Jardinerong Sunog (the Burnt Gardener)

Today, the male flowers of Amorphophallus salmoneus began shedding pollen, coinciding with the receptivity of the female flowers of one of my many A. macrophyllus 'Bluto'. You know what that means. Frankly, I am not sure if this endeavor will 'take'. I always felt that the former genus Pseudodracontium  (of which macrophyllus is a member of) is sufficiently distinct from Amorphophallus to stand as its own genus, which is another way of saying that there is a possibility that I just wasted my time. Of course, plants from two different genera can be artificially crossed, but there are many cases when they just won't. However, I am prepared to be surprised. And I want to be wrong. For those wondering why I think Pseudodracontium might be distinct from Amorphophallus , the answer lies in their more verrucate appendices AND the fact that contrary to most Amorphophallus , the inflorescences are synanthous. What the latter means is that the peduncles appea

If you have been following this blog for quite some time, you may have already anticipated this: posts about Amorphophallus  come out during late spring or early summer. However, this post comes a bit earlier than usual. Because whereas the rains habitually announce their return during May, triggering the beginning of the year's activity period which manifests a couple of weeks later, this year's precipitation fell in April. Strange, considering that April is THE driest month in my area. Memory tells me that I have never seen a raindrop fall in April. Ever. Now, this would have been quite a trivial matter to discuss, even briefly, but since last year, I have been noticing rather strange Amorphophallus behavior coinciding with the prevailing climate. Some of my plants woke up very late- around the end of July and early August. And while most of them entered slumber during November and December- which is typical- there were those that lasted until February; one of my  A. bul

Early 2018, I purchased a plant of Gymnocalycium anisitsii subsp. damsii , a very common and inexpensive cactus that is available practically anywhere in the Philippines. It was acquired mainly for experimental purposes; these past years I have been trying to emulate the appearance of wild plants by using purely- yes, 100%- inorganic, mineral mix. No soil, just rocks. I was inspired by photos of wild plants in their natural habitats and the interest coincided with a paradigm shift wherein mainstream 'knowledge' relating to cacti mix have been totally thrown out of the window in favor of a much more natural way to grow these plants. Anybody who has spent a fair deal of time cultivating cacti surely knows what G. anisitsii subsp. damsii looks like: dark green, plump cacti with short and thin spines and  prolifically surrounded by pups. The plant I bought is typical of these store-bought varieties. Upon returning home, I immediately removed all the pups, potted it in a purely m