Christmas Week Conditions and Foliage Favourites

6 comments

This past week has seen scorching hot temps. (34-36 deg C), no rain, wide blue skies, and excruciatingly high humidity levels (which makes our highs feel more like 40 deg C). Typical weather for Christmas week in my corner of the world.

Gardening jobs have been few and far between, as Christmas preparations, celebrations and family get-togethers took priority.

Aside from some watering and weeding, I’ve potted up a few plants (Plectranthus, Pentas, Begonias and Caladiums) to add to the courtyard garden.

I’ve also fertilised all the flowering plants in the shade house garden and continued treating the potted Coleus plants, in an effort to control the outbreak of mealy bugs on them.

During my really, really short wanderings, I’ve noticed:

- the Cassia fistula (commonly known as the Golden Shower Tree) is covered in its pendulous yellow flowers

- the Acalypha wilkesianas are covered in their flower spikes

- my oldest Ixora chinensis is throwing out new flower buds

- the Mussaenda philippica x flava ‘Calcutta Sunset’ is blooming

- the Lagerstroemia indica (commonly known as the Crepe Myrtle) is finally throwing out its flower sprays

- and there are flower spikes appearing on some of my Coleus.

I’m finding quite a number of cicada exoskeletons left behind when the adult cicadas escape through a split down the back of the nymph. Right now, the cicadas are making an absolute racket out in the bush land, morning, noon and night. That’s also typical during our summer.

Over the last few years I’ve found my appreciation of foliage plants has grown and developed more and more.

These are a few of my favourites at the moment:

Monstera deliciosa

Cordylines

Alocasia amazonica

Coleus

Xanthosoma lindenii, now known as Xanthosoma lindenii or Phyllotaenium lindenii. Most of the gardeners here in the tropics refer to it as Caladium lindenii though.

Ferns are popping up everywhere after the rain we received this month. I’m starting to pull some of them up and planting them in empty spots on one side of our driveway. Not sure they will take, but my fingers are crossed.

• 29 Dec, 2024
• 6 likes

More blog posts by bushbernie