African Violets love wet leaves, but...

This one is not like the others. Look at the tray and you wouldn't need to see the flowers of this African Violet to clearly see it is unlike all the others in my classroom. All the others are the descendants of a single plant that found its way to my room. This one has been propagated also but apparently all but one has sold.

I love propagating them. Not just because it is easy, but for the emergence. Take a leaf cutting, place it into a soil mix (1 to 2 parts sphagnum peat moss, 1 part vermiculite, 1 part sterilized loam, and 1 part clean coarse sand or Perlite).

Keep a bit moist and wait. What you won't see is the new roots, what you will see eventually is a new rosette (a circular arrangement of leaves) that will emerge at the base of the the leaf. I then have the students cut off that original leaf which gave its life for a new plant.

These plants love florescent lights at the school as much as my aloes shrink away from them.

They are classified in the genus Saintpaulia. But not the Saint Paul, but Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire, 19th century German soldier, who was in on the "discovery" of the plants somewhere around Tanzania.

And that brings up something that mystified me. I have always heard that African violets do not like getting their leaves wet. Does that make sense? For years I didn't question it, then I wondered why it would be adapted to have dry leaves. It is not a desert plant.

Truth be told.... it's a myth. I do trust the word on the street that says the leaves don't like cold water. Maybe an experiment is in order. However, I can't guarantee no leaves with be harmed during the...

spending time with the aloes and their descendents

The last two weeks we have been potting up our aloe plants (equal parts of sand, vermiculite and compost). The aloes came as most plants arrive in my classroom ... donations or we borrow a piece when someone asks us to repot one of their plants, or we grow it from seed. The latter has not been the case of the aloes. So, when I decided to sell some aloes this week to folk around the school, I was curious to see how much a person who buys plants would pay (please don't hate me for my roomful of plants which came by way of seed or donation). A very non-exhaustive search found that I was in the wrong line of business. Artificial aloes get a much better price. I was amazed at how cheap the real plants were, but then thought about how they self propagate.

The aloe above is looking rather healthy. To keep all my aloes this green I need to rotate them away from the light stands to the sun, which I accomplish by placing them into our one south facing window (and they stay green as long as they are not touching the window on cold winter nights). As this page of info indicates, they do not like to be in subfreezing temps. The aloes below were my introduction to their diversity, a wonderful discovery.

My main concern for the aloes is over watering and plants in two of the pots showed some sign that we had over watered. Some rotted roots, some black areas on leaves, and that stress may be why they were the only aloes in the room that had scale insects. We scraped off the pests, then cut off the sad looking parts when we potted. We also did a test spraying to see if the insecticidal soap would damage the aloe. For now they are isolated from the rest of the healthy plants. As far as the healing powers of Aloe ... I am convinced and use the inner juices to touch up any time I burn myself in an unmindful moment.

I wish I would have a sunny place for one in my house, so I can buy one of my own plants