Archive for September, 2009

In Virginia, a woman apparently doomed to bed and wheelchair found her means to recovery by having a greenhouse built on a city lot and running it for profit. She scouts seedsmen in China, India, Japan, and England for rare plants. Her knowledge of greenhouse operation came the hard way, by experimentation. Today her greenhouse is stocked to the brim with virtually every kind of gesneriad. Her articles in plant publications whet readers’ appetites for the unusual things she sells over-the-counter and through the mail.

A business executive in New York set up a prefab greenhouse with no thought of operating it for profit. The house and potting shed cost approximately $3,000.00, although he saved $1,800.00 by erecting it himself and doing his own mason work. An achimenes authority, he soon found he had an over-supply which collector friends wanted. Currently he has a self-sustaining hobby which will bring in sizable dividends when he has more time for it. He has made a cross between a species sinningia and a rechsteineria, the tubers of which he sells for $20.00 each.

A young man in Oklahoma paid a substantial part of his college tuition with the proceeds of gesneriad sales from cuttings, tubers, and seeds sent through the mails. His less than 10-foot-square greenhouse is too small to accommodate specimen plants, but he can grow quantities of gesneriads in flats and hanging baskets. From these he harvests the material he sells.

One Sale Paid for My Greenhouse

At a national African violet convention a commercial dealer heard me talking about a white-flowered Episcia dianthiflora. Later he wrote, “If there is such a plant, we might be interested in buying propagation stock.” The upshot was that I sold enough of these plants to pay for my greenhouse. Formerly, I used to send out a listing of many kinds of African violets, gloxinias, and other gesneriads. Then I tried advertising, running my ads simultaneously with pertinent magazine articles. Results were good. After you have once advertised with the larger magazines, you receive monthly letters announcing future articles which usually feature photographs of the plants discussed. I found it paid to tie in ads with the issues that carried stories about the plants I was selling.

Currently I grow my gesneriads for commercial firms, selling tubers and seeds rather than plants. These are easily shipped, and I use the top cuttings of my rare gesneriads to propagate more material.

Smithiantha (naegelia)

Your customers will surely like these plants with gorgeous foliage and beautiful flowers. Always in short supply and great

77, 78. Haemanthus multiflorus, the blood lily, (left) and Sprekelia

formosissima, the Jacobean lily, are both amaryllids. Collectors find them

irresistible. (Photographs by Author)

demand, this gesneriad is a natural for sales to collectors as well as to your local trade. I have a back list of customers who have been waiting to obtain rhizomes. Yet I have never seen these plants in a florist’s window or at a general flower show. Foliage on S. cinnabarina looks like dark red plush; in S. zehrina, the red mingles with green to give a marbleized effect, and flowers are red and yellow. Some of the hybrids have all green or reddish-brown haired leaves. Rose Queen has rose-and-white flowers; S. cinnabarina’s are red and yellow.

Like achimenes, these plants are easily propagated. As their flowering season ends, they show extra rhizomes sprouting from leaf axils and the rhizomes in the pot also multiply. One good tuber will produce up to eight or more extra ones in the course of a season.

STREPTOCARPUS

Streptocarpus, the Cape primrose, is a fibrous-rooted plant which grows well under Saintpaulia culture. All of the species are good collector items and a newcomer, S. saxorum, makes a fine house plant. An admirable feature of this blue-and-white flowered one is that it is possible to make two to three hundred cuttings from a 2-year-old plant. Although so easily propagated through the fleshy-leaved cuttings, S. saxorum does not easily set seeds. The flowers nevertheless have sufficient pollen to permit crosses with other streptocarpus species or with other gesneriads.

One way to keep up with the gesneriad world-and thus build your business-is through the American Gesneria Society. It publishes news letters and a yearbook devoted to the culture of gesneriads. For membership, write Mrs. E. E. Hammond, Secretary, American Gesneria Society, Inc., 109 Cope-land Lane, Irvington, California.

Rechsteineria

Here is a pot plant with an excellent future-it will pay you to make its acquaintance. Some specialty houses still list but one rechsteineria, and that under the name of Gesneria cardi-nalis, macrantha, or umbellata. (Taxonomists now include Gesneria and Corytholoma with Rechsteineria.) I have six species of these plants. By ordering seed from several specialty houses, you can obtain a good collection for your own sales list.

This tuberous-rooted gesneriad from Brazil has unusually varied flower forms, but the color range is not great, from pale pink through salmon and yellow to vivid red. The plants are of easiest culture, some varieties blooming several times a year. Of even greater “dollar importance” to me is the fact that these plants will interbreed with some of the sinningias to produce glamorous bigeneric hybrids.

Tubers of rechsteinerias are firm; those of R. cardinalis resembling a sweet potato, the others being more like gloxinia tubers; R. cardinalis has heart-shaped, emerald green, hairy leaves and brilliant red flowers of unusual form. Rechsteineria cyclophylla bears an umbel of bright red 5-petaled flowers. It flowers several times a year, sometimes sending up flower scapes with no leaves. My older specimen plants are never given much rest, while those intended for sale are dried off shortly after they finish flowering.

A 2-year-old tuber can be depended upon to produce hundreds of flowers at blooming time, and the flowers, having good substance, make exciting and unusual corsages. The helmetlike flowers of R. Warszewiczi have lovely salmon-to-lemon coloring, and plants grow to 2 feet. Most of us who hybridize gloxinias would like to work this luscious near-cantaloupe hue into a gloxinia strain. Tubers are the easiest of all gesneriad tubers to store. They can be left in the pots, watered slightly, or left dry; or they can be removed and stored in sand or vermiculite.

A variety of the red-flowered R. purpurea grows in a fascinating way. The glossy, sharply serrated leaves develop in whorls of three, then six. Topping the 18-inch plant are two umbels of rose-splashed tubular flowers, usually about 150 of them at a time. My seed sales from this variety are excellent. But I haven’t exploited the plant since I want to use it in my own hybridization. I know of no seed or bulb house selling these tubers, but that is no drawback since it is easily grown from seed.

Rechsteineria leucotricha or Brazilian edelweiss, has leaves covered with downy silver hair, and light red flowers. The tubers are round and of light orange color in their young state, but as they age they become darker and somewhat gnarled. This species, like R. cyclophylla, will send up flower scapes in advance of the heavy foliage-often without benefit of pot or potting soil. It is easily grown from seed but a bit difficult from cuttings. One firm sells mature plants for as much as $8.00 apiece.