3 m (10 ft) tall in open ground, it is an evergreen climber. On juvenile plants the leaves are oval and entire; on mature plants the leaves are pinnately lobed. They are matt green and covered in silver blotches. The insignificant flowers are rarely seen in cultivation.
The specific epithet pictus means "painted", referring to the variegation on the leaves.
With a minimum temperature tolerance of 15 °C (59 °F), this plant is cultivated as a houseplant in temperate regions, where it typically grows to 90 cm (35 in). The cultivar 'Argyraeus' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
All peace lilies are evergreen tender perennials. Most have upright clusters of leaves that grow directly from short rhizomes (underground rooting stems) to form slow-spreading clumps. The shiny, simple bright green leaves have long, sheathed petioles (leaf stems) and prominent leaf veins. They vary in shape from narrowly lanceolate to elliptical or oval with pointy tips.
Like all members of the aroid family, they have unusual flowers consisting of a finger-like floral column (spadix) surrounded by a white or pale green petal-like leaf (spathe). The spathe is often large, leathery and held above the foliage. The blooms are usually fragrant, long lasting and suitable for cutting. They occur mostly from winter to summer, but some hybrids have been bred to bloom longer.
Tropicals such as these are very frost-tender and require protection from chilly weather. Bright indirect light, high humidity and evenly moist but well-drained soil or potting mix are required for good growth. Water and fertilize regularly, but refrain from over-watering or over-feeding as both can damage root and foliage health. Outdoor plants must be shaded from intense midday sun, which can scorch leaves. Indoors, these are some of the best plants for low-light conditions. Spathiphyllums are great landscape plants for the tropics. In temperate areas grow them as houseplants or summer patio specimens.
Symplocarpus foetidus, commonly known as skunk cabbage or eastern skunk cabbage (also swamp cabbage, clumpfoot cabbage, or meadow cabbage, foetid pothos or polecat weed), is a low growing, foul-smelling plant that grows in wetlands of eastern North America.
Eastern skunk cabbage has leaves which are large, 40–55 cm (15.75–21.5 in) long and 30–40 cm (12–15.75 in) broad. It flowers early in the spring when only the flowers are visible above the mud. The stems remain buried below the surface of the soil with the leaves emerging later. The flowers are produced on a 5–10 cm (2–5 in) long spadix contained within a spathe, 10–15 cm (4–6 in) tall and mottled purple in colour. The rhizome is often 30 cm (1 ft) thick.
The eastern skunk cabbage is native to eastern North America, from Nova Scotia and southern Quebec west to Minnesota, and south to North Carolina and Tennessee. It is protected as endangered in Tennessee.
Breaking or tearing a leaf produces a pungent but not harmful odor, the source of the plant's common name; it is also foul smelling when it blooms. The plant is not poisonous to the touch. The foul odor attracts its pollinators, scavenging flies, stoneflies, and bees. The odor in the leaves may also serve to discourage large animals from disturbing or damaging this plant which grows in soft wetland soils.
Eastern skunk cabbage is notable for its ability to generate temperatures of up to 15–35 °C (27–63 °F) above air temperature by cyanide resistant cellular respiration in order to melt its way through frozen ground, placing it among a small group of plants exhibiting thermogenesis. Even though it flowers while there is still snow and ice on the ground it is successfully pollinated by early insects that also emerge at this time. Some studies suggest that beyond allowing the plant to grow in icy soil, the heat it produces may help to spread its odor in the air.
Erigeron glaucus is a species of flowering plant in the daisy family known by the common name seaside fleabane, beach aster, or seaside daisy.
This wildflower is native to the coastline of Oregon and California where it grows on beaches, coastal bluffs and dunes. This is a perennial daisy reaching heights between 5 and 30 centimetres (2.0 and 11.8 in) with branching, nodding stems which may be glandular and hairy to hairless. It grows from a stout rhizome and produces thick, firm, rounded to spoon-shaped leaves, sometimes with a few teeth along the edges, each two to 13 centimeters long.
Its stems bear inflorescences of one to 15 flower heads which are variable in size from one to over three centimeters wide. The centers contain golden yellow disc florets and the edges are fringed with ray florets which may be long or quite short, and are shades of deep blue and purple to nearly white. While typical habitats include coastal bluffs, one highly specialised plant association is found within the two Cupressus macrocarpa dominant forests in Monterey County, California.
Coreopsis auriculata (Mouse-ear Tickseed) is a plant species of the genus coreopsis in Asteraceae. Coreopsis species are commonly called Tickseeds. This species is perennial growing from 10–30 cm (4-12 inches) tall and sometimes to 60+ cm (30 inches). Pants with rounded yellow colored flowers bloom in spring and early summer. They are often stoloniferous, forming long spreading colonies by way of short stolons produced after flowering. Plants produce both basal and cauline leaves; the foliage occupy 1/4–1/2 of the plant height, the leaves have petioles 1–6(–10+) cm long, with simple leaf blades or they sometimes have 1 or 2, or more lateral lobes.
The basal leaf blades are suborbiculate or ovate-elliptic to lance-ovate in shape and typically 15–55 mm long and 9–25 mm wide. Flower heads are produced on the ends of 8 to 25 cm long peduncles, the heads have 9–12 mm long phyllaries that are lance-deltate to lance-ovate in shape. The flower petals or more properly the ray laminae are yellow colored and 15–20+ mm long. The disc flowers have corollas 3.5–4.5 mm long with yellow colored apices. Cypselae or the fruits containing a single seed are 1.5–2.5 mm long and brown black in color with no wings.
Plants are found growing along roadsides and in openings in woods with mixed hardwood trees and pine barrens especially with calcareous soils in the south eastern USA. Coreopsis auriculata 'Nana' is commonly grown as a blooming ground cover in garden settings.
Pteridium aquilinum (bracken, brake or common bracken), also known as "eagle fern," is a species of fern occurring in temperate and subtropical regions in both hemispheres. The extreme lightness of its spores has led to its global distribution.
Common bracken was first described as Pteris aquilina by the father of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, in Volume 2 of his Species Plantarum in 1753. The origin of the specific epithet derived from the Latin aquila "eagle", but what it pertains to has been a matter of some debate. It is generally held to be the shape of the mature fronds appearing akin to an eagle's wing. However, medieval scholars, including Erasmus, thought the pattern of the fibres seen in a transverse section of the stipe resembled a double-headed eagle or oak tree. It was given its current binomial name by Friedrich Adalbert Maximilian Kuhn in 1879.
It was traditionally treated as the sole species in the genus Pteridium (brackens); authorities have split and recognised up to 11 species in the genus, however.
It is a herbaceous perennial plant, deciduous in winter. The large, roughly triangular fronds are produced singly, arising upwards from an underground rhizome, and grow to 1–3 m (3–10 ft) tall; the main stem, or stipe, is up to 1 cm (0.4 in) diameter at the base.
An adaptable plant, it readily colonises disturbed areas. It can even be invasive in countries where it is native, such as England, where it has invaded heather (Calluna vulgaris (L.) Hull) stands on the North Yorkshire moors.
The plant contains the carcinogenic compound ptaquiloside, and communities (mainly in Japan) where the young stems are used as a vegetable have some of the highest stomach cancer rates in the world. Consumption of ptaquiloside-contaminated milk is thought to contribute to human gastric cancer in the Andean states of Venezuela.
Matteuccia struthiopteris (common names ostrich fern, fiddlehead ferns or shuttlecock fern) is a crown-forming, colony-forming fern, occurring in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in eastern and northern Europe, northern Asia and northern North America. The species epithet struthiopteris comes from Ancient Greek words, struthio meaning ostrich and pteron meaning wing.
Ostrich Fern Foliage
It grows from a completely vertical crown, favoring riverbanks and sandbars, but sends out lateral stolons to form new crowns. It thus can form dense colonies resistant to destruction by floodwaters.
The fronds are dimorphic, with the deciduous green sterile fronds being almost vertical, 100–170 cm (39–67 in) tall and 20–35 cm (7.9–13.8 in) broad, long-tapering to the base but short-tapering to the tip, so that they resemble ostrich plumes, hence the name. The fertile fronds are shorter, 40–60 cm (16–24 in) long, brown when ripe, with highly modified and constricted leaf tissue curled over the sporangia; they develop in autumn, persist erect over the winter and release the spores in early spring.
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The ostrich fern is a popular ornamental plant in gardens. It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. While choosing a place of planting it should be taken into account that these ferns are very expansive and its leaves often lose their beauty throughout the summer, especially if not protected from wind and hail. The tightly wound immature fronds, called fiddleheads, are also used as a cooked vegetable, and are considered a delicacy mainly in rural areas of northeastern North America. It is not considered advisable to eat uncooked fiddleheads because illness has been traced to that practise.
Cyathea cooperi is a medium-to-large fast growing tree fern, to 15 metres (49 ft) in height with a 12-inch (30 cm) thick trunk. The apex of the trunk and unfurling crosiers are particularly attractive, covered as they are with conspicuous long, silky, straw colored scales. The crown is widely spread and the light green fronds may reach a length of 4–6 metres (13–20 ft).
C. cooperi is quite distinctive from C. australis in that it has a more slender trunk with distinctive "coin spots" where old fronds have broken off the trunk. C. cooperi fronds are bright green and lacy and tend to be very fast growing. There are several major horticultural varieties of this fern including Cyathea ‘Brentwood’ which has paler fronds and scales and C. ‘Robusta’ which tends to be darker in both characters. C. cooperi is the one of the most popular tree ferns, along with Dicksonia antarctica due to its rapid growth form, hardiness and aesthetic appeal.
Tree-ferns grow best in high humidity and high soil moisture conditions. It is therefore important to use good-quality mulches and to top them up regularly as this will not only keep the soil moist but also provide nutrients to the shallow root system. Tree-ferns usually respond well to organic fertilizers and well-rotted animal manures, C. cooperi especially as it tends to display particularly vigorous growth.
Though a wide range of pests attack ferns they rarely cause significant damage. If outbreaks do occur tree-ferns can be treated with the standard array of organic and non-organic pesticides. It has been found that the use of fertilizers can reduce a tree-ferns susceptibility to attack. Thus by providing adequate food, water and shelter you will be able to grow beautiful and healthy tree-ferns in your own garden!
