ANNUALS FOR CHINESE NEW YEAR

Undeniably, what is Chinese New Year without Chrysanthemum and Celosia? These are just some of cultivars and undoubtedly the best Chrysanthemums are not even shown here.

PLUMERIA CULTIVAR

It is more common to see pink or red flower frangipani trees but I have a penchant for yellow flower ones. This young one beside the Marina Bay MRT exit looks amazing with an understated beauty. What struck me was also how healthy the leaves looked compared to the other many cultivars with scales, mealy bugs and rust infected leaves.


I will be more than happy to introduce this to a garden without hesitation.

VINCA ROSEA

 Today's weather - sunny

I took these photos a few days ago to show how well this Vinca rosea (synonym: Catharanthus roseus) species with pink flowers and a dark pink eye is growing in the ground. It appears to be more hardy compared to its cultivars which do not seemed to be able to adapt very well to our soils especially when they are too clayey.


This is the species I wanted to plant at the Hub.

HOUSE PLANTS

I bought most of these plants during the recent WOC. They are mostly orchids which include the variegated Phalaenopsis amabilis cultivar, Calanthe cultivars, variegated Dendrobium cultivar, Phaius tankervilliae and variegated Phaius tankervilliae, Cymbidium cultivars and variegated Cymbidium cultivar and a pink Arundina graminifolia (from Vietnam).


Sadly, the Calanthe inflorescence dried up but the two plants are otherwise healthy looking. The variegated Dendrobium was to replace the one, which I purchased from the last SGF, that died a few months ago. I saw the beautiful Phaius on my March Sarawak trip this year and suddenly realized that I forgot to post about this fantastic showy terrestrial orchid on my blog when I couldn't find any trace of it. Interestingly, I managed to buy a variegated form of it too. This show saw me buying lots of Cymbidium cultivars and some of the photos are posted below. I bought on the last day and hour of the WOC, three bags of variegated Dianella for merely $10, which in my opinion was a good bargain. There is also an unknown pink flower orchid that I bought, which I think could be another Calanthe.


As for the red Gerbera, I bought it from Ikea but unfortunately, the plants rotted away at the base and I just threw it away today. If I remember correctly, I purchased the variegated Ficus from Giant. Then there was the small leaved Tibouchina which started to produce lots of floral buds and eventually purple flowers after I planted it into the planter. One thing I don't really like about the latter is that it tends to shed some of its leaves very easily but the good thing is it is relatively free flowering under the less than ideal semi-shade conditions.