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fall 2016 31 The Garden’s Plot Map and What’s Blooming List are available at the information desk at the Shehan Visitor Center and at the South Entrance welcome booth. A list of the Garden’s complete plant collection is also available at the Visitor Center information desk. Be sure to pick up both when you visit. Here are some of the plants I found: 1. Scutellaria costaricana, a skullcap that has tubular orange-red flowers withheld in a bundle at the end of a pedicle (a stem that attaches to the inflorescence). The individual flowers have yellow “lips” and little orange caps or helmets held above the corolla. From Costa Rica and Panama, this small shrub is in the mint family. Look for it on the upper level. 2. Episcia cupreata, a charming member of the gesneriad family, serves as a groundcover in one area of the upper level conservatory. Its bicolor silver and green leaves are hairy and its flowers a bold red with yellow throat. I have a pink-flowering Episcia that has now filled three pots and trails to the ground from its shade house bench. 3. Calathea warscewiczii not only has lovely patterned leaves, but it also produces white flowers from what looks like a Dairy Queen vanilla cone. As the flower matures, the bracts of the cone become light yellow with pink lips. 4. Impatiens mirabilis meanders across a window sill between the upper and lower levels. Hailing from Thailand, it resembles a tiny yellow balloon, with a lower lip that sticks out in a pouty way. It grows from a caudex—a swollen woody base. 5. Plumeria obtusa ‘Singapore Dwarf Pink’ in plot 133 is a charmer with only the slightest hint of pink in our midday sun. The small tree is evergreen. 1 2 3 4 5


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