Our garden is currently hidden under several inches of snow but the Tibouchina urvilleana plants in our small conservatory, which would be more at home in tropical Brazil than in freezing north-east England, are in full flower. Each bloom only lasts for a couple of days but they are produced in a long succession through the darkest months of winter. These plants have very unusual flowers, with two types of stamens. The lower, claw-shaped ones are the genuine article, producing pollen that is squeezed out of a pore in their tip when they are pushed downwards, but the upper ones with pale tips are sterile 'food' stamens that attract bees. They use the pollen- bearing stamens as a landing pad and unwittingly transport the pollen.
Tibouchina urvilleana grows into a greenhouse shrub but old, woody plants soon become shapeless and their brittle stems easily snap. I've found that the best way to grow them is to take semi-ripe cuttings in summer, when they root very easily, producing compact plants with plenty of 3 inch diameter flowers from November onwards.
Wonderful flower! the color is great..
ReplyDeleteVery nice photo of nice flowers. I sometimes wish that I had a conservatory during the colder months, but I manage to fit in a decent number of houseplants, a couple of which actually make nice flowers.
ReplyDeleteI bought mine for 99pence from a charity plant sale, not knowing a thing about it. It is now one of my favourite plants and, like yours, happily blooming away in the conservatory at the end of November.
ReplyDeleteI have found it to have a dislike of our tapwater though.
Thanks for explaining the stamens to me!
I'm interested in how you took this photo - white background and very nice even lighting with no highlights. Indirect strobe in a whitebox?
ReplyDeleteHi Dejemonos sorprender,the colour varies depending on the way the light strikes the petals - sometimes it can appear a much deeper, velvety purple
ReplyDeleteHi RPS77,I have houseplants all over the windowsills too - mostly cacti on the south-facing ones..
ReplyDeleteCan't remember what I paid for mine Keith - not much, I think - but I've been growing new plants from cuttings every year for the last five or six years and have given a lot of rooted cuttings away. Very good value for money!
ReplyDeleteHi beetlesinabush, I haven't got a lightbox so I suspended a piece of thin, lightweight drawing paper behind, with direct sunlight from the window sining through it to produce a difffuse white background, then clamped the plant in front of it and lit that with a diffused strobe from an angle, so that it didn't cast a shadow on the background paper.
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