January Blooms

[helixturnhelix]

Hey all,

My first Dragon Breath Bloom

[Charlie]

Very cool, Chris! It's a seed setter and has great pollen in case you get tempted!

Charlie

[helixturnhelix]

I wish I had something else blooming to cross it with!  I really wanted to cross it to Saffron, but she is just now sending buds again after I cut her back in July!  Do most varieties have a lag time between flowering and growth?  My Belle hasnt had buds on it for a while, and has stopped growing, for the last month, which I am just attributing to the decrease in daylength.   I also want to mention that DB gets about an hour of sun a day and is fully of buds so I think it can tolerated alot more shade and still bloom well  

-Chris 

[Charlie]

That's an interesting question, Chris, with no set answer. It depends on the variety, and on how much flowering we are talking about and whether the flowers were pollinated and set seed and if anything else happened to stress the plant. I would say that the norm is for rapid growth to be followed by blooming while growth never completely stops for hibiscus. That is what I see in our 6 inch pots that take longer to sell and ship - they keep blooming and growing all along. When they first bud up they could ship in 20 inch high boxes, sometimes less, but later in the summer they are still blooming and need 24 to 30 inch tall boxes. For more mature plants in the ground it is more or less that same - in spring they grow rapidly and then start blooming after which they continue to grow while blooming, but more slowly.

I suspect your Belle is reacting to winter and less light, as you thought. I'm happy to hear that Dragons Breath is able to bud up in just an hour of direct sunlight. My DB is also blooming well inside our office but those windows get several hours of direct sunlight in the winter. Thank goodness in summer the sun is higher in the sky and those windows do not get much if any direct light although smaller windows do get early and then late sun. Our office has turned out to be my best locale for making seeds due to the mild but bright conditions in here. My current greenhouse gets too hot for seedpods to hold but the plants need the heat to grow well in winter and I'm not going to deny it to them just to make seeds.

Charlie

[Louis]

Greetings from the frozen wastelands.

Outside temp is minus 8 at 10:30 AM. however in the morning sun are two beauties.

Louis

Sleeping Beauty



Bridal Path opening.

[jpiper82]

Louis, That must be the winter colors of Bridal Path, correct?  It went down to 8 deg here in Dallas, TX

John

[Louis]

hi john, i am not sure of the summer colors of bridal, i only received the plant this past fall.

on this shot, the color deepened the second day.

louis

[motherof4]

here a couple of my blooms...bridal path and living legend....going on the 4th day....other blooms shown are beautiful...I love sleeping beauty...I have her too...but still young..looking forward to spring..I am new to this..luv looking at all the beautiful blooms

[Charlie]

Beautiful blooms, Motherof4! It looks like they are growing outside - must be in California then since the rest of the country froze and few blooms are seen outside of greenhouses and inside houses right now.

The flower colors show the influence of cooler winter temperatures and less light. Bridal Path shows more intense colors and some shift to more red which it typical of many hibiscus flowers in these conditions. The Living Legend photo shows the unique way that this variety reacts by becoming lighter colored in the same condition and with less red! I've seen this happen even in summer with LL when the plant is grown in deep shade on my porch so I think it must have more to do with lower light in winter than with cooler temperature.

Charlie

[motherof4]

yes they are outside...I have several under a couple of trees I have growing in my front yard..and yes I am from rialto ca...in which it was in the 80"s for the last couple of weeks..all of my plants seem to be doing fine...a bloom here and there...I am using your fertilizer...booster and super nova...hopefully I will have plentiful blooms and growth this spring...I am new to this..but I am addicted

[helixturnhelix]

Bonnie Lass

Any new seedling photos to share Charlie?

[Charlie]

I'll check what I have from last summer and fall. In winter I rarely bother to take photos because the colors of the flowers are so intensified and color shifted that they are totally misleading as far as the real colors that the blooms display from spring to fall.

The only people who have flowers in winter are those who have greenhouses that heat up very warm in the daytime due to the greenhouse effect but have cool to cold night temperatures since few if any people can afford to heat their greenhouses above 50F and most just keep it a few degrees above freezing on really cold nights. This causes flower colors to change dramatically over what the typical flower will look like in the normal hibiscus growing seasons.

People who grow hibiscus in the house will usually see more normal looking blooms because we do not let our houses get as cold at night as most greenhouses get, nor as hot during the day. Those extremes are what cause the big shift toward red/blue and intensify the color to what is never seen when blooming in natural outdoor warm weather conditions. If you see such photos know that you will never see those colors unless you, too, grow in a minimally heated greenhouse during the winter.

Chris, your Bonnie Lass bloom is showing amazing color. What were the conditions is has been in? Being in Colorado you obviously experience some very cold weather. Does your apartment temperature fall into the 50's sometimes?

Charlie

[helixturnhelix]

Hi Charlie,

I am glad you like the bloom!  It was the only one and will be the only one for a while (I do not see any new buds)  It was about 6 inches across.  I do not like the cold and keep my apartment at a toasty 69 degrees, so it is 69 at night and usually on a sunny day heats up to 75 during the day.  It is pretty nice in the apartment, temperature wise.  I wish I would be getting more blooms, but this spider mite infestation has taken a toll on the plants in the living room.  Luckily, the bedroom plants have been spared (so far) so they are looking pretty good.  I think I will have a WD and Saffron to share hopefully.

[Louis]

hello everyone,

i had sleeping beauty give me two blooms yesterday and i was not here to see them open first day. here are the second day blooms. photos were taken at 6:30 am this morning with harsh light. had to go to work to pay for my habits .

first day color was intense. my house is a steady 70 degrees, might get cooler where they are at night. maybe no lower than 65. notice the snow and frozen lake in the background in the first image.

come on spring.

louis

[Charlie]

Hi Louis, must be really nice to see hibiscus blooms with the wintry backdrop out the window!

Charlie