![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I have a baby Franklinia! It poked its wee head up out of the Chobani yogurt cup yesterday morning and now it has two leaves.
This is very exciting for me, but a challenge lies ahead. They're supposed to be fairly easy to germinate but pretty difficult to transplant, and they're extremely finicky about their soil composition and moisture. They like sandy loam, acid, with a pH of 5 to 6. They like to be uniformly moist but not soggy.
The Franklinia was discovered growing along the banks of the Altamaha River in Georgia in the 1760s by John and William Bartram. All specimens were in a two- to three-acre area, growing nowhere else. William went back in 1776 and collected seeds, which he sowed in his Philadelphia garden in 1777 -- a garden, I might add, that's barely two miles from our house. The Franklinia was last seen in the wild in 1805 and all existing specimens are descended from the seeds William collected. Thus, the gene pool is very shallow and the plants are apparently susceptible to a fungus that causes wilt and infests cotton plants. This would explain the Franklinia vanishing in Georgia -- the fungus probably washed downriver.
Swallowtail on Franklinia, July 30, 2011.
This is the very tree whose seed is now growing on my windowsill.
It's a beautiful little tree, amenable to growing in dappled shade although it prefers full sun for the most prolific bloom. It blooms in late summer, autumn, and early winter and it's not unusual to see its white blossoms along with brilliant red autumn foliage. Here's Wikipedia on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklinia
I collected a seedpod on a solo trip out to the Fairmount Park Horticultural Center (different than Bartram's Garden) in April, to photograph early flowering cherries. I scarified five seeds with an emery board, soaked them overnight, and planted them on April 18. I'm hoping for another couple plants but if I can grow this one on I'll be feeling pretty lucky. It should be the perfect size for putting in the ground when we move to our retirement home in a year or two. There will be a beautiful symmetry to this -- we finalized the decision to move in 2014-2015 about the time I collected this seed. Seventeen years ago, I scarified a wisteria seed from Bartram's Garden and planted it in a pot on the day we made an offer on this house.
In other windowsill news, another member of the Class of 2009 sent up a flower stalk while I wasn't paying attention! So I will have one last burst of hippeastrum flowery goodness in a week or two. That will make six solid months of schlumbergera and/or hippeastrum blooming indoors. Not bad. And my Nopalxochia is awfully happy about being fed and about regular feedings and being treated more like the epiphyte that it is (tipping out all runoff water). One can only hope that vigorous flowering will follow the vigorous foliage.
This is very exciting for me, but a challenge lies ahead. They're supposed to be fairly easy to germinate but pretty difficult to transplant, and they're extremely finicky about their soil composition and moisture. They like sandy loam, acid, with a pH of 5 to 6. They like to be uniformly moist but not soggy.
The Franklinia was discovered growing along the banks of the Altamaha River in Georgia in the 1760s by John and William Bartram. All specimens were in a two- to three-acre area, growing nowhere else. William went back in 1776 and collected seeds, which he sowed in his Philadelphia garden in 1777 -- a garden, I might add, that's barely two miles from our house. The Franklinia was last seen in the wild in 1805 and all existing specimens are descended from the seeds William collected. Thus, the gene pool is very shallow and the plants are apparently susceptible to a fungus that causes wilt and infests cotton plants. This would explain the Franklinia vanishing in Georgia -- the fungus probably washed downriver.
Swallowtail on Franklinia, July 30, 2011.
This is the very tree whose seed is now growing on my windowsill.
It's a beautiful little tree, amenable to growing in dappled shade although it prefers full sun for the most prolific bloom. It blooms in late summer, autumn, and early winter and it's not unusual to see its white blossoms along with brilliant red autumn foliage. Here's Wikipedia on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklinia
I collected a seedpod on a solo trip out to the Fairmount Park Horticultural Center (different than Bartram's Garden) in April, to photograph early flowering cherries. I scarified five seeds with an emery board, soaked them overnight, and planted them on April 18. I'm hoping for another couple plants but if I can grow this one on I'll be feeling pretty lucky. It should be the perfect size for putting in the ground when we move to our retirement home in a year or two. There will be a beautiful symmetry to this -- we finalized the decision to move in 2014-2015 about the time I collected this seed. Seventeen years ago, I scarified a wisteria seed from Bartram's Garden and planted it in a pot on the day we made an offer on this house.
In other windowsill news, another member of the Class of 2009 sent up a flower stalk while I wasn't paying attention! So I will have one last burst of hippeastrum flowery goodness in a week or two. That will make six solid months of schlumbergera and/or hippeastrum blooming indoors. Not bad. And my Nopalxochia is awfully happy about being fed and about regular feedings and being treated more like the epiphyte that it is (tipping out all runoff water). One can only hope that vigorous flowering will follow the vigorous foliage.
