What's in Bloom
Bloom Highlights
Aloe juvenna
Tiger Tooth Aloe
This plant is endemic to Kenya, where it is found growing in arid, rocky areas and limestone cliffs. It grows as a succulent subshrub with a mounding habit. The succulent stems are basally branching with shoots that alternately produce broadly lanceolate, succulent leaves that clasp the shoot. The leaves are green with white spots on the upper and lower surfaces. The leaf margins curl upward and are lined with small, white spines. Leave axils produce a tall floral stalk that terminates in a raceme of tubular, pendulous flowers. The flowers have six fused tepals that are a bright coral color and green-tipped. The genus name comes from the Arabic alloeh, meaning “bitter and shiny substance.” The specific epithet is pseudo-Latin, meaning "juvenile,” due to the diminutive size of the plant.
Chlorophytum suffruticosum
Spider Plant
This plant is native to central and eastern Africa, where it grows in semi-arid scrublands of tropical areas. It grows as a tuberous subshrub with thick roots for storing water. The stems grow semi-erect, bearing long, strap-like, narrowly lanceolate leaves that are cauline, sessile, and opposite to sub-alternately arranged. The leaves are bright green on the upper face and distinctly ridged on the underside with a glaucus bloom between the ridges. Upper leaf axils produce a long, erect floral stalk terminating in a raceme of large, white, scilla-like flowers. The flowers have six white tepals, each with a soft green stripe down the midrib on the underside, six greenish-yellow lanceolate anthers on white filaments, all around a pistil with a ball-like, green ovary and a long, white style. The genus name comes from the Greek words chlorós, meaning “yellow-green” and phytón, meaning “plant.” The specific epithet is Latin for “close to shrub-like.”
Dietes grandiflora
Large Wild Iris
This plant is native to the southern and southeastern provinces of South Africa, where it is found on rocky coastal cliffs and dunes, and in forest margins and thickets where the shade is dappled. It grows as a rhizomatic perennial, forming clumps of stiffly vertical fans of foliage. The dark green leaves are long and lanceolate with their margins folded upward to clasp around each other. Leaf axils produce tall floral stalks terminating in a large, solitary, tricolored flower. The outer tepals are large and white with a golden signal patch; the inner tepals are smaller, white, and have small brown marks at their base; the style arms are light purple and ascending. The plant blooms in two-week periods with a rest period between reflowering. The genus name is derived from the Greek words dis, meaning “two” and etes, meaning “relative” in reference to its close relation to the genera Moraea and Iris. The specific epithet means “large flowered” in Latin.
Melaleuca citrina ‘Little John’
Little John Red Bottle Brush
Melaleuca citrina is native to eastern and southeastern Australia, where it grows in rocky and sandy soils of swamps, riverbanks, creek beds, and coastal areas. It grows as a shrub or tree with many branches that start red-stained green before maturing to produce light tan bark with brown fissures. Shoots bear dull green, narrowly elliptic leaves from short leaf stalks. The leaves are hairy, arranged oppositely, alternately, and sometimes in whorls. The shoots’ termini produce a cylindrical spike inflorescence of many bristly looking flowers. Each flower has five tiny sepals and five small green petals that subtend the many long, showy, red stamens and pistils. Once all the flowers reach maturity, the shoot will continue to grow from the terminus of the inflorescence. This cultivar is noted for its dwarf stature and deep red flowers. The genus name is derived from the Greek words mélas, meaning “black” and leukós, meaning “white,” since the first specimens described were said to have white bark blackened by fire. The specific epithet is Latin for “citrus-like” in reference to the aroma of the leaves when damaged.
Strongylodon macrobotrys
Jade Vine
This plant is native to the Philippines, where it grows in ravines and tropical rainforests. It grows as a liana (or woody vine), climbing nearby trees and along the forest floor. Its many branching vines bear a thick canopy of dark green, trifoliate leaves with ovate leaflets. The leave axils produce long, pendulous, racemes that can grow up to 10 feet long and are dark purple, almost black, bearing many large, claw-like turquoise flowers. Each flower arises from a dark purply-black floral stalk and has a fused cup-like calyx of five sepals that is lighter than the floral stalk. The flowers have five petals: a banner petal that is highly recurved back over the calyx, two small wing petals that clasp over the two keel petals that are fused and curve up and back towards the main stalk. The genus name comes from the Greek words strongylos, meaning “rounded” and odous, meaning “tooth,” in reference to the rounded tips of the sepals. The specific epithet comes from the Greek words makros meaning “large” or “long” and botrys meaning “cluster.”