{"id":156,"date":"2009-06-29T04:22:34","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T12:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=156"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"mystery-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/mystery-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery Plant"},"content":{"rendered":"

MYSTERY PLANT<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When my daughter, Kate, was little, she used to bring me bouquets of fallen leaves that she gathered on her way home from school.\u00a0 Now, as a college student with a summer job in the City, she sometimes brings home interesting plants that she finds at the Union Square Greenmarket.\u00a0 Yesterday she brought me a mystery plant.\u00a0 She had no idea what it was and neither did the plant vendor’s helper from whom she bought it.\u00a0 She and I tackled the challenge of plant identification.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our specimen tops out at thirty centimeters or just over a foot tall.\u00a0 I am sure the smallish nursery pot is only temporary, because the Mystery Plant’s configuration suggests that it will grow larger.\u00a0 The plant is shrubby, with the bottoms of the stalks remaining somewhat woody, while the tops are tender and green.\u00a0 A bit gangly in its growth habit, Mystery Plant has three main stalks with leaves running the entire length of each.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The leaves are elongated ovals, pointed at the ends, with smooth, rather than serrated or “toothed”\u009d edges. \u00a0The largest and oldest of them are about two inches or five centimeters long.\u00a0 All are arranged in opposed pairs along the stems, which made me think that perhaps the plant is a member of the mint or Labiatae family.\u00a0 I rubbed the leaves.\u00a0 They had a course feel, somewhat akin to extremely fine sandpaper, but perhaps more important, they weren’t aromatic.\u00a0 Not all mints are aromatic, but many are, and a pronounced minty scent would have been a dead give away.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The flowers are the most interesting feature.\u00a0 Borne at the tops of the stalks, each flower is a tube, approximately one and a half inches long, ending in two prominent scarlet petals springing from a fuzzy purple center that looks like a tiny bat’s face.\u00a0 This sounds ugly, but it is rather cute and very distinctive.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought right away of a plant called Tacca chantrieri or black bat flower.\u00a0 I rushed to the catalogs and websites and found out that tacca is larger–in the wild, the flowers are up to a foot in diameter and either black or white.\u00a0 They do look like bat faces, but have a more sinister aspect.\u00a0 Tacca has three prominent petals rather than two and extremely long, whisker-like projections extending outward from the flowers’ centers.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mystery Plant’s flowers reminded me of some sages that I have seen, so I changed my focus to the enormous salvia clan.\u00a0 In search of species with tubular, lipped flowers, I found Salvia coccinea and Salvia greggii.\u00a0 S. coccinea, also known as Texas or scarlet sage, seemed promising, especially when I found out that there was a bi-colored variety.\u00a0 Unfortunately that salvia was pink and white.\u00a0 Still, I thought maybe Mystery Plant was a new cultivar.\u00a0 I looked at many online and textbook photos of S. coccinea, but none of them showed the little bat faces that are so prominent on Mystery Plant.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 More research ensued on Salvia greggii, also known as autumn salvia.\u00a0 The most obvious problem with the S. greggii idea was that the greggii’s bloom in the fall and my plant is blooming right now.\u00a0 Of course, it was probably raised in a greenhouse and forced into bloom, so that alone was not enough to knock S. greggii out of the running.\u00a0 After looking at anther dozen or so photos, I noticed that the greggii’s had smaller leaves and prominent, lower rather than upper, petals. \u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I finally abandoned all the Latin and entered the terms “bat face”\u009d and “red and purple”\u009d in the online search engine. \u00a0The first few citations referred to something called “bat-faced cuphea”\u009d.\u00a0 I clicked on one of the citations, which took me to a specialty website and there was Mystery Plant in living color, finally revealed as Cuphea llavea.\u00a0 My particular Mystery Plant is probably a cultivar called ‘Tiny Mice’, developed at the University of Georgia.\u00a0 Sometimes it is sold with nothing more than that name, so the buyer can only discover its genus and species by going on the Internet.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cuphea is part of the loosestrife family, though in yet another bit of botanical confusion, it is not related to the common purple loosestrife, which is actually part of the primrose family.\u00a0 The llavea species is native to Mexico, confirming my suspicion that it will not survive cold temperatures.\u00a0 My ‘Tiny Mice’ will be installed in a larger pot, enjoy the summer and early fall outdoors and spend the winter in my sunny dining room.\u00a0 If you don’t have a sunny spot indoors or in a greenhouse, treat the plant as an annual.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now the caveat”\u00a6Cuphea is prone to root rot, aphids and powdery mildew.\u00a0 Fortunately you can protect your little mice or bats by providing them with good drainage and air circulation.\u00a0 Don’t over water and if you see aphids, give them a quick squirt with the hose.\u00a0 Fertilize once a month during the growing season or use a time-release fertilizer to ensure new growth and additional flowers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I cannot find an online or mail order retail source for Cuphea ‘Tiny Mice’.\u00a0 Look for it in garden centers and other retail outlets.\u00a0 Logee’s Greenhouse has a flashier cultivar called ‘Flemenco Samba’.\u00a0 Find Logee’s at <\/font><\/font>141 North Street<\/font>
\nDanielson, CT 06239<\/font><\/font>; (888) 330-8038; <\/font>www.logees.com<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Free catalog.
\n<\/font><\/font>\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MYSTERY PLANT \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When my daughter, Kate, was little, she used to bring me bouquets of fallen leaves that she gathered on her way home from school.\u00a0 Now, as a college student with a summer job in the City, she sometimes brings home interesting plants that she finds at the Union Square Greenmarket.\u00a0 Yesterday she … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}