Strelitzia and friends.

What is a "crown" in this context? A "fan" of leaves perhaps?

Any advice on Feeding regime, and watering pls?

These are mine (Apr 2010)

 

I'm sure its quite friendly around there.

 

I use the word "crown", not sure if that is botanically correct, but to me its the area where one fan of leaves come from.
Your plants Kristen look fairly old and have quite a few crowns so in theory you should be getting a flower from each crown each year at least.
As to feeding, well I've never been that successful growing them in pots, the flowering has mostly been poor until you reach dustbin size and then you get a couple of good years before they start to look a bit starved again.

I wouldn't mind betting if you took a hammer to one of those pots you would find not much soil/compost, just a mass of roots

I did use to repot mine and divide it every few years just to keep it looking decent.
But it died in the unheated garage during our first really cold winter about three years ago.
I think I left it out too long and it was very wet when the cold struck.

 

Strelitzia is one of those plants I like, but can't get to flower.
But at Kew today I saw these and apart from make me jealous, had beautiful flowers..seethe!!!! Wayne

 

Good pictures wayne, is the top one "Mandella's gold" or some such cultivar?

 

I was just reading about strelitzia and maybe I`ve found what i did wrong , I hope that this will help other peoples as well , basically strelitzia need sunshine to flower , in nature if a strelitzia grown in shade it can grow up to 3 mt in search for sunshine (talking about strelitzia and not the nicolai who can reach 10 mt high ) , so an healthy strelitzia sould be btw 3 and 4 feet high , basically it should look like Pete or Kristen.
So Wayne if your one look like mine that means is been for too long in the shade and will only produce long leaves and no flowers.
When i got mine it was flowering and look like one of kristen , no more then 3 feet and the leaves was grey green , now the leaves are 5 feet plus and soft green .

 

I've had this Chamaerops since it was a seed.
It flowers well these days but the flowers are not exactly spectacular, more kind of unusual.



It looked like this a while ago, size wise, but this is remaining seedling of Chamaerops humilis "cerifera", it does appear to have a whiter colouring to the leaves.


Just need to wait another 20yrs.

 

Has anyone ever grown S. nicolai? Would it make a good foliage plant ? and how long would it be before it reached say 6 feet and became too big to get into a greenhouse?

 

Not tried myself Peter, I've just never got round to it.
I'd love to grow one, if I had an outside chance of getting it to flower, but I think space being in short supply, and plant with huge leaves that I cant prune down in winter and watch grow away the next year, somehow would bother me.

 

Strelitzia Nicolai is an extremely slow grower , seen potted and they stay as small as 8 feet , but maybe that will take a good 20 years over here , go for it .

 

Pete - how is your Iochroma australis over-wintered?

 

They are just out in the garden, been there a few years and quite well established, but the dropped seeds grow and survive most winters.
Had the odd exposed plant on the allotment cut back to the ground for a couple of years but all have survived this year intact.

This blue one grows over my greenhouse, I cut it back hard every year after flowering.


Below it grows lots of seedlings, these are from last year, the vaguely tomato like fruit get squashed everywhere in Late August.

 

Thanks Pete. I have ten coming along, so can afford to experiment............

 

Hardier than is usually expected, but needs to get as big as possible first year.

 

Pete - I am always amazed at the stuff that you have growing outside over the winter. I know that it can get pretty cold in Kent.

Sal - thanks for the info. I was hoping that someone would say that it was fast growing. However I am still tempted to have a go - seed is very cheap and I see that Jungle Seeds sells it.