Click below to see our plants alphabetically listed by common name with their cures and cooking ideas

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Click for a list of my Special Pages Menu of All My Special Pages Agave Aloe Amaryllis Angel Trumpet Tree Anthuriums Bananas & Plantains Begonia Botanical Gardens Bougainvillea Bromeliad Cactus Cactus & Succulent Mysteries Calatheas Camellias Canna Lilies. Chile Peppers Clerodendrum Coffee Coleus Croton Dahlia Devils Trumpets Ferns Flower Mysteries Frangipani Garden Furniture & Fixtures Healthy Naturally Heliconia Hibiscus Landscaping Lilies Mystery Plants Orchids Palms & Sagos Philodendrons Roses Succulents Water Lilies&Water Gardens Wildflowers

Search for Latin names and more here!

This was one of my plant mysteries kindly solved by the very knowledgeable Ursula G. living in Southern Germany

Watercress Nasturtium officinale
Watercress is one of the most delicious greens available to us, but because it grows in or beside flowing water the risks are pretty evident. In our market in Panajachel, watercress arrives periodically in mountainous bunches as fresh and beautiful as can only be imagined in a supermarket. We succumb routinely to its charms, but only very rarely now include raw watercress in salads. I have several delicious recipes for cooked watercress and can only hope that the nutritional quality is not too diminished by heat.
Benefits: Popeye would have loved watercress as it offers more iron than spinach and it's loaded with very beneficial antioxidants. Buy it ONLY organically grown in the hopes that somewhere in the world there is a running stream of water that is not polluted.
From: Asia and Europe
Photographed:
Planting and Care: Watercress is a perennial so once you've got it growing beside your mountain clear water stream you'll enjoy it for years.
Text and Photograph ©GreenGardeningCookingCuring.com 2014

Watermelon
Benefits: According to Yahoo News this is a good fruit to have on your side, "Rich in vitamin C and a great source of potassium, watermelon is also a highly concentrated source of the antioxidant lycopene. A diet that includes this ruby-colored fruit will help prevent the growth of polyps in the colon, as well as help fight heart disease."
From:
Photographed:
Planting and Care:
©GreenGardeningCookingCuring.com 2018

Link: http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/veggies/watermelon1.html

Shrub Mystery solved by Ursula G. living in Southern Germany

Wheat Triticum spp.
Naively, I never thought of Italy as a wheat producing country, never putting 2 and 2 together to come up with fabulous bread and pasta. Even with all the wheat fields we saw, Italy is in the top ten wheat importers in the world. Driving the circumference of Sicily, I was impressed with the simple beauty of a wheat field. I'm also very glad that so far even with Hilary Clinton's help, Monsanto hasn't been able to convince other countries that GM wheat would be a good idea.
Benefits: Need we discuss this?
From: The Near East.
Photographed: Immediately below in the (Ortobotanico) Botanical Garden in Naples, Italy, in 2014. Below that in Sicily in 2012.
Planting and Care:
Text and Photograph ©GreenGardeningCookingCuring.com 2013

WILDLIFE IN OUR TROPICAL GARDEN AND IN OTHERS

Animals, birds, lizards, snakes, spiders, insects and more!

       Montserrat does not have a long list of sizeable or dramatic wildlife -- our own pretty wild chickens and the daily visit to our vegetable gardens by a few agoutis, large rodents endemic to the Caribbean, an iguana or two and our neighbor's cats and dogs all made the short list of what we thought of as animals on the island.
       One afternoon during my treasured nap I woke to the braying of a young bull. Since my husband often skillfully entertains us with his very carefully crafted animal noises, I thought, "Oh, it's just Stassi." When I went out to water our small plants at about 5:00 PM, I spotted the calf's droppings at our front door and realized the noise was indeed coming from a calf.
       Stassi and I headed out for our evening walk and soon ran into a neighbor, a young fellow named Derek. We told him where we had last seen the calf which we believed to be his and he was quickly off on the search speeding around the neighborhood in his "mini" look alike trying to find his young bull. Animal husbandry is an activity not allowed in a few of Montserrat's neighborhoods like Olveston, but that law was ignored along with that of mixing commercial and residential properties.

**Agouti, Rabbit (in Montserrat)
This was one of our delightful garden visitors very similar in looks to a guinea pig and about the size of a large house cat. Their fur is dark brown, almost black, and they have soft pink ears. These charming little fellows are members of the rodent family. They are vegetarian and when in a safe environment they are creatures of the day. If things get tough, they easily become nocturnal. They have a peculiar habit of stopping when scared, then jumping straight in the air and "poof" they are gone!
Text and Photographs ©Krika.com 2009

BIRDS

'Noisy Miner' or Indian Myna
Photographed: At the Royal Botanical Garden in Sydney, Australia, 2013.

'Noisy Miner' or Indian Myna
Photographed: At the Royal Botanical Garden in Sydney, Australia, 2013.

Birds by the Marsh
Photographed: At the Magdalena Hotel in Tobago, in 2018

**Green Backed Heron (in Montserrat) Butorides virecens
Below are photographs of Bob, a lovely bird that made us and our pool his close friends. He stopped by regularly on the rim of our pool and dipped his beak in the water every now and then, either getting a drink or catching a bug. As a person totally unable to identify birds, even after buying Peterson's Guide I simply named him Bob and then struck up a conversation with him. He seemed to like to hear my voice and over the last year or so he has dared to come as close as four feet, reminding me very much of a long ago trip to the Galapagos Islands where wildlife had little fear of humans.
Links: For more information click on the following
http://www.jaxzoo.org/animals/biofacts/GreenBackedHeron.asp
Text and Photographs ©Krika.com 2008

Bob was identified by our neighbor Jotinder B. from Britain who lived and worked for a while in Montserrat.

Central American Parrot (Guatemala)
Photographed: At the entrance to Hotel Vision Azul on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.
Photograph ©KO 2010

Mystery Butterfly #1 (Guatemala)
Photographed: At Lake Atitlan in the Guatemala highlands
Photograph © GreenGardeningCookingCuring.com 2013

**Ground Lizards (In Montserrat)
These are tough insect eating lizards, little tanks in the garden. They seem to be able to "hear" what is beneath the soil as we have seen them digging and certainly have had to clean up their messes, soil pitched this way and that as they chase a below the soil snack. These lizards which can be more than eighteen inches long are extremely skittish around humans. This always seems surprising because little fellows like the three inch green lizard in the celery in the photograph above will often stand up to fight when we approach.
Text and Photographs ©Krika.com 2008

Ladybugs (In Maine)
Photographed: In the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Boothbay Maine, 2013.

Leaf Miners
Leaf miners can be identified by the trail larva of a variety of insects leaves behind. The larva tunnel within the leaves of many plants, but on any type of edible leafy green they are especially unsightly.
Control:
1. One of the best things you can do to prevent future generations of leaf miners is to simply remove any leaf where you see evidence of their presence. Once removed, dispose of the leaves by burning. Do not put them in your compost pile.
2. Wasps called Diglyphus isaea can be purchased and released in your garden. There they will go to work dining on some of the insects responsible for depositing larva that will cause this type of leaf damage.
3. What amused me greatly is just reading (9/2018) that neem oil effectively controls leaf miners. When we lived in Montserrat, finding alternatives to the prodigious amounts of poisons used by gardeners and farmers on the island was not easy. I read about neem at the time and we had a few neem trees so a marriage made in heaven delightfully prevented any problem with leaf miners during our ten years of living there. We never used any poisons so neem leaves truly became our great friends.
4. I routinely soaked small leafy branches of neem in a big bucket of water for a few days. When it became ripe and smelled bad I strained it and we applied it with a sprayer to the vegetables I was growing and to vulnerable flowering plants.
Photographed: On my basil in Crown Point, Tobago, in 2018.
Warning: Although eating the leaves of leaf miner affected plants may seem okay. It isn't. You should always remove and destroy affected leaves to remain healthy and to control more infestations in the future.

**Spiders (In Montserrat)
A friend of ours happens to be an entomologist and we can easily quote him saying, "There is no such thing as a good spider. They are all poisonous." I never would have agreed with him while I lived in Rhode Island where "daddy longlegs" are very common. I'd never had a spider bite and never dreamed of having one. Then I moved south to Washington, DC, where I got my first spider bite. It was red and itchy and painful at the same time and I quickly changed my opinion of these little beasts. I think it's fine for them to be living outside, but in the house I work hard to move them out where they belong without using any pesticides.

Here are some techniques for repelling spiders.
1. The aromas of eucalyptus, mint or lemon are said to repel them.
At Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, we have found that mint works very well, but it is not common in many areas where we have lived to have access to large bunches of fresh mint. I am allergic to eucalyptus and could not tell you which I fear more, the allergy symptoms or the spider bites. We haven't yet tried lemons.
2. Burning the dried stems and leaves of a plant called pericon has also proven very effective.
In Mexico we lived in a four century old building with very high wooden ceilings and 16" square support beams. This is the environment that spiders and scorpions dream about as did we, but I was getting multiple 2" diameter bites that made life very uncomfortable until we were told what to do. The dried pericon is lit in an hibachi or something similar. Once it lights, you blow it out and let is simply smoke until your rooms are filled with it. Once the pericon has expired, open your windows and go out for lunch. When you get back the spiders will have moved on.

Alabama Jumpers

These were the first worms I learned were destructive in the soil as well as often being startling as they jump wriggling from it. Apparently they are voracious root eaters which we discovered when they decimated our amaryllis bed. Of huge bulbs only a few survived the onslaught of Alabama Jumpers. To give you an idea of how bad a problem they might be, we removed over 200 large jumpers from a 1 square yard area of garden.

Web Options I found:

1. A 20% solution of vinegar and water will spell death to the jumpers.
2. Neem and BT apparently don't work.

What has worked for us:

1. We noticed when tossing out soapy water from our clothes washing basin on the soil one day it brought worms to the surface in apparent distress. We didn't know if it killed them so we did a small test area and found that it didn't, but it did bring them up where we could catch and remove them. The soap did seem to kill the tiny ones.

We now spread a simple "lemon scent" detergent on the ground liberally and spray it with the hose until the ground is wet and soapy. Next we wait and watch as the jumpers appear and collect them in an old straight sided pot. When it appears we have harvested as many as will come to the surface, we put the pot in the sun and go on to better things.

2. When preparing potting soil you surely don't want these critters in the dirt. The best way we've found is to place the dirt on a large plastic sheet in the sun. Next sprinkle lime on it and rake it in. Leave it in the sun for a few days raking it to evenly expose it to the sun's heat and then you're ready to go.

Please do get in touch if you have easier or more effective solutions.

**Wisteria Wisteria chinensis DC or Native Wisteria (Australia) Hardenbergia comptoniana
This is one of my very favorite plants. I have loved it since I was a little girl spending hours sitting next to it in the garden whenever it was in bloom. I have recently planted the seeds I bought in Australia and am keeping my fingers crossed.
Benefits: The scent of these flowers is a little like my concept of heaven.
From: China
Planting and Care: The wisteria is a fairly flexible wonder. Plant it in full sun or partial shade in almost any type of soil. Provide routine rainfall or watering until the plants are settled in and then water when it seems too dry.
Text and Photographs ©GreenGardeningCookingCuring.com 2014

Wood Sorrel See the "S" Page -- SHAMROCK I AND SHAMROCK II