Annah and I are now back from our vacation and we have both been busy continuing to move stuff to our new house as well as getting caught up at work. This post has been in the works for a while since the Adromischus cristatus has taken several months to fully flower. Enjoy!



The Adromischus cristatus that Annah and I purchased back in May (see "100 Houseplants" post) has been slowly preparing for a bloom in the past three months and has finally decided that it is time to bloom. The flowers Adromischus cristatus flowers are truly something to behold since they are unlike any other flower that we currently have.

(The two pictures above which I the tried to get a picture of the entire Adromischus cristatus plant are not the greatest, but I hope you are able to get the general idea of what the plant looks like as a whole.)
Ever since bringing this plant home it has been growing next to a window that receives maybe 8-10 hours of sunlight combined with 12-14 hours of fluorescent light per day. It has been watered probably once every 7-10 days since buying it and is so far still in the plastic pot that it was purchased in with the excess water draining into a coffee cup which it sits in. (I have yet to purchase an actual plastic plant tray for the plant, but letting the water drain into this coffee cup seems to work well.)

The Lithops leslie 'albinica', which grows right next to the Adromischus cristatus has so far not really done anything, for better or worse, so I will continue to give it the same care that I've been giving it and see what happens.

It is probably time to head to one of the big plant stores in the Twin Cities to purchase some more plants in the Crassulaceae family since they are fun plants which are also easy to take care of!



In other houseplant news, the African Violet plant (above) that was flowering in a previous post is still flowering beautifully and more flower buds are getting ready to bloom. The other African violets are growing right next to this flowering plant but none of them have flowered recently, so I'm not exactly sure why they are not blooming since they are receiving the exact same care. We'll just have to wait and see, I guess!

(Left to Right: Adromischus cristatus and Lithops leslie 'albinica'.)
If any of you follow the number of houseplants that Annah and I own, which is to the right under the "About Us" section, you might have noticed that we recently surpassed the 100 plant mark. We finally reached this "milestone" this past weekend on Saturday when we were up at Linder's Nursery where I purchased a Lithops leslie 'albinica' and a Adromischus cristatus ("Crinkle-Leaf Plant") and both of these were small and easy to transport. I had seen and read about the Lithops in this post at PATSP and this post at Water When Dry (and then her second post) and it seemed like an interesting plant. The Adromischus cristatus or "Crinkle-Leaf Plant" is in the Crassulaceae family and it produces some intriguing flowers.

On Sunday we then purchased two more plants (#101 and #102) that we saw at the HyVee Grocery Store in the Floral Department where they were having a sale on Tropical Plants for $11.98, which seemed like a decent price for some decent looking plants, so we bought a Monstera deliciosa (PATSP post about this wonderful plant here) which is the plant in the photo on the top and a Strelitzia alba ("White Bird of Paradise") which is the photo on the bottom.

Space is starting to become an issue so I'm not sure how much longer this plant-buying obsession can continue. We should be fine as long as we stick to smaller plants.


This is the first post regarding our houseplants for quite some time and it won't be the last. We are currently working on other houseplant posts that will be posted in the future.

Update (05/28/08): We are back to 100 houseplants now since my Spathiphyllum ("Peace Lily") and Annah's Pachira aquatica (Braided "Money Tree") have died.

Photo Credits: Annah and Jordan