On a sunny day I pulled into the Paul J Ciener Botanical Garden parking lot. There was a large planting along the edge of the parking lot and a new building on the other end. I learned after talking with the attendant in the building that the planting was the botanical garden. There is a master plan and nice map of the five acres planned for development, but at this time, the parking lot garden was it.
 The site had been a car dealership. The owner of the business left it with some money to start a botanical garden, so the entire place is relatively new. I thought this was a fitting use for the land after its run as a paved lot selling cars. |
 Around the building was a walk with annuals and vegetables, and along the path was this pepper plant never seen or heard of before. Yes, one plant had purple, red, yellow, orange, and cream color peppers growing on it like multi-colored candies. I must know what this was. |
 Colocasia in extra large - not elephant ears, but I would say dinosaur ears is a more appropriate term. |
 Bananas in variegated leaves are new to me, or were these diseased? |
 And finally, what in the world is this egg growing out from each cluster of orange star flowers? |
What a nice way to combine business and pleasure. The multi colored plant is an ornamental pepper of some sort. I have had a few in past years.
ReplyDeleteNice reuse of land from auto dealership to garden, love it!!
Here are a couple links to some peppers that have the multiple colored peppers.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pepperseeds.eu/bolivian-rainbow.html
http://www.seedman.com/apepper.htm
The banana is not diseased, and looks like a variety called Siam Ruby. It is tropical and would have to be dug up for the winter anywhere north of Florida.
ReplyDeleteJanet,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the research. From photos, the pepper look like Garda Tricolor. I need to send a message to the garden and ask.
Les,
I suspected so - I couldn't imagine the garden leaving diseased plants on display. (Hopefully you don't at your new job, either.)
Always been a fan of ornamental peppers. My fav is Calypso with variegated leaves. Red fruit shines like fire flashes.
ReplyDeleteThose Colocasia leaves are gigantic. I've only grown these in containers outside, and in a short season mine never get very large. They get cut down by frost while still babies. If I was more industrious, and saved them inside over the winter, I could have a much more tropical looking garden.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the variegated banana leaves in outdoor pots before. It seems that growers have been working more and more on various variegated foliage plants, as they are always so popular for colour.
I've never seen the tri-colored pepper growing naturally but we get them as potted plants from nurseries for indoors.
ReplyDelete