Other Gesneriads in Demand - Smithiantha, Streptocarpus

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.

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