Den nobile – Mystery Revealed

Back in early December 2013, this Dendrobium nobile plant was given to us as a mystery bonus when we bought Sarcochilus orchids. While all the Sarcochilus plants died of scale infestation, the young Den nobile survives.

Dendrobium nobile – Flower Buds

Finally, after a long wait, the spikes have revealed their small flower buds. They are green with splash of red. Still cannot imagine what the flowers will look like, green can turn into white. There will be four canes with blooms. I have applied a weak solution of orchid fertiliser for flowering season. It seems that this Dendrobium that I have knows exactly where to grow flowers and where to grow new growths. All the flowers are correctly growing along the canes while the new growths for future canes are growing from the bottom. I saw other people had keikis instead of flowers.

Phalaenopsis Orchid Spikes

Notes on orchid progress July 28, 2014:

After many months flowering and followed by few months of resting time, now three of our Phalaenopsis orchids are growing flower spikes. They are going to be the first flowers under my care. The previous blooms were already there when I bought them. Not too bad after all 🙂

Saving Dying Orchid

Last Saturday December 7, I went to visit a friend in Coburg. The warm and sunny weather made the visit enjoyable. We went to Vasili’s Garden Centre and Café in Munro st. Coburg. A small nursery and interesting café. We just looked around to see the plants there. My friend bought a small pot of miniature palm and later at her place, the palm was divided into two small clumps and she gave one to me. After visiting the nursery we went to Preston market to have lunch, looked around and bought a bit of vegetables.

From Preston market, we went to Lalor to visit my friend’s niece and another window shopping in Epping Plaza.

Anyway, to cut the story short, she also gave me her neglected and dying orchid plant. She doesn’t know what kind of orchid it is. What I saw was small stunted kind of pseudo-bulbs with a bit of small and thick leaves. It could be some kind of miniature Dendrobium.  The poor orchid was grown in ordinary potting mix and the pot was full of clover weeds. She said that I can have and save it, nice pink flowers…… Apparently this orchid plant was given to my friend from her other friend. It was flowering when it was given to her, but many years went by and it never bloomed again. It was kind of forgotten and neglected in her front garden exposed to all weather elements.

So another mystery orchid! At home I took the miserable orchid plant out of the pot, cleaned all the soil, the weeds and also got rid of the dead bulbs and stems. I repotted them into a slightly smaller pot with a special orchid medium. I finished it up by giving the plant a drink of seaweed fertilizer:)

See what is going to happen in the next few weeks…. Oh yes, I planted the mini palm in a pot, but later I plan to add it into the terrarium. I am not so sure what kind of palm, but it is really tiny. I hope it will stay small.

Close up No-Id Orchid

Saving Dying No-Id Orchid – Top View

Miniature Palm

Soft Cane Dendrobium

Today, when we bought a couple Sarcochilus orchid plants in the Orchid Farm in Langwarrin, the generous owner gave us two more Sarco orchids in smaller pots and a small Dendobrium as a bonus. One of the Sarco bonuses and the Dendrobium are mystery, it means that he will not tell how the flowers will look like/what colours. I cannot wait until they bloom!

Soft Cane Dendrobium

So far, the only Dendrobium that I have is Australian native (D. delicatum) which obviously has hard canes. Only today I learned that basically there are two types of Dendobriums: The Hard Canes and the The Soft Canes. The dendrobium bonus gift is the soft-caned one.

These are my notes about Dendrobium Orchids :

Hard Cane Dendrobiums have tall pseudobulbs/canes and they are evergreen. The flower spikes grow from the top of the canes. Examples of these type of Dendrobiums are Dendrobium Phalaenopsis (Den Phal) or also known as Dendrobium bigibbum and some Australian native Dendrobiums.

Soft Cane Dendrobiums/Dendrobium nobile/Den nobile

• It is terrestrial (grow on trees) or lithophytic (grown on rocks) from the Himalaya, Assam, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, found in lowland, mountain forest or rocky areas.
• The plant is deciduous, will drop leaves in cold weather.
• Flowering time is mostly in winter through spring. The blooms grow from the upper nodes of both leafed and leafless canes.
• For growing in Melbourne-Australia, the plant can be put in the open (full sun/part shade) during growing season in Spring and Summer (after finished flowering). If the canes are too green with very luscious leaves, the plant may need more sunlight. In temperate climate, the plant can be left outside in the sun during dry winter time, when there are a lot of rainfalls, keep it in a bright place under cover.
• Best temperature is not lower than 4 deg. C and not higher than 32 deg C. To help flowering night low temperature about 10 deg C is needed.
• Watering is done only during the growing season after finished flowering in late Spring through Summer time (November – April). Reduce watering in autumn when the weather has started to cool down. In the winter watering is only needed when canes start to shrivel.
• The plant will need a reasonably high humidity, can sit the pot on a tray filled with pebbles and water.
• Fertilizing ‘weakly weekly’ during growing season from November to March with liquid fertilizers with high potassium content, fish emulsion, seaweed extract etc. and stop it completely during winter time.
• During blooming time, keep the plant under cover to protect the flowers from rain.
• Den nobile prefer relatively small pots, and as the plant can grow pretty tall, little stones can be put in the bottom of the pot. The most common potting  media that is used is pine bark or coco bark chips.
• Repotting and division can be done when the plant has become overcrowded.

New Pseudobulb (cane) – Soft cane Dendrobium

Soft Cane Dendrobium – Mystery Bonus

What Plant Is This?

I bought this plant long time ago and until now we never know the name. It has bulbous roots, unusual foliage and small red flowers that resemble Chinese Lantern.

Help….. What Plant Is This?

Note October 7, 2011:

This plant is native to Himalaya and the name is Agapetes serpens or commonly known as Himalayan Lantern. It is actually belong to the Ericaceae family. I am so happy to have this rare plant.

He Grew Sunflowers

Few months ago my husband came back home with some seeds to grow. I asked what kind of seeds and he said some things that could be eaten later. It was kind of surprise to me as he was never interested in gardening before.

Anyway, few weeks later I saw that the seeds had started to grow. I could see they were some tomatoes, corns and something else along the back row. They had large heart shaped leaves. I was not so sure of them, so I asked him what they were. His answer was that he had forgotten and that he just planted the seeds there and threw the packagings in the bin.

The mystery plants grew taller and taller. Only few survived as snails and caterpillars had eaten most of them before they had a chance to grow bigger. Here from my window I could gaze at the mysterious tall plants with wide leaves and wondering what they were. Until one day I noticed that they started to grow flower buds. OMG! They were sunflowers. Ha…… The mystery was eventually solved.

I caught some of the naughty green caterpillars that had eaten many of my hubby’s plants and put them in a large glass jar. Soon after, they shrivelled and covered themselves with some kind of  white woolly net in the process of metamorphosis. One of them has changed into a small skipper butterfly or moth? (I’m not very sure). 

 Until now only two of the sunflower buds have opened. One is very large that grow towering above the fence and the other one is shorter and small. I love the bright golden colour.

Ah Sunflower

Ah Sunflower, weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the sun;

Seeking after that sweet golden clime

Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,

Arise from their graves, and aspire

Where my Sunflower wishes to go!

A Poem by: William Blake

Epiphyllum ‘Gold Coin’ (?)

I could not believe my eyes when I saw it in Garden World! It was the only epi-cactus that was blooming, the rest were just small cuttings. It was sitting there on the bench leaning on the other plants as it was too heavy for the quite small pot.OMG, so many flower buds!  I thought all Epiphyllums flower toward the end of spring, but this Gold Coin Epi is flowering now!

Here are the images of the Epiphyllum ‘Gold Coin’ that I bought yesterday (August 11, 2010):

If you read on the comment box, I wrote that my ‘Gold Coin’ Epi looks different from those that I saw online. For comparison, here is the one from http://cgi.ebay.ch/Epiphyllum-Epicactushybride-Gold-Coin-/200489881951:

August 14, 2010: I think I like this new epiphyllum that I have more and more…. it has a very lingering  but gentle and sweet scent. After matching the flower with those that are available online, it looks very similar (not 100 % the same) to the hybrid ‘Fruhlings Gold’ (Spring Gold)…. I haven’t got a chance to go back to Garden World to look at all epiphyllums there to find the match. I’m so sure that it is not Gold Coin!!

Sunday, November 14 – 2o10:

A very strange plant! The last flower of this whatever breed of Epiphyllum look like this:

Yellow Epiphyllum …Fruhlingsgold ?

Why the look of the flower suddenly changed? This last flower is more like Fruhlingsgold. Is it possible if you put two different kind of epiphyllum together, it can changed the blooms????? It is just weird to me! I wonder how the flowers will look like next year, can’t wait to see!!!

Planet X Nibiru

In a very ancient Sumerian text, it was believed that there was a planet called Nibiru. It has a very long elliptical orbit and our Solar system is located towards the far end it’s orbit. Nibiru’s long orbit will complete in the duration of 3600 year. So it will approach our solar system once every 3600 years. When it is approaching, our solar system which includes our Earth will experience a massive catastrophe. Even long before it reaches the closest point to Earth, we will be able to experience  it’s gravitational pull which causes earth quakes, tsunamis, unusual weather patterns, floods, storms, tornadoes etc. When it has reached to closest point to Earth, there will be shifting of our poles and as a result there will be a massive melting of the ice cap which causes sea level to rise dramatically and will change the shapes of our continents. Ninety percents of living things which includes humans will perish.

Does it make sense? If we think about many advance civilizations that were suddenly disappeared without a trace, it will make us wonder about the truth ofNibiru Myth. The sudden disappearance of the ancient civilizations like the Egyptians, Mayans, Sumerians , Atlantis etc will prove that the destructions of Nibiru is possible. In ancient texts from all over the world like those from China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia,  all have their own versions of a giant flood.

What about geological remains? Do they also support this theory of Nibiru? It has been known for a long time that fossils of fish and crustaceans had been found in places that far away from the ocean. This proves that once those areas were in fact ocean floor and they were shifted during the calamity and now they are dry land. Why all those animals during the dinosaur’s era were suddenly disappeared too?

Planet X Nibiru has been spotted.

Lurking far from behind Pluto, it has been spotted an unknown object that is very large with a long elliptical orbit and it rotates clockwise which was the opposite of the Earth’s which rotates anti-clockwise, and many experts believe that it is in fact the Planet X Nibiru.

To the Summerians, the God Anunnaki was from a tenth planet in our solar system which was known as Nibiru. While in Babylonian legend it was called Marduk. If we include the Sun and the Moon then it will be the twelfth planet.

It has been calculated that it will be in 2012 that the passing of Planet X Nibiru will bring all over destructions of the Earth. Will it be true? Just let the time tells………..

Interesting Youtube link about Planet X Nibiru:

Strange Dancing Lights

The other day, I found some digital pictures that my son took on December 23, 2005. That night around 11.00PM (Melbourne time, Australia), I went outside to admire the Christmas lights decorations at the front part of our house. They were so bright and colourful. It was a cloudy night without any stars to be seen. Then suddenly when I was gazing towards the north eastern sky I noticed something very strange. There were these small milky white lights moving around in such way that they seemed to dance around. Sometimes it looked like they chased one another. Other time they seemed to spread out and then back closer together again. Then suddenly they seemed to move erratically and then they repeated the previous movements again……

I had never seen anything like this, so I called my husband and son to come out of the house to see this strange display. Then my son decided to capture them with his digital camera. He said that more than likely that nothing would come up because he couldn’t see anything through the camera lenses. This strange phenomenon last about 2 hours before they were reduced in numbers faded and disappeared completely.

Almost immediately, our son uploaded the images from his camera into his computer and to our surprise we saw very strange images.

He captured two different kinds of images. One is the milky white lights like the ones that we saw through naked eyes, and another different one that we didn’t actually see at all.

Images that we did not see, but captured by the digital camera

What are they?

• After we researched many different sources at the internet, there were few different theories to explain the images.Rain or water particles in the sky:  Remember that night was cloudy, so it did make sense if the air was full of water particles. They say that a good digital camera sometimes can capture these water particles and the results are as above. The ones that look like glowing discs are water particles that stand still while the white one with the tail is the one that start to fall down.
• Orbs:  Orbs are believed (by many) to be ghosts in the form of balls of light. They are life forms that travel in groups and are believed to be the human soul or life force of those that once inhabited a physical body here on earth (www.goststudy.com)
• UFO: Other people still believe that these images are unidentified flying objects or in this case is rather of dancing objects

How to explain what we saw? The most probable scientific explanation about the dancing lights is that there were electrical storm activities far away above the cloud that night.

But if you saw yourself that night you would wonder if electrical storms could actually made such beautiful movements…. The way the lights moved was more like a choreographed dancing. Other thing to wonder was that the movement of those lights was only limited to certain spot of the sky which is about 45 to 50  degrees up the Northeastern sky.

Photo image that we did not see but caught by camera

One of the little white lights that we saw and it was also caught by camera

Note: This sighting was from Melbourne, Australia.

January 28, 2016:

I just found this video on YouTube and it is very similar to what we saw. The one that we saw seem much higher in the sky compared to the one on the video.

Some people claimed it was laser light pointed to the sky…. not really sure though. If it was laser, we would have seen the beams of light pointed to the sky. It would have looked similar to torch lights. But we did not see them at all.

Thank you so much for Homebake2013 for this entry on YouTube.