Florist's Cineraria - Today's Flower

Florist's Cineraria
Pericallis cruenta
(per-ee-KAL-liss) (kroo-EN-tuh)
Today’s Flower

This plant’s colors continue to amaze me. They are so vibrant and since it comes with a simple Daisy shaped flower that makes them even more special. This is the darkest colored one I have seen. I really love the blues that the Cineraria comes in but this wine colored one was really nice. I don’t have any experience in growing these but would like to try it sometime. Next time they are at the nursery I am taking a few home.

Cineraria is a tender perennial that likes shady areas. Apparently the slugs like them too so you need to take precautions against them. They seem to be easily grown from seed and there are several mixes available. They can reseed in warmer climates.

I read an interesting article on Reuters the other day. It was called:

Thirsty plants can Twitter for Water with New Device
By Robert Muir

Washington (Reuters) - "Chances are you've never had a conversation with your house plants but if they could talk, what would they say? "Water me."

Researchers at New York University's interactive telecommunications program have come up with a device that allows plants to tell owners when they need water or if they've had too much via the social network blogging service Twitter.

"Obviously plants can't talk or Twitter directly, so we have to help them along with that," said Rob Faludi, co-creator of the device called Botanicalls."

The rest of the article is here

Definitely falls into “they have thought of everything category”. Like most electronic items the price is going to have to come down before I buy it.

Since it is Sunday and that means it is Today’s Flower day I thought I would share this unusual flower that was blooming at work. These pictures aren’t the greatest and please humor me as a proud parent. This vine has been at work for two years now. It grows in the container garden in the summer and in the conservatory in the winter.


Bat-leaf Passion Flower
Passiflora coriacea
(pass-iff-FLOR-uh) (kor-ee-uh-KEE-uh)

I remember reading after buying this plant that it doesn’t flower much and being a little disappointed with that (it turns out that is wrong after further reading). Although the foliage alone makes it worth cultivating, it really does look like a bat. It hasn’t flowered previously and it was surprising to see it blooming this week. The flowers are really small maybe the size of the center of a regular passionflower and the small purple fruit is ornamental. Even though there were only two or three flowers on the whole vine I do hope a fruit grows.


Passiflora coriacea is native to Central and South America. There seems to be some question about how hardy this plant is. It grows at high elevations in its native habitat so it must have some cold tolerance but I don’t believe the 15 deg. F I saw on one site. That is still not as cold as it gets here in Connecticut so it will continue to spend winters inside.

Wow, was it windy here yesterday. The peak gust was 49 mph. It just doesn’t feel like spring out there. More like some kind of weird limbo. This is one of the Pansies we are growing this year.



For more flower pictures from around the world check out:
Today’s Flowers . It starts at 18:00 GMT on Sunday. We are working all day but I hope to check out some of the postings.