Attack of the caterpillar

Posted on by

Just a few days ago, I was admiring how well our caladiums were doing. This particular plant was just starting to get nice and lush, and I was thrilled because I love the striking colours of the leaves and stems.

Before - beautiful, vibrant leaves.

And then today… I found only half the number of leaves, and this:

Now - the plant equivalent of a pile of scavenged bones.

The culprit?

Guilty as charged - the Hawk Moth larvae.

This brilliant lime green caterpillar from the Hawk Moth, I believe – beautiful, but not welcome any more. It’s a common pest to our caladiums and it’s relatives have wiped out several caladium plants in the past. This one was removed from it’s feast and moved far, far away.

We are not pleased.

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

Fascination with tendrils

Posted on by

As I watch my veggie babies grow and develop, I’ve found my curiosity drawn to how my vining plants work their way upwards. Long, thin tendrils reach out unerringly for the nearest unmoving object where, on contact, they wind themselves firmly to hold up and support the main plant as it continues on it’s vertical journey.

Bittergourd vine (with possible flowers forming!) hanging on as it works up the trellis, with tendrils forming interesting curlicue designs.

This has been a bit of a chore for me where my bittergourd plant is concerned. If you remember, it started growing out of my big pot of Japanese Bamboo (dracaena surculosa), the seed kindly deposited by bird or creature unknown. A few people identified it by the leaves, and rather than uproot it, since Mother Nature decided to gift it upon me, I left it where it was and trained the vine to grow onto my compost pit fence. However, being only about a metre high, the fence posed little challenge to the creeper, and I had to hastily construct a better trellis for it to grow on. Let’s just say I add on as necessary. :P

But back to my point about tendrils.

In the initial stages, I had to keep unwinding them from the handy Japanese Bamboo and onto the fence and trellis. It seemed like one day I got the tendril attached and growing where I wanted it, and the next day the plant would once again be leaning towards the Japanese Bamboo with a new tendril stretching out for forbidden land, like an unruly child. If I could move the pot away, I would, but the bittergourd is growing out of it and I didn’t want to have the vine exposed to an accidental severing. So it will need constant vigilance, as Professor Moody is wont to say. Nevertheless, it’s making good progress up the trellis and looks like it’s about to start flowering. *cheering*

Cucumber tendrils reaching from one leg of the trellis to another. I had nothing to do with that, and am proud of my cuke's "musclepower" :)

How do they decide to grow the way they do?

I have no idea. They just seem to have blind instinct and a mind of their own. My young cucumber plant was working it’s way up one trellis leg and decided that it needed to reach across to the other support … and it did. All on it’s own! Logically, to me at least, the plant should have followed the same support upwards, but again, like a child testing boundaries, it had to see if it could reach across a 20 to 30cm gap instead. Well, mission accomplished, it could and it did.

My favourite tendril - the curly, little spring.

As for my loofah plants – the last of my tendril-bearing veggies – they’re making their steady way up an old chainlink fence that I’d like to conceal. Not that this kind of tendril is unique to the loofah, but it’s the plant I got the picture from. I’m talking about the cute, tightly curled tendril that looks like a tiny green spring. I haven’t found information that backs my theory up, but I think the tendril resorts to coiling itself that way to support itself as it keeps reaching straight upwards for a solid support. It’s exactly the sort of thing Mother Nature would come up with, and I’m in awe of her ingenuity. It’s truly fascinating and inspiring to watch nature at work. I’ll never grow tired of watching and learning.

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

The curry leaf tree

Posted on by

Fragrant, green leaves of the curry plant

Like many Singaporeans, we grow plants and trees that are used in seasoning Asian foods, and the curry leaf (Murraya koenigii) is one of the basic plants to have growing in your garden. It’s no longer used solely in Indian cooking – nowadays, with all the fusion cooking going on, it’s common to find a sprig of curry leaves seasoning the cuisines of other cultures.

What I love about curry leaves is the clean scent that they give off when you bruise or are cooking them.

White flowers in foreground, unripe berries in the background. Click pic to zoom

The plant originates from India. It is known in different Indian dialects by different names: Kadhi Patta in Hindi, Mithho Limbo in Gujerati, Karuveppilai in Tamil and Malayalam, and so on. As names and words get skewed in different situations over time, we’ve been calling it Curry Pillay in our Singaporean household.

A friend recently taught me the Malayalam name, which means “Black Neem Leaf”. According to Wikipedia, “Karu/Kari” means black, “ilai” means leaves and “veppilai” means Neem leaf. Karuveppilai is a pretty complicated word to a non-Malayalam speaker, and I suspect we distilled the name down to “curry pillay” because that’s what we could remember. Besides, that’s what the leaves are used for – cooking curry – so it makes sense to me!

Our tree is an established one that’s close to 20 years old. It grows pretty straight and tall, with branches growing outwards and upwards from the main stem – or trunk, I should say. The bark is light-coloured, and relatively smooth and waxy. The tree gets full sun throughout the day and seems to enjoy it. It’s about 2 storeys high and doesn’t seem to want to grow taller. Instead, it spreads out via its branches that we prune a couple of times a year.

I’ve also discovered that it’s spreading itself via its roots – new plants are springing up from the roots of the old tree! I made this interesting discovery when I was trying to dig up a small plant to give away.

These plants sprout everywhere, thanks to the efforts of the hungry birds

However, baby plants aren’t much of a problem if you bother to look. As mentioned in an earlier post, many fruit-eating bird are attracted to the curry tree because it produces bunches of berries. Black-naped Orioles, Asian Koels, Bulbuls and Mynahs are among the regular visitors to snack on the small berries. After eating, they find other perches and kindly spread the berry seeds all over the place. Because of this, we find little curry plants growing everywhere, and either give them away or weed them out. As a matter of fact, our tree has several “babies” across Singapore and one in Europe!

The curry leaf tree is perfectly suited to our tropical climate. We don’t do anything special to the tree – no need to water or fertilize it because Mother Nature does that for us, and the roots are deep enough to get through the dry periods. The only problem is that it attracts white pests, usually mealy bugs. Since I don’t want to spray insecticide on an edible plant, I usually cut off and dispose of the diseased branches. It would be great if more insect-eating creatures visited, though. Sunbirds and tailorbirds do drop by, but perhaps the mealy bugs aren’t to their liking. Life goes on.

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

What plant is that?

Posted on by

Flowers of the Duranta Dark Purple

Last week, someone at the GCS Forum brought my attention to the FloraWeb feature at the NParks website. It’s a really cool database of flora that you can find in Singapore. I subsequently spent a bit of time squinting through the pictures in the database, and was delighted to be able to put proper names to several plants that we have either added ourselves or that simply took root at some time or other.

The Cardwell Lily (Proiphys amboinensis)

I’ve gone from saying, “yeah, that red, spiky-headed plant” to “Dracaena marginata, otherwise known as Rainbow Dracaena”; and “that plant with the clusters of purple flowers” to “Duranta dark purple”, and so on… It’s been quite enlightening. :D

The plant with the round green leaves and occasional spikes of white flowers also finally has a name to it – the Cardwell Lily (Proiphys amboinensis). It started growing under our old passionfruit bower about 30 years ago and we discovered that it made a pretty sight when potted. Since then, we’ve “domesticated” it and made it part of the family.

Sulphur Alder (Turnera Subulata)

Then there are a number of other plants that we’ve bought, or adopted from other people or places, because we liked the look of them. I don’t know how many we’ve taken in, not knowing their names. Take for example what I’ve called our Easter lilies – I’ve just learned that they’re actually called Hippeastrums. Who knew? :) All we thought was, they looked pretty at a neighbour’s house, and they shared some plants with us.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget the flowers that only bloom in the mornings – I’ve just learned they’re called turnera subulata, otherwise known as the Sulphur Alder. Oh, and that it’s related to the yellow flower that I didn’t even notice it was identical to, save for the colour of the flower! That would be it’s cousin the Yellow Alder, or turnera ulmifolia.

The Yellow Alder

My dad taught us that we should do things properly, so I’m going to take the camera around the garden to try to get pictures of everything, so I can identify them accurately. What can I say? Live and learn – it keeps life interesting!

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share