Olaf- you will know for sure when they bloom. Hirsuta leaves are grass green and plushy soft. My Dark Velvet - i never paid attention to the softness of the leaves - do not think anything out of regular.Leaves are quite dark, stems are green - and for me it just refuses to put rhizomes, so when it gets too long - I reroot the cuttings. Try to post pics on the Gallery part of this forum - there is an instruction - plus you need to shrink the pic to 60k. But as I said - wait until it blooms. It likes hi light btw. send me a private email, pls. Irina

Do not restart Achimenes - it is time to put it down for the winter. Harvest your Kohleria rhizomes, put them in a baggie with humid vermiculite and keep it in a lighted place. When it start hatching - pick the biggest and strongest rhizomes and plant them near surface 3-5 per pot. There is good chance they will regain the vigor. I.

Joey, Don't worry to much about it. An inch sounds fine. The bubils are actually tiny bulbs not seeds. they will be clones of the parents. Treat them as you would bulbs of the same size. If you have asiatic lilies they are kind of like the tiny bulbs you get from the stem just below the ground. I actually like to plant them in pots to grow on before I set them out into the ground the next year.

From Pam: But Al, don't you agree that the red shoot looks like the sheathing that a new leaf would have?? Yes - absolutely. Does a branch always grow from a cut at the leaf axil? In the case of broadleaf trees like ficus, maple, ......., yes. If you make the cut through the axil itself, the bud and other latent buds lined up behind it (insurance - in case the first bud dies) are likely to succumb to desiccation. In the OP's case, we can see the axillary bud remains viable because the pruning cut was distal to the axil such that only the internode was severed. The internode, predictably, died back to the first leaf proximal to the cut. The new leaf will appear, protected by the leaf sheath, but it will have an apical meristem (where extension growth originates) immediately distal to all the leaf. All the latent buds already formed and lined up in leaf axils already have an area of meristematic activity immediately distal to the nascent leaf in each bud. Many species of broadleaf trees will continue to activate these axillary buds as the tree grows. Maple is a plant you're really familiar with, so I'll use that as an example. Let's say I buy a maple and find a favorable trunkline in it (for bonsai), but there's a problem. There is a branch near the top precisely where a branch is needed, but it's much too thick/heavy. I can remove the thick branch and rely on an axillary bud to erupt BELOW the branch I stubbed off. This seems odd, because the axillary buds erupt from ABOVE the leaf to form a branch. If we think for a moment, the branch was above the leaf axil, which means the rest of the latent axillary buds would be BELOW the branch. This is a very significant issue in trees like Ficus benjamina "Too Little" because these latent axillary buds are very prone to erupting below larger branches that are an important part of the composition. To feed branches, photosynthate moves downward in the phloem, then turns upward to feed branches from below. The branches formed by the second third fourth ....... axillary buds in the row, growing immediately below older branches, sap strength from old branches (obviously they get first crack at the flow of energy into the branch) and weaken them severely or kill them outright if not removed in a timely manner. So even after a branch is solidly in play, those latent axillary buds are still a consideration. ******************************************************************************** Keep an eye on it, Andrea, and let us know if there is extension growth beyond the first leaf already forming. Keep up the good work, Pam. You're one of the best we have! Keep an eye on ToC, too. He's no slouch. Al