"I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say"
Flannery O'Connor -- Writer
"If you can't write it down, you don't know what you're talking about"
Gary --- Blog writer for 13 years.
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| Sinningia 'Arkansas Empress' -- Single stem How can this not be a successful flowering houseplant? Or better yet, a ubiquitous Spring plant for patio planters? |
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| Sinningia 'Arkansas Empress' by Dr Jon Lindstrom |
Sinningia ‘Arkansas Empress’ is a
magnificent flowering plant when grown well.
This salmon flowered Sinningia, an
F1 hybrid by the late Dr Jon Lindstrom of the University of Arkansas, has many
flowers in a terminal cluster. It then
expands into a second whorl of flowers.
This exceptional plant has never been
grown commercially. It’s sterile, so it
makes no seed. Propagation is limited to
side-shoot tip cuttings, unless tissue culture could multiply it.
How could it be sold if quantities
could be had?
It is a stand-alone specimen plant
that could be a premium gift plant for Mother’s Day. If a continuous supply of small plants were
available, it could be flowered at any time of the year.
It’s big enough and showy enough
that it could be sold as a flowering plant in mixed Spring/Summer patio
planters.
Beginning as a plantlet with roots, the Sinningia will form a
tuber under the finished foliage. Although
not many indoor gardeners want to deal with it, the tuber will resprout and the
tuber will grow bigger each year. My
friend, Vicky, has kept hers in a patio planter for years to grow and flower
each Summer.
‘Arkansas Empress’ will be expensive because of the tissue culture
and long crop time, but these salmon flowers will be worth it.
This tissue culture project has started, and results could be
seen next year. Updates as they occur
--- No guarantee.
Sinningia ‘Prudence
Risley’ is a flowering houseplant that deserves to be grown in commercial
quantities.
Like many Gesneriads, it has been
hiding in the hobby world and shows up at Gesneriad Conventions and occasionally
at the Philadelphia Flower Show to be judged.
It’s always judged to be a cheery
plant with its tubular red flowers.
I know how to produce this amazing
plant and have grown small quantities over the years. Being sterile, seed propagation is not possible. Tissue Culture can work, but who’s going to
do it? My method is side shoot, tip
cuttings.
The picture of ‘Prudence Risley’ in
flower is at my West kitchen window in April 2025.
No one is more surprised than I am
that these flowers showed up with only window light. It’s been growing there for a year or more,
no fertilizer, just water.
Celebrate!
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| Sinningia 'Prudence Risley' at Windowsill |
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| Tolumnia with double spike |
Is the rare double spike on Tolumnia genetic or culture?
I've found 5-6 plants that have two flower spikes on the same fan. That's 5-6 out of 11,000 plants. If it is genetic, we need to select for this trait. If it's just good growing health of the plant, we should learn how to do that.
If anybody out there knows the answer, please tell me.
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| Tolumnia 'Peppered Sunlight' Is this the future of Tolumnia Orchids? Eight flower bud count, two spikes per fan. Will tissue culture mericlones duplicate this? |
