Claudette Really Filling Out

Claudette is filling out nicely.  Soon she will be back to her old self and who knows how long it will be until she flowers.  Will possibly be able to take her home at that point or maybe just move pollen from one tree to the next.  Will just have to see how everything goes.

With the greenhouse in the yard now some of the more summery plants are now starting to pop back up.  I think it's turmeric breaking ground again in several places. Not the one up front though.  Although the day lily is still going strong.  Will see how cold it has to get before it kills it back for the year.  I remember even in Southeast Texas they would die back and come up in the spring.

Several other seeds have been planted in the green house to see what might sprout.  I know they say you can start seeds in a green house but I've never been able to find out.  At the house in Arlington the "green house" was more like a drafty covered porch.

I've got the study pretty well cleaned up and Claude is loving the new light setup.  I have the grow lights mounted to the wall finally and they are set up on an intermittent timer. Day is on 1.5 hours and off 0.5 hours.  Night is the opposite.  It keeps the leaves from burning quite so much it seems.

Claudette2 Stressed

So at the office I have had 2 smaller cacao trees growing in the same pot.  It was about time for them to be in their own pots but this really puts stress on them.  The larger one is doing fine but this smaller one that was continually living in the shadow of the other is struggling.  There are a couple new leaves pushing out but for the most part i think it will loose ALL of its other leaves.

I trimmed some of them back in an effort to reduce what it was trying to keep going but I think it may have been too little too late for them.  This is after a week of repotting and is better than losing all of the leaves on day 1 or 2.  It has always struggled though to even put out the smallest of leaves in the other pot, the leaves being 1/4 the size of the other tree.

The soil is still moist but not wet and draining out.  Added a little today to make sure there was enough moisture but it's hard to tell exactly what is needed at this point.  I guess I'll just have to be patient and see how things go.  Probably stop by here tomorrow as well to see how many leaves are left and assess the progress and state of the little tree.  There is still plenty of hope though.  I've heard of cacao trees that have come back even after a year of losing all of their leaves.  They really are resilient trees.

Papaya Leaves

One of the most interesting leaves I've seen on a plant. The water beads on the leaves fairly easily after the rain we just had.  This has to be one of the more easily identified plants out there.  sometimes it can be difficult to tell what the plant is by the leaf if it is more generic but the structure here is pretty specific.

Other specific leaves I can think of are maple, burr oak, onion, fig, and pine.  These are of course probably because of the widespread knowledge of what these plants look like due to either how common they are or, as in the case of the maple, how famous.

In contrast, it can be hard to tell some trees just from a leaf shape. Although the size is different, if you looked at the shape alone of basil, live oak, thyme, and pepper plants, they all look about the same shape. Kind of what makes this leaf so striking and not easily confused with something else

Five Leaf Green Bean Plant

You've heard of four leaf clovers, well I've got a five leaf green bean plant.  I'm sure it's just a clump of leaves that didn't make a new stem out of the previous leaf area but it still looks cool.

The garden currently has lots of leaves growing.  The basil has doubled in size since last week and the cilantro is growing even faster.  No need to go to the grocery store any time soon for these.

The single solitary carrot has no flowers yet but it's already five times bigger than any carrots that tried growing last year. The new leaves seem to just keep coming.

The green onion at first seemed like it might die back after the scapes were done growing and making seed but there are now even more leaves than they started with.  Lots of brown of course as the old growth gives way to the new though but that's to be expected.

The tomato plants should be making flowers any day now.  There are surely enough leaves but I plan to add a little more dirt and thin them  just a little more so there isn't so much competition for nutrients.  An of course feeding it all.  There are still inkcaps growing in the large pot.  I think the dirt was still more mulch than dirt and needs some decomposition. They're doing what they can and should be excellent next year if not by this summer.

Cacao Leaf

I think I've said this somewhere before but it's amazing how much like a city a leaf looks.  You have the main highway down the middle of the leaf with collector streets merging at intervals and little neighborhood streets coming off of those.

A leaf really does have the water and sewer system going on through the veins you can see.  They do double duty though unlike a man made city where you'd better separate them or face a major disaster.

Even the drainage, or rainwater, that hits the leaves will travel down these paths and end up flowing off of the point of the leaf.  Trees that are more adapt to a rainforest environment even have a more pointed tip to the leaves to assist the water as it pulls together toward the tip and falls off of the leaf to minimize the weight, and thus potential damage, on the branches.

Pine needles are really good at this.  The pointy long leaves barely hold any water at all, dripping like nobody's business.  We used to camp a lot and the piny woods of East Texas was a favorite.  The smell of a pine forest after a summer rain is something you don't soon forget.

A good leaf picture also makes a good desktop wallpaper.  Not sure if this works real well since it's only taken with my iPhone, but it could be worse.

Not Fall Colors

Typically we think of reds and oranges as fall colors.  Here though these colors represent new growth.  The new leaves start out fairly red and start growing pointed downward.  Rather quickly though they grow to a full size leaf and go from red to orange to yellow and finally green.

Even after they are done growing they aren't at their final green color.  This can take several more days of development.  You can see here on this leaf the red node at it's connection point to the leaf stem.  This plant hadn't had these before but may fade as time goes on.  It's already a bit lighter than it was when it started.

New red leaves aren't an unusual sight though.  Look around this coming spring at the trees as they begin to leaf out and you'll notice that many trees start with red or orange leaves that turn green as spring continues on.

Right now the pear trees are blooming and look white, not quite rivaling the cherry blossom season but still a sight to see.  Unfortunately the cold snap that's coming may well knock all of those blossoms off. with icy rain.

Cacao Nodes Turning Red

Really not sure why this happens still. Red (named because all the leaf nodes were red from the start) I figured was just how that variety grew.  But now I'm wondering if it's how it's growing instead of what is growing.

This picture is of one of the cacao trees that traveled over to the next cubical to be cared for.  Only this last leaf so far has the distinct red nodes.  The rest of the leaves are just plain green.  Maybe a little darker at those points but certainly not a different color.

As you can see though the traveling plants are doing just fine as well.  New leaves coming in all the time and a nice color to them.  There is no gnat colony over there though so I guess that's a plus as far as worrying about them.  I've been thinking about getting this one taken care of.  They're not really bothering me but I don't want them to become an office nuisance.

Bean leaves

Plant identification by leaf is a common practice.  There are websites out there (usually by geography) that can help identify a plant by shape, type, texture, and such of a leaf, like this one at Texas A&M.  I guess I never paid a lot of attention to the leaves of a bean plant before but the initial leaves just didn't look like a bean plant to me.

It so happens that these are primary leaves that get the plant growing quickly and don't match the rest of the leaves it will produce throughout the rest of the growing cycle.

I think I already see some leaves forming at the base of some of the leaf branches.  It won't be long before they open and start to make beans.  One of my favorite things about bean plants is that they grow so fast and you can see results without waiting too long.  The cacao, just visible on the right, takes a minimum of 4 years for fruit to form but more likely 7-8 years in these less than ideal conditions.  They are still putting out leaves though.