Avoiding SAD - Visit a Greenhouse

Seasonal Affective Disorder, the winter blues, has never gotten me down, although winter simply goes on too long. But one certain remedy is to spend some time in the nearest greenhouse. All that organic material, the humidity, the smells of plants and earth, have a very salutory effect upon your brain. Maybe this is why botanists are not too prone to depression?

So while curing my SAD today this beauty caught my attention - Thunbergia mysorensis. Sorry if it has a common name, it isn't known to me (anyone?). The inflorescences hang down nearly 2 feet and the colorful flowers open bottom (which is at the top) to top, but this poses a problem for such flowers because usually their stamens and stigma are on the dorsal side of the flower. This is solved by having the flowers rotate on their stalks 180 degrees. This is not uncommon and other plants with dangly inflorescences do the same thing (e.g. Wisteria). Note also how the red calyx contributes to the overall display. You can grow this outside in warm climates.

Winter flowers - Indoor Tropical Plants

You can take the biologist out of the tropics, but you can't take the tropics out of the biologist. A number of tropical plants actually thrive living out of doors during our generally hot, humid midwestern summers until early fall, hung from shepard's hooks in semi-shade or convenient oak limbs. Once the temperatures begin falling below 50F, they get moved inside for the duration of fall and winter.

The interesting thing is that this move stimulates regular flowering from December to February, a great indoor display of botanical color. Here's one of the Phactor's long time favorites: Billbergia nutans, the Queen's tears, a bromeliad or a member of the pineapple family. The combination of pink bracts and calyx, green ovary and petals, outlined in blue, and the yellow stamens is very striking and a quite unique color combination.

This plant grows well in a 50:50 combination of orchid mix and cactus potting "soil". Every two weeks the entire hanging basket is showered throughly and allowed to drain before rehanging.

Another reliable and easy to grow tropical plants that reliably flowers under this indoor-outdoor regiem is one of the orchid cacti that another blogger has illustrated so nicely. Enjoy.