Anybody like weird plants?

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

How about this one I have growing in a pot, It's an Arisaema and they are called Cobra Lillies. It's hardy and will grow outside as well but will flower in mid June.

I have a few different types of these Aroids but not all as dramatic as this one

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Arisaema Griffithii

[modeng2000Participant @modeng2000]

Is it carnivorous?

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

And this one in Paris this year

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Not quite so exotic but did manage this from seed, its took five years and I get loads of tubers but so far only one flower

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Posted by modeng2000 on 10/05/2023 14:07:12:

Is it carnivorous?

 

 

Not Carnivorous but they use flies to pollinate it, Here is a Youtube of another of my plants, a Helicodiceros also called the dead Horse Arum and you can see flies all over it

video

Edited By vic newey on 10/05/2023 14:32:08

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Posted by Speedy Builder5 on 10/05/2023 14:07:24:

And this one in Paris this year

I have this plants baby brother growing outside,

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Here is a fully hardy Arisaema Tortuosum which can reach 6 feet"

[Anthony KnightsParticipant @anthonyknights16741]

After nurturing and growing the leaves on the top of a pineapple fruit for three years, I eventually managed to grow a pineapple. The plant is very big and it was a lot of work for one fruit. We do well in this country to be able to buy them for about £1 each.

[BazParticipant @baz89810]

Seeing as we have become Gardeners World, can anyone come up with a way to get rid of bindweed?

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Bindweed?

If you don't want much else to grow in its place.

Take a shanpoo bottle T(Clean and dry ). Drill a m1/8 or m3.16" hole in the cap and fill with salt., and pour onto the bindweed, before hte heavens open.

It should shrivel and die. But be careful to concentrate the salt on the weed.

Howard

[DiogenesIIParticipant @diogenesii]

Dig it carefully (try not to break up the white roots) and pick out all the bits. Do it again in another couple of weeks and you'll find more that you missed first time round.

The point of doing this is to make less plant to kill.

Let any stems grow, encourage them up canes or sticks to make them easy to handle and keep them out of things you want.

Once they reach a good length,with some full leaves, carefully coil them up (still attached to the root), put some rubber gloves on and wet them liberally with a systemic weedkiller* and seal them in a plastic bag with a rubber band round the neck.

Let them 'stew' for a while to let the chemicals kill the root.

"Weedol" do some strong products – they will neutralise on contact with soil so you can replant quickly.

Be careful to observe safety precautions and don't get the Weedol on anything you want to keep, even splashes of it..

Repeat until defeated.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Speedy builder 5 your morph is very similar to dragon arum which seem to grow like weeds in my garden and when flowering they stink to high heaven .

[Andy StopfordParticipant @andystopford50521]

I like the look of the Arisaema, I'll have to get some bulbs for next year.

Not so sure about the Dead Horse Arum, though I daresay my carnivorous plants might like it as a neighbour.

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Posted by Andy Stopford on 10/05/2023 19:31:07:

I like the look of the Arisaema, I'll have to get some bulbs for next year.

Not so sure about the Dead Horse Arum, though I daresay my carnivorous plants might like it as a neighbour.

———————-

They are fascinating plants as are carnivorous. I grew some of those in the in the 1960's when they were not available everywhere like today. i built up a huge collection at one time.

The dead Horse arum will be hard to find tubers of, the one I have been nurturing in the garden is huge this year, the large flower bud is waiting to open but won't if it's raining! The problem is they start growing in the Autumn and although the tuber can stand hard frost the leaves have to be protected or it weakens the plant,

Some Arisaemas come into the UK from India but have a CITES certificate even though they most likely are cultivated rather than from wild collection. The problem is they sometimes appear here dried up or too far into growth and need extra care or it will rot.

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Posted by bernard towers on 10/05/2023 19:11:15:

Speedy builder 5 your morph is very similar to dragon arum which seem to grow like weeds in my garden and when flowering they stink to high heaven .

———————-

I have four of the Dracunculus Vulgaris plants in the greenhouse and due to open the flower in a couple of days, unlike the Amorphophalus they are very hardy outdoors

[Antonny MayerParticipant @antonnymayer47546]

Posted by vic newey on 10/05/2023 11:39:24:

How about this one I have growing in a pot, It's an Arisaema and they are called Cobra Lillies. It's hardy and will grow outside as well but will flower in mid June.

I have a few different types of these Aroids but not all as dramatic as this one

It looks cool. I never thought that it's so beautiful. Anyway our platen is unique

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Nice plants.
Exotic is a relative thing. I did grow some bananas in Surrey as well as pineapple but it gets impractical apart from the challenge and the winter heating bills got silly.. I had dustbins of soil with successful strelitzia that did well with modest winter help and then got even more daft when I picked up some white strelitzia seeds cheap – which germinated well but no way could I cope with a plant that grows 20-30 feet tall and had to let them die over winter when they got too big for indoors in Wales.

pgk

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Word of warning, beautiful as they are and some of the plants shown can be stunning, if you have cats then please be aware that all lilies and the exotics featured are highly poisonous to cats and can cause death. I have four cats, one an Abyssinian will eat any plant so we are very careful what plants we have around, he even goes into the garden and eats daffodils when they are in season, needless to say they are on the list of poisonous garden plants, he usually proceeds to vomit the consumed plants which I suppose is his body’s way of countering the poisons he has ingested. So far his diet has not proved terminal. Dave W

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Posted by Samsaranda on 12/05/2023 11:35:03:

Word of warning, beautiful as they are and some of the plants shown can be stunning, if you have cats then please be aware that all lilies and the exotics featured are highly poisonous to cats and can cause death. I have four cats, one an Abyssinian will eat any plant so we are very careful what plants we have around, he even goes into the garden and eats daffodils when they are in season, needless to say they are on the list of poisonous garden plants, he usually proceeds to vomit the consumed plants which I suppose is his body’s way of countering the poisons he has ingested. So far his diet has not proved terminal. Dave W

—————————————-

I'm not sure if you are referring to my Arisaemas? which although are called cobra Lillies but are not related to the Lilly family in any way. In some parts of the world the tubers are cooked and eaten

Apart from that, you clearly have an unusual cat because that's not normal behaviour is it so issuing dire warnings is a bit unfair, Our cats occasionally eat grass as do most cats but I've not seen them eat anything else.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Vic

You are right our cat is pretty unusual, he is as thick as two short planks but a beautiful loving cat and at 6 kilos is no small size, he has always eaten any plant life he comes across but this is not unique behaviour for cats, there are some breeds that will sample any plants they come across, hence my warning, there are lists of plants that it is advisable to keep away from cats, lilies come near the top of the list. Anyway to digress we have another cat who delights in eating swarf that he finds in my workshop, so far as we know he has only sampled aluminium swarf which he subsequently regurgitates, he is now only allowed in my workshop when I am present, he is deaf and follows me everywhere and is content when in the workshop with me to sit on the workbench next to me or he will curl up and sleep there. Checked with our Vet and his opinion was that aluminium swarf is relatively soft and would transit through the gut with no problems so not to panic. Dave W

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

Dave, you sure do have some strange cats! over the years we have had quite a few cats but always rescued moggies rather than pedigree or rare breeds, Our neighbour has a Bengal and two others that sometimes comes round, when they go on holiday we feed them but we have never heard of them eating anything weird.

Aluminium caused a minor infection on my leg, I was out walking and something was constantly sticking in the side of my leg below the knee, I searched, shook my leg etc but could find nothing and by the time I got home there was a big purple blotch. I removed my trousers and finally found a tiny coiled up piece of aluminium swarf embedded in the material,

I think your vet was wrong to presume aluminium was soft as it clearly caused damage to my leg, the mark is still partly visible after 6 weeks so please be careful of your cat eating it

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Vic

The Vets take on the aluminium swarf was that it was relatively soft and generally without sharp edges, once inside the gut apparently the gut lining would distend and allow the passage of the swarf, I bow to his superior knowledge he is very experienced and frequently travels overseas to teach other vets so I presume he knows what he is talking about. In respect of our four cats we have two White Turkish Angoras, (Brother and Sister rescue cats) The Abyssinian and a Siamese. Many years ago I used to work as a Judges Steward at Championship Cat Shows so got to handle all sorts of different breeds of cats, suffice to say that I prefer cats to people. Our house is never without resident cats. Dave W

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

The shape and quantity of swarf would be the limiting factors. Fortunately, most sensible sized stuff does transit. Many will remember the days of cotton-wool sandwiches when someone inadvertently swallowed glass chips from free school milk bottle rims. I've force-fed small pledgets of milk soaked cotton wool to cats who have swallowed sharp looking metal objects to help parcel them up and push them through. Caution with long items.. string or thread on sewing needles or Christmas tinsels, which can all lead to 'linear foreign body syndrome' where the peristaltic action of the gut bunches itself up and goes necrotic on the folds.

pgk

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

PGK

Thanks for your posting , your explanation was more or less the same as our Vets, the aluminium swarf that our cat decided to eat was in small spirals about an inch long, I showed a sample to our vet hence his explanation. Dave W

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