A private greenhouse full of exceptional plants (a tour)

I've long been enamored with all the cool plants on the Instagram account pills23. Since I knew they were based here in Portland I fired off a casual "can I come visit sometime?" message and (lucky me!), the dream came true. I got to meet the plantsperson behind that account, Steven, tour the greenhouse and touch all the plants! Steven shares this space with Cassandra (plantsinwonderland) whom I did not get to meet. They used to own a local shop called Cloud City Tropicals which has unfortunately closed. The plant passion runs deep here...

Just inside the door and I was lusting after those curvy leaves. Steven says they're two different forms of Ophioglossum pendulum, yes it's a fern. The spiky business is Huperzia squarrosa (aka Phlegmariurus squarrosus).

The ruffled foliage looked a little like my crested Pyrrosia lingua but it's actually Polypodium fallax.

Ceratostema villosa (aka Ceratostema loucianae)

At this point was having a hard time deciding what to focus on. The big picture? Or individual plants? Of course the individual plants won (with occasional pulled back shots). 

I should also note that even though I'd never met Steven before, I instantly felt at ease with him. His plant knowledge was off the charts, but not in an intimidating way. He let me sort of pick my way through the greenhouse and ask questions of the plants I was curious about. I was there for a little over two hours and it felt more like 30 minutes. I can only hope Steven felt the same and wasn't spending those two hours wondering when the crazy lady was going to finally leave...

Lecanopteris pumila, aka ant fern.

Yes I can definitely say that thanks to Stevens love for ant ferns I too am now a little obsessed. 

Philodendron verrucosum

This leaf was gorgeous from both the front and back and has a fuzzy stem too!

Selliguea platyphylla

One of the most interestingly shaped staghorns I've seen, this is a Platycerium veitchii.

Microgramma bifrons 

A close-up.

Platycerium ridleyi

Dendrobium uncatum, it definitely reminds me of my Poncirus trifoliata. Steven mentioned a desire to collect all the zig zag orchids he could find.

This one! Back when Steven shared a photo of this crested form of Pyrrosia longifolia on his Instagram feed I nearly passed out from sheer plant lust.

And now here I was, standing right in front of it! 

Be still my heart! If Steven hadn't been such a nice guy I might have been trying to calculate if there was any chance I could grab it and outrun him. Truth be told he probably saw the lust in my eyes because he offered me a cutting (!), yes! More on that at the end of this (long) post.

This was the first time I'd been face to face with this plant "in real life", but even before seeing on Steven's Instagram feed I'd seen it on Martha Stewart's blog. Martha had visited the Amazon Spheres and afterward they'd sent her a box (or two, or three) full of plants. Here's Martha's picture of Pyrrosia longifolia...

And back to Steven's, isn't it crazy how it's growing in a piece of bamboo?

Okay, moving on...

Another ant fern I think...

And another Huperzia species. I asked if this one had been resting on a shelf or something to get the flat-bottom effect but that's just how it's growing.

Hot! Am I right? Anthurium wendlingeri

 I wanna call this a aglaomorpha, but it might also be a drynaria.

Another of those cool plants I've seen photos of, but never in real life; Selenicereus wittii. yes it's a cactus.

"A very strange and unique species of epiphytic cacti from the seasonally flooded forests of the Amazon basin of Brazil. It clings tightly flat against the trunks for forest trees just at the high water mark of the seasonal flood. The segments of the stem are broad and flat and approximate two inches wide and four to six inches long. There are fine marginal spines in tufts. The flowers are fragrant and are borne on long peduncles and are about four inches in diameter and bright white, emerging only at night and fading by first light" (source)

Shortly after my visit Steven posted photos of this plant on his Instagram account, I was shocked how much was lost in translation, but that meant I wasn't too upset when I looked at my photos and they didn't do it justice. In person this was absolutely stunning, Monolena primuliflora...

Truth be told the bits left after the flowers fade might have been my favorite part.

Oh ya! Sexy begonia alert, Begonia paulensis.

Looks like a nice chunk of tree fern used as a mount. Lots of texture to grab hold of.

Maybe Lecanopteris lomarioides?

Microsorum punctatum 'Dragon Whiskers'

I think this one may be Polypodium formosanum.

With textured fronds!

Super sexy...

This was interesting, the tag read Lemmaphyllum microphyllum, which I know as a little epiphytic fern with thick succulent leaves, yet these leaves were thin and more traditionally fern-like.

Microsorum thailandicum, aka blue oil fern.

Alocasia cuprea

Microgramma mauritiana 'Laciniated'

And this final fuzzy fern is a mystery, if I remember correctly what had been growing in this container slowly disappeared, while this fern took over. It's pretty cute...

Here's Steven, posing with (I think) an Elaphoglossum metallicum. Meeting this guy and hanging out in his greenhouse was such a bright spot in an otherwise intense and overwhelming few weeks. Plant people are the best!

And the fun didn't end there! Steven generously shared cuttings of a few of the ferns I lusted after. Here's the Lemmaphyllum microphyllum that was different from the ones I already have.

Microgramma mauritina 'Lanciniated' (I cut the long leaves down to a smaller size since I'm trying to root them)

Here's the small fuzzy NoID fern.

Keep in mind I have no idea what I'm doing here, please wish me luck rooting these babies!

Pyrrosia nummularifolia

And last (but not least!) the crested form of Pyrrosia longifolia. Thank you Steven!

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Not so fast there Portlanders! Winter is coming for you

We came so close to escaping winter this year. Sure, our weather had been cool the last few weeks, overnight lows in my garden in the mid to upper 20’s, the days “warming” to the mid 40’s. Nothing like the destruction of the last two winters though. Zone 9 plants were still unscathed, ferns that normally need to be cut back each spring still looked fresh.

Then—in those online weather groups I monitor—talk of cold began. One regular poster really got my attention when he said something about how rare it is to see Portland and Spokane (my home town) with the same temperatures forecast. WHAT!? Spokane gets cold, as in negative numbers. That would be catastrophic. Thankfully that didn't happen. What did happen though were temperatures that stayed below freezing for roughly 38 hours and a low of 24. That’s why all the containers I could move were in the shade pavilion greenhouse, there’s no way I wanted to risk them freezing solid.

Space was at such a premium by Wednesday afternoon that I started stacking pots…

These next few photos are from mid-morning last Thursday (the 13th), after the first round of snow came though. This one was taken from inside the house, in fact I gave up trying to get the screen back in the window after snapping this shot because the snow was blowing in the window and my fingers were frozen.

When it came to the in-ground plants I didn’t protect much, just a few things like my patch of Aloe aristata (Aristaloe aristata). They were covered in frost cloth and then a sheet of reflective insulation for good measure.

Adiantum venustum

I left the ferns planted in the palm trunk to fend for themselves. It's not a true experiment if you interfere. 

Ditto for most of the in-ground  agaves, no protection (I only protected two).

Fast forward now to Friday the 14th, around 11am, when the event was officially over and temperatures finally rose above 32F. The snow depth here varied between 2” and 4” depending on where you measured, due to the wicked east wind blowing. The official total for the area was 3". Thankfully there was only a brief period of freezing rain, sandwiched between snowfalls. For those who get excited about such things this keeps our streak alive, Portland has experienced 10 years in a row with measurable snowfall.

Even I have to admit agaves buried in the snow are very photogenic. 

Here’s something I would have protected if I’d thought of it, those fuzzy fronds are Pleopeltis lepidopteris 'Morro dos Conventos'. It’s supposed to be hardy to 10F though, so it should be fine. 

Looking out the kitchen windows the bright yellow of this Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard'Color was a welcome sight. 

Ditto for the Edgeworthia chrysantha  'Nanjing Gold'…

And the bright pink Arctostaphylos x 'Austin Griffiths' blooms. Storms like this can destroy these blooms if the ice or wind is too much for them. I'm so glad these are still looking good.

Here’s a look at what I protected in the front garden. This is the same shot I shared above, the 4th photo down, just taken about 22 hours later.

And after I pulled off the covers. These little Aloe aristata are tough, but I didn't want to risk their turning to mush.

These containers are usually placed along the house sidewalk, near the front door. I didn't want to shlep them all the way around to the back to the shade pavilion greenhouse, so I tucked them up against the house and covered them.

Here's one of the agaves I protected, A. parryi ssp. huachucensis 'Excelsior'.

And here's the other, there's a terracotta pot and frost cloth under that snow...

Agave 'Blue Glow', the cold/wet may still prove to be too much for it, but I had to try.

Let's take a look at the back garden now...

What have we there? Damn rabbit!

I like this shot. The planted up terracotta bowls were moved into the shade pavilion, which left the flat platforms open to hold snow.

I will survive! Actually this strongly variegated aspidistra was a solid performer though last winter's nightmare, so I'm sure it will be just fine.

The palm ferns are still looking good.

I'm sure the asplenium trichomanes won't miss a beat.

Hopefully the pyrrosia will be just as tough.

There's another pyrrosia experiment going on in the garden, one I don't think I've written about here. I planted a P. lingua on a chunk of Paulownia tomentosa trunk from our tree (we lowered it's pollarding point last year). It had the perfect "crotch" (sorry, couldn't come up with a better term) to plant. Pyrrosia naturally grow epiphytically on trees so I thought I'd see if I could recreate that here. Of course below freezing temperatures might prove to be too much for it. We shall see.

Speaking of pyrrosia, the back of this P. lingua 'Kei Kan' looked fetching with the white snow backdrop.

Looking at this patch of Aspidistra elatior gave me the shivers, and not because I was cold. No, I was remembering how bad it looked after last winter. It's made such a comeback. I don't think this wintery event will do any damage (unless a leaf or two broke under the weight).

The Stachyurus salicifolius buds are still a couple months from bursting open, after last year's storm most of them dropped. I have hope for a much better show this year.

I don't hold out much hope for this agave though (which I bought without ID, but at one point I knew what it was). We shall see.

I have three of these clear plastic bins, and put all of them to work along with frost cloth. Two protected rare-ish pyrrosia...

...and the third went over this (also kinda rare) Rhododendron cardiobasis. This is it's first winter in the ground and I didn't want to risk loosing any of those big leaves. 

The fern table and low stock tank were left open, but I did wrap a little frost cloth over a few things in the large stock tank.

That's a wrap on this storm! 

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All material © 2009-2025 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.