Coleus, 2006

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This is one of many that have very large leaves, maybe about 5" long on average, however these are just very large leaves, like a giant, but proportional version of regular coleus, not HUGE leaves. Some of the huge ones have leaves that are the size of dinner plates and the stems are rather deformed.

This is a huge-leafed variety. Sometimes they look more like lettuce than coleus. Although most of the huge leaf kinds are green with variegated white and magenta, this one is unusual because it is primarily maroon with magenta, white and green mottling. Sorry for the oak leaf on top of it. Also notice the "black" sheen. I think this is because it has some black or blue hairs on the leaf which give it a strange velvet appearance.

A huge-leaf variety of the more typical green with white/magena mottling.

A little hard to shoot this one...it's on the top of a plant stand. There are two plants here, one with dark leaves and another with white and green.

Here's the one with white and green. Some of the stems on the plant have leaves that are solid green, while others have a yellowishwhite border. Go figure.

Stan really likes this saber variety. It's a really nice little plant, and doesn't have that freaky deformed quality that some of the saber coleus have. It too has that random quality where some of the stems have leaves with creamy white, and others are green.

Here's a better glimpse at the color of my "favorite of 2006." Still, the camera cannot capture the intensity of the purple stems. It's a very intense purple that would make the early 1970s proud.

A unique copper-colored coleus with orange and magenta mottling.

More of the intense copper and orange and bronze and magenta and maroon and cream and green and purple and... This is why I love coleus.

I'm trying to capture the leaves of the coleus behind the mottled one. Very painterly, it was as if you took a solid white coleus, painted green around the edges, and then took a glaze of magenta, and glazed the leaves, covering most of the green edges and white centers.

That's a rubber tree leaf on top. Sidenote: When we got the rubber tree back in 2001 or so, Stan said "that's the smallest rubber tree I've ever seen." Indeed, it was only about 6 inches high. Now it's over three feet tall and spreading out. It thrives and grows big and healthy when we put it outside in the summer (as do most other plants we outside summer). I had a rubber tree when I was a teenager, but like most everything else, it did lousy. My parents wouldn't let their precious window space have plants in them, so the poor thing had to be in the middle of the house where it got no sun.

"Rosebud." You know, in Citizen Kane where Charles Foster Kane utters those last dying words...Rosebud was the name on his childhood sled. The term has come to mean, for me, something from my childhood that I want or miss, or have now found that is a reasonable facsimile of something long gone but desired. Back in the mid 70s, I got a clipping of this kind of coleus (green edges, creamy white centers) from a friend...her parents had the best coleuses. But like everything else I tried to grow in my parents house, it too died. Every year I've tried to find this kind of coleus in greenhouses, but I've not have one survive the winters. I put this one in a southwestern-facing window which hopefully will get lots of winter sun.

This one is close to my favorite one from 2005 (which didn't make it), but no cigar. It doesn't have that beautifully unusual (for coleuses) yellow ochre color, and too much white and magenta. It's still beautiful, though!

This one is similar to "Rosebud" except it has pinkish magenta stems and veins. "Rosebud" has no traces of reddishness.

This one is sort of similar to my favorite of this year, except it has yellowish green stems rather than purple. Here, the purple is manifest in the leaf veins.

A couple different plants here. The one in the lower left corner and a little on top has red edges and dark maroon centers. Very unusual. The one in the main part of the picture I have a couple of, one is a warmer hue and another is a cooler; I think this is the warmer hue. When the leaves are young, they are a light yellow green. As they mature they turn red. Very striking.

An overview of a whole stash of coleus we have upstairs under a plant light. Up on the very top you can see a cactus.

More and more...look at thiose big leaves on the one on the right with maroon margins. I love the copper and orange mottled one on the bottom, and in the lower right is a more cooler hue version of the one with yellow new growth and reddish older growth.

Another one with very big leaves. I can't seem to get enough of these.

This plant is gorgeous outside. The leaves have yellow margins with orange centers, but the orange is so indescribable because it has bluish purple hairs that gives it the most unusual sheen when the sun hits it just right.