Penn State Botany Greenhouse

This beauty is blooming again! Our lovely Bird of Paradise, Strelitzia reginae has put out a few more blooms for our visitors this week. Vlad has been working on giving it a little trim. An interesting fact about the Bird of Paradise is that they are cross pollinated exclusively by birds. When a bird sits on the sturdy, blue "tongue" which is a modified petal of the flower, its weight causes the bract to open, dusting the bird's feet with pollen to be carried to the next flower. Also, the plant is named in honor of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of King George III of England who was a passionate botanist. The species, reginae is the Latin word for "queen". Vladimir Dmitriyev Jr.

I guess it couldn’t wait. Our red Epiphyllum bloomed over the weekend. Vlad was nice enough to take a picture while it was in its prime. Today it has already faded. It still has its beautiful red color. Hopefully we have better luck next time!

Our red Epiphyllum is going to bloom but as usual it looks like it might open over the weekend. Fingers crossed that it holds off until Monday!

The greenhouse’s Mormolyca ringens, which is a fascinating Central American orchid, is blooming! This orchid’s flower emits a pheromone and looks the way it does so that it can trick male bees into attempting to mate with the flower, which accidentally pollinates the plant in the process. The flower's lip is coated in tiny, hairy structures that resemble an insect's hairy body. The flower also produces a scent like the pheromones of female bees. Once tricked, the male bee will try to mate with the flower and as a result brush against the plant’s pollen sacs and then the bee carries the pollen to the next flower.

We have been waiting for this little beauty to bloom! Our Miltoniopsis ‘Cream Puff’ is blooming this week! Apparently, yellow Miltoniopsis had been difficult to acquire. However, breeding efforts have led to the availability of this color and Cream Puff is one of the results. Cream Puff is a clone that is described as having a rounded shape and a cream yellow coloring with dark red eyes and a red mask on the lip. It has a light fragrance which smells wonderful.

Many plants in the greenhouse are labeled but there are some plants that the greenhouse staff hasn’t had time to identify. The Botany greenhouse houses both common and rare plants that are not typically found for sale, making it difficult to identify them sometimes. One of those unusual plants was just identified. The greenhouse has 3 Scadoxus plants which are in the Amaryllis family. We believe the greenhouse houses the species pole-evansii. This plant is highly toxic since it contains poisonous alkaloids that are lethal to animals, such as sheep and goats, that graze on them. The bases of the leaves are grouped to form a false stem or pseudostem. These pseudostems contain brown spots that are scattered throughout. Flowers are produced on an upright leafless stalk. The bracts under the umbels turn downwards and are generally withered during flowering. Individual flowers are salmon-pink and one of our plants in room 103 is currently blooming which is how we were able to finally identify it.

In mid-May, we posted about a unique and rare occurrence in the greenhouse. One of the Castilleja that had been part of a research experiment conducted by the dePamphilis lab had produced yellow bracts rather than the typical orange or scarlet bracts. Well even more fascinating is that another Castilleja from that same study has yielded a plant with bicolor bracts that are yellow at the base with a touch of orange on top which makes the bracts appear to be a paler orange color than what has been seen over the years as the lab has studied various aspects of the Castilleja plant. The dePamphilis lab is trying self- and reciprocal out-crosses between the yellow morph Castilleja plant and orange and bicolor morphs to determine whether the trait has a genetic component. As a result, if you come visit these unique plants, the bracts are currently covered with netting to limit pollinators from reaching the flowers. We are excited to see what they find!

Some of the beautiful and bright pops of color in the greenhouse today!

Today is the start of an experiment! Kim acquired some interesting but older seeds, and we are going to see if any will grow. Fingers crossed that we get a couple plants since we are hoping to add them to the collection! Vladimir Dmitriyev Jr.

Every day is a surprise in the greenhouse and we try to change things up for every visit! Today we started redecorating the Denise Orndorff Teaching Collection room. Vlad and Kim are hoping to really create that jungle feeling. Vladimir Dmitriyev Jr.