When limited growing space frustrates the hobbyist who admires the great, glorious gloxinias (sinningias), here’s a selection of pleasing and precious substitutes. In general these plants are distinguished by the fact that the flower stems grow out from the base of the leaf where it joins its own stem (axil). The flowers are typical gesneriad trumpets, usually nodding; the leaves are mostly rather round and velvety. The following are fibrous-rooted:
hybridus—Botanical name for groups of hybrids called “as complex as the garden geranium,” with quilted light-green leaves and a wide selection of flower colors. One strain of particularly attractive low plants, the German Weismoor hybrids, has fringed and crested flowers up to four inches across, often contrastingly veined or blotched.
rexi—Long-oval, velvety leaves lie very flat. Six-inch stems hold two-inch funnel-flowers, pale orchid with purple throat.
saxorum—Leafy-stemmed species, the stems branching continually, making dense mounds of plump, one-inch oval leaves curled under on the edge and covered with soft silk-velvet. The lavender-flushed white flowers stand out at the end of wiry three-inch stems.
CARE. Cool, humid, loamy soil with humus, filtered sun.
PROPAGATION. Seeds (plant in early spring for flowers fall and winter), leaf cuttings, some offsets.
SPECIAL USES. Artificial light.
Tillandsia Bromeliaceae
There are several entrancing dwarfs and miniatures among these tree-perching bromeliads with curved, leathery, often quill-tipped leaves. For two of the newly listed species (T. argentea and T. tricolepsis) I can simply say that the leaf rosettes resemble airy, long-bristled cones; they have not yet flowered for me.
circinnata—The silvery leaves, broader at the base, overlap and form an urn-shaped, tuber-like swelling. Tight, flat spikes of glowing-orchid flowers in late winter.