AN ALOCASIA TIGRINA LOVE TRIANGLE

Sorry, that title is misleading. Nothing racy or risque to see here. Just me and my two favorite plants, both of the Alocasia Tigrina persuasion, celebrating my blog's 2-year anniversary. Fitting, too, since the very first entry was about another Alocasia Tigrina that I owned, the parent of these two stunning babies. That original plant is long dead, due to my earlier lack of gardening knowledge (too much water, wrong pot size). But I managed to bring one of these to life from a tiny segment of live tissue on the rotten tuber. The other Tigrina mysteriously appeared in my garden (these guys are rare so it didn't just happen to be there already) so I'm guessing that it somehow started as a tiny tubor that got dispersed into my garden when I dumped out the soil from the pot of the dead plant. Plant reproduction works in mysterious ways.

Check out these two beauties.

Here's me, back in March 2010 with the original Alocasia Tigrina that I mananged

to unceremoniously kill with my lack of tropical plant growing skills. Fortunately,

I've learned a lot since then so the babies should do just fine.

MACARTHUR PALMS

I recently bought some baby Macarthur Palm trees (Ptychosperma Macarthurii) on Ebay. Although I only ordered three, I was delighted to see two extras included. I don't know too much about this palm except that it prefers tropical climate so I'm hoping they do OK with the warm, dry weather here in Pasadena. I'll keep them indoors until they get a bit bigger and stronger to handle the cool winters. The bottom photo shows a mature species. A gorgeous, multi-trunked palm.

MOUNTING A STAGHORN FERN

If you're snickering right now, get your mind out of the gutter. If not, good for you. Mounting a staghorn fern is good, clean fun. I recently bought a young staghorn fern and after studying some mounting techniques on the Net, decided to give it a try. These hanging ferns can get huge so a reasonably strong mount is definitely needed. I bought a wood frame mount on ebay and painted it black (to match my wardrobe, of course).

Here's the main ingredients in today's project: Staghorn fern, mount, moss, 

fishing line and, unseen here, 8 screws.

I soaked the moss, which is basically going to be the only 'soil' used on the mount. It absorbs

water like a sponge and stays packed so it's an ideal medium for staghorn ferns.

I attached 6 screws to the mount. These will help secure the fern.

The excess soil gets removed since it won't be needed. The moss is a much better medium.

A healthy portion of moss is placed on the mount with an indentation created in the middle

where the fern goes and the moss gets wrapped around the base of the fern.

Here's the clever part. In order to not disrupt the delicate young fern, fishing line is strung from screw to screw, overlapping the moss and the edges of the fern, holding it firmly in place.

Et voila, a happy staghorn fern on it's new home! I picked a semi-shaded spot for it

that hopefully won't get too much sun.