It makes little difference what your profession is regarding a capacity for enjoying greenhouse gardening.
It’s no hindrance, however, if that profession just happens to take you on periodic expeditions into South Africa, where some of the world’s best greenhouse material originates.
Dr. Harold E. Anthony’s Fascinating Plant Collections
This is an advantage Dr. Harold E. Anthony of Englewood, New Jersey, curator of mammals at New York City’s Museum of Natural History, has over most of us.
Trips into the wilds of Nyasaland, Burma, and South America, together with a lifelong interest in plants, have given him the know-how to no end of fun with fascinating plant collections.
He has the following:
- Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis), a half-climbing vine with glossy foliage and clusters of scarlet flowers
- Gazania, a small pot plant covered with yellow, orange, or scarlet daisies
- Jasmine, whose white or yellow star-shaped flowers send out a delightful fragrance
- Plumbago capensis, another semi-climber with blue phlox-like blooms
- The glory bower (Clerodendron thomsoniae) makes a grand show with white and crimson blossoms.
Many splendid bulbous and flesh-rooted plants, for which South Africa is so noted, thriving in its greenhouse.
The blood lily, Haemanthus katharinae, bears gorgeous red spherical blooms. Clivia miniata is brilliant with a large cluster of orange-yellow trumpets and cyrtanthus with orange, white, or yellow blossoms.
The lily of the Nile, agapanthus, throws up umbels of blue lilies on long stems. Large tubs of crinums (the bulbs of tremendous size) produce umbels of 6 to 12 lily-like trumpets on long stems.
But I was particularly taken aback by the fragrant, sparkling white blooms of a large Amazon lily, Eucharis grandiflora.
The Finest Greenhouse Materials From The US
A noteworthy collection of haworthias, crassulas, mesembryanthemums, and aloes was started from seeds and cuttings collected on trips.
However, peculiarly enough, most of Dr. Anthony’s finest greenhouse material comes from sources in the United States.
Great distances and quarantine regulations make it difficult to transport plants and cuttings. And it is with amusement that Dr. Anthony tells how South Africa itself features well-known American brands of seed in stores in principal cities!
Only a portion, of course, of his collections are South African. Dr. Anthony’s hobby of growing the unusual takes several directions.
He has perhaps the most varied plant assortment of any home greenhouse I’ve seen—and all succeed well. Among other things, he likes to take a particular plant family and explore it.
He has grown a number of the Asclepiadaceae, including the stapelias or carrion flowers with those large, grotesque star-shaped blooms of unusual color and repulsive odor.
Another family he’s explored is the Apocynaceae, to which old-fashioned Nerium oleander belongs.
Orchids Taking Center Stage
Dr. Anthony’s hobby has taken a new twist within the past year, with orchids stepping into the spotlight.
They need to be neither troublesome nor expensive, he reports. A good collection can be built up quite reasonably by carefully selecting varieties.
His phalaenopsis or moth orchids and cymbidiums produce lovely long-stemmed blooms lasting two to three months.
The collection also includes a few lady-slipper orchids (cypripedium), some cattleyas, and a vanda. Dr. Anthony’s favorites are three genera from Mexico: laelia, epidendrum, and oncidium.
An ingenious and extremely practical method of staging (see the illustration above) affords maximum use of space in Dr. Anthony’s 18 by 25-foot greenhouse.
44659 by Ernest Chabot