City Gardener

In Room D2 Director A... had me look at a fungus matt located on one of the low bushes (?name). She had been reading about parasitic fungus from Australia/New Caledonia and wondered if perhaps this particular plant’s fungus might be an example. I asked her for a couple of glass slides with which I took a scraping of the fungus. We took the slides into the plant pathology lab and used a microscope to view the slide. We saw what looked to me to be standard dimorphic fungus with yeast forms and septate hyphae. There were branches at 45 degree angles, and fusiform conidia. I suspect this is a common fungus, perhaps Aspergillus sp. We also saw a small 6 legged insect/mite. In Room D2 (“Dwight’s room” as A... calls it) I trimmed a tree palm (species?) branch, and then scrubbed sooty mold off from a fig tree that had been hidden by the tree palm branch. In Room C3 I repotted a large ZZ plant from an old white plastic pot to a new large terracotta pot (not the largest pot tho). I used a 50:50 ...

I spent the morning on small tasks. I trimmed the vines in room C3. I also dead-headed the bamboo plants next to the vines. In D4 I picked up leaves and trimmed out dead stems from many of the cacti. While in D4 I recognized a cactus with well developed leaves among the spikes.  The sign states the plant is one of the few which straddle the time when cacti evolved from plants with leaves to plants with spikes (and only microscopic leaf remnants). I progressed through rooms D3, D2, and D1 pruning and picking up deal leaves. A had placed trays of old project plants on the floor of room C4. I dumped the plants into a bin and emptied it onto the pile of soil and plants at the back of the building.