help for some plants and ID

[zuhayr-123]

hi all.

ive posted here afew times now every time i have a question and iv'e always got answers so im hoping this time will be the same.

first off... can anyone name me this plant (attached) ? my grandma has had it since i was just 1 or 2, we had two of these one outside and one inside but we left the outside one there when we moved houses. for some reason since we moved into this house the leaves are starting to turn yellow when they where a solid green before and id appreciate a name of this so that i can gather some information on its habits, living conditions and prefered soil type.

second. i have a small pine tree (7ft or so) and it in a large pot (atleast 4ft high) i just want to ask, how much taller will it grow if i keep it in the pot because it seems to have slowed down in growing, or was that purely due to the winter ? and if i wanted to re'compost it when i do everything else, is there any specefic kind of compost to use ?

and lastly....when i was again 1 or 2 ish my mother worked in a garden centre.

up untill now there seems to be one flower that she still has in her mind which she nick-named the 'dragon flower'. she named it this because she said that the flower opens like a dragons mouth and that it had to held by the neck of the plant which also made its 'mouth' open. she said it was in many colours when i asked her, mostly blues and purples and pinks but she cant remember its original name. IF SOMEONE COULD PLEASE ID THIS PLANT FOR ME THAT'L BE GREAT. id love to have this in my garden because my mum still wants it and still thinks of it.

I WOULD BE GREATFULL IF ANYONE COULD HELP ME OUT HERE BY ANSWERING MY QUESTIONS.

thanks all in advance !!

[David E. Ross]

The last question -- about the "dragon flower" -- seems to refer to what we call "snapdragon". The botanical name is Antirrhinum majus. Its flowers might be white, pink, red, yellow, orange, and maroon. Commonly, it can grow to 2-3 feet. There are also dwarf varieties.

Where I live, we treat it as a winter annual although it is really perennial. If it is planted in October and starts blooming before the first frost (which is barely freezing), it will bloom all winter and through most of the spring. It cannot survive our summer temperatures.

In areas of the UK where summer temperatures remain cool, it should bloom through the summer and into the autumn. Without a severe freeze, it might indeed be perennial. However, the plant is subject to rust and is not really long-lived.

Regarding your first question, this newsgroup does not allow attachments; so I cannot identify your plant. Regarding your second question, I know nothing about potted conifers.

[echinosum]

What you need to do is post your picture to a picture sharing site like Flickr, and then give us a link to it, so we can see it.

Pines don't really like being in pots. They do need maintenance for long term survival. You have a choice between forever increasing the size of the container to satisfy their demand to grow, or else taking steps deliberately to restrict their growth. If you do neither, they will start to look sickly and eventually die. See discussion, for example, here 'Growing Evergreens in Pots | Dirt Simple'

In addition to pruning the above ground plant, she mentions root pruning -that is a bonsai technique to discourage the pine from wanting to be bigger, which is a way of trying to keep the plant alive without increasing the size of the container to supply its increased demand for water a nutrients. The other thing you will need to do is replace the potting soil from time to time. Google will doubtless find you other discussions of container cultivation of pines.

Pinus mugo, the dwarf pine, is one of the most successful pines for growing in a pot, for obvious reasons - they grow slowly and stay small. Though in the wild they grow high up mountains where the mountain weather discourages them from growing much taller than 6 feet (I've walked through P mugo forests in the Tatras in Slovakia), and they will grow a bit bigger than that in Berkshire. Their natural form is multistemmed and they spread out to interlock form impenetrable forests. I have a 25-yr old P mugo in my garden in Bucks which is about 9 feet tall, is very multistemmed, and mainly expands sideways rather than upwards. There are also dwarfed forms of normally larger pines available: for example I used to have a very pretty dwarfed Scots pine that grew only to only 4 feet after 10 years (in the ground), until it failed to survive being moved during building works. I also have a 13-yr old P koraiensis in a slow-growing form called "Silver Linings" that's grown to only 6 feet so far, though that will eventually, after a long time, become large. My neighbour has an even smaller dwarfed pine, I don't know what, that's been there much longer.

[songbird]

zuhayr-123 wrote: ...

please put the picture in a place that can be linked to. this usenet newsgroup does not encourage or allow direct binary posts on many usenet servers.

in general, it is not unusual for a plant that is moved to show some signs of stress. if you can describe where it was last and what the differences are between that and where it is now we might be able to figure out something to help.

songbird

[zuhayr-123]

the plant that i attached was a pothos. i asked my mum and got the name :$.. i read it survives in a wide variet of soils so ill just chaneg most of the soil for some more rich kindof compist and see what happens. untill then ill try to take some cuttings.

id love to plant the pine into the ground but i just dont have enough space, because we need a practical kind of garden too as opposed to a no-nonsense planted garden. ill again change the compost for more rich compost and maybe some manuere ?

and thank alot songbird for naming he snapdragon. i bought some seeds so will sow them next month.

[echinosum]

Don't waste your time: that will probably kill it off. The underlying problem is that the water capacity of the soil in the container is not sufficient to support a pine of that size. To keep going, either you must increase the size of the container, or else you must employ labour-intensive and skillful bonsai techniques to reduce the size of the plant and restrict its growth.

If you are not willing to employ those skillful labour-intensive techniques, or increase the container size, then the time has come to realise that some plants won't live for ever in containers. So throw it away, and buy a new plant, preferably one more suited to container cultivation.