Happy New year, everyone!

Primulina 'Picolo'
- blooming non-stop since August 22cd.

Beautiful!

Happy New Year! New year, new thread. I just hope the weather is kinder in 2023 than it was this past year. The gessies were miserable spring to fall. Their sleeping now. They wake up really late. By the time they were waking up in 2022 the heat was way too high for their liking.

@kkaymci55 has some very beautiful Streps! Look at this variegated one

Kohleria 'Rattlesnake'. It had completely died back, and resurrected from the rhizome(s).




Primulina 'Patina'. the mother plant and two from leaf cuttings.






Primulina dryas 'Latifolia Dwarf'. The mother plant and one from a leaf cutting.




Petrocosmea China #3. It had 4 little mature leaves when I got it, and now it is finally showing some variegation. It's incredibly shiny!


The micro miniature Sinningia concinna never stops blooming!


Primulina 'Picolo' has been blooming non-stop since mid August, too.

so cute!
The Primulina patina leaf baby #2 has some interesting leaf shapes.

sedumzz said:The Primulina patina leaf baby #2 has some interesting leaf shapes.

Yes. One would wonder if it is really he same cultivar, but it is! (I only have 3 cultivars of variegated primulinas, each is very different and I can't mix them up.) I believe it has gotten a bigger dose of fertilizer. Don't pay much attention to the shades/hues of color between the 3 shots. They all had the exact same background and you can see they look different. The middle one shows the most accurate leaf colors. When I took all these pics, I had to use different camera settngs: white balance for all that blue in the Kohleria shot, some are focus stacked (and different lenses to accomodate), and all in low artificial light. Sometimes I don't get to return all the camera settings back to "normal".

Also, I had gotten of bunch of those cement pots that leaf baby #2 is in. I like them so much because they add a lot of weight to what would otherwise be light and easy to tip over. (Gesneriads all seem to like little "undersized" pots.) Although the cement pots have a not very uniform coating (acrylic or something) brushed in the inside surface, I wonder if some lime is leaching into the soil mix. Mel Grice, one of the gesneriad gurus, mentioned in a video about putting limestone in the mix. And I water with rain water, not high pH tap water. And to add even more vexing thoughts... I had first soaked in a vinegar solution a couple pf these pots that I've already planted in, hoping to remove some of the lime, but now I don't remember which is which!

So here are two Sinningia leopoldii hirsuta seedlings. Three had sprouted about Nov 1. One died early on. Kept in a closed bag with ample water, they hardly did anything for sooooo long.The cotyledons were far less than half the size of the smallest leaf you see in the last pic. Finally after such excruciating patience, I gave the tiny (tiny!) seedlings a bit of fertilizer - something I would never do to anything so minuscule, but I felt I had nothing to lose. Though they didn't really grow, they looked a lot better. That was the start of my regular dilute fertilizing, every other time I water. Ever so slowly opening the bag, for the last three weeks the ziplock bag has been completely open with the pot still snugly inside.

So the two survivors sprouted right next to each other, and they were already crowding. Again, something I would never normally worry about with a seedling at this stage, except they grow so slow! So today I decided to move the larger one farther away in the same pot.

Sinningia leopoldii hirsuta is a tuberous species, and when I oh-so-carefully dug, no wonder it responded to the more frequent watering and fertilizer! It had one 1 to 2 mm single strand root! Actually not unlike the Sinningia concinna seedlings I am growing. But with S. leopoldii hirsuta being a much larger plant at maturity, I kinda expected it to be a bit more robust. I am certainly learning a lot!



You can see the tiny tuber.

@Leftwood
How big do Sinningia tubers get, Rick? Achimenes and Eucodonia rhizomes vary wildly in size. I think that's due to age, generally. They make little clumps of tubers all during the growing season. They make them generously though. Even a cutting will make a few rhizomes even when started late in the season. They crumble easily, too, and those crumbles can grow plants. I can't tell the little tuber on your Sinningia is formed of little segments. Are they a solid structure?

In my experience they vary in size, age and also the size of the plant (mini/micro/standard etc)

Yeah, it depends on the species (and of course, age). It's just incredible how these survive with such an undeveloped root system! The tiny tuber you see is single and round.

I got a shock today when I say "today's plant" was an AV, of the genus Streptocarpus. Saintpaulia is now bumped to "synonym," and Streptocarpus is the accepted name. When did that happen??

Admittedly, it's been a long time since my windowsills were full of AVs and I had hundreds of babies on an upstairs light stand, but still.

Life is settling down, and I'm getting better again at keeping house plants alive. Picked up 2 mini AVs at a nursery during the holidays. That's how "it" started many years ago, with "just 2!" AVs.

There are few really puzzling taxonomic changes that baffle the more down to earth gardeners:
-- Saintpaulia to Streptocarpus
-- Dodecatheon to Primula
--Cimicifuga to Actaea

Of course, there have been quite a few in Gesneriaceae.

Streptocarpella, Saintpaulia have been merged with Streptocarpus, I'm still working on making subcategories to help organize the now larger genus

I would think there would be subgenera, sections or series already designated. I would use those rather than make up my own.

Leftwood said: I would think there would be subgenera, sections or series already designated. I would use those rather than make up my own.

Yes, we are using those

Trying some plants I've never tried before, Primulina.

(pictures corrected)
Primulina 'Loki' (Shalit)


Primulina 'Naine Argente'


Primulina yungfuensis



I'm hoping Primulina will behave like AV's. I have no issues with AV's.

Streptocarpus on the other hand will grow great for me for several months and then they all started to get a fungus or mold on the leaves. Something was not to their liking in my growing conditions. It's a shame because for the time I was growing them, I thought they preformed better, flowering, then AV's.

Primulina are similar to AV, but generally like a more airier soil. Did you switch tungfunensis and Lokis images around?

sedumzz said: Primulina are similar to AV, but generally like a more airier soil. Did you switch tungfunensis and Lokis images around?

Just looked at some images on the web.
It looks like they are, but not by my doing. That is the way the tags are in the plants I bought... I don't think I had any fall out in transporting them home.
Plan on potting them real soon into different pots. I'll tag them correctly when I do.
See someone mentioned about these plants seeming to like smaller pots. Is that what most that grow these see as well?
Do these get around the same size as standard AVs?

Yes, the Loki and yungfuensis got switched. An easy mistake by a grower because they often print new tags for your order all at once and then place them in the pots.

Primulina do seem to like small pots in general. Put them in a larger pot and they grow larger faster. I agree with sedum zz that they do like more airy soil, but the better way to put it is that they don't tolerate heavy soils like AVs can.

Don't repot for at least 2-3 weeks. Repotting is always traumatic for any plant, as is a change in environment (grown in a greenhouse to your house). One shock at a time is always best for plants to transition well.

You will likely find that primulinas use more water than AVs, except for yungfuensis that I keep drier than other primulinas.

Some interesting info on Naine Argente:
https://gesneriads.info/genera...