Sinningia arenicola, aka sp. "Waechter"

1. Feature table
2. Publication and etymology

This plant is a tough, sun-tolerant sinningia which is very popular with the Anna's hummingbirds (Calypte anna) which frequent my yard.  The flowers are open in May and June (late spring in the northern hemisphere) and are visited by these birds at least once an hour, even though they aren't as impressive to the human eye as some other sinningias.  At a guess, I would have to say that this is the sinningia species most attractive to hummingbirds in my back yard.  You can tell when a hummingbird is pleased with a plant, because it will visit almost all the open flowers, instead of sampling just one and flying off to another plant.  By this measure, Sinningia arenicola keeps the hummingbirds happier than, say, S. douglasii or S. leucotricha.

This species provides another service in my back yard.  I have a couple of plants positioned near a waterbowl for goldfinches to drink from, and one of the finches perches on a tall stem as a lookout while another sips from the bowl.

Sinningia arenicola is an unpublished name, and Alain Chautems correctly admonishes us not to use it, but instead to call the plant by its holding name: Sinningia sp. "Waechter".  Unfortunately, I've already got all arenicola on all my plant labels and in my records.  I'd hate to change them and then have to change them again (or back) when the name is finally published.

Feature table for Sinningia sp. "Waechter"

The name "arenicola" means inhabiting sand (our English word "arena" comes from the Latin word for sand).  The plant was found growing just ten meters (less than 40 feet) from the Atlantic Ocean, in sandy soil at the edge of the beach.  It was surrounded by salt-tolerant weeds.

The name "dunensis" was quickly applied to the plant, but alas, this is not a valid species name, since "dune" isn't Latin or a place name.

[Hey, wait a second!  Dune!  Sandworms.  Paul Atreides.  Duncan Idaho.  Dune is as real as, say, Orange County.  Why can't we have dunensis?]

[Parenthetically, dune is a perfectly good Indo-European word, from the same root as town.]

This species has hairy tough leaves in pairs or whorls of three.  The flowers are borne in the axils of the upper leaves, which get progressively smaller up the stem, the topmost being only about 1 cm long.

The flower is a straight tube, dusty red on the outside, and white on the inside, with a dark purple streak on each lobe.  The top two lobes overlap, giving the appearance of a single lobe.  During the male phase, the anthers are held right up against these overlapping lobes.  In all these respects, except for the white tube interior, the flower closely resembles that of S. douglasii.

The habitats, however, could not be more different: beach margin for S. arenicola, temperate forest epiphyte for S. douglasii.

Some sinningias are more Waechter than others

A different plant has been grown under the name S. sp. "Waechter" or S. arenicola.  When I sowed seed from the AGGS Seed Fund, I two different kinds of plant.  The first, described above, matched what Alain Chautems had applied the name sp. "Waechter" to.  The other had somewhat similar flowers, but otherwise was quite different.  The first has come true from seed, but I haven't gotten flowers from seedlings from the second yet.

Because of a number of differences described, I gave the second group of plants the name "Desafinado".

A comparison page has a table and some pictures to demonstrate the differences between the two types.

The picture at the right shows the true "arenicola" with all the flowers originating from the node -- that is, no peduncle.  The flowerstalk of S. "Desafinado" has a peduncle.

Note that the handsome plant shown under the name S. sp. "Waechter" and accession number USBRG 98-093 on Ron Myhr's Gesneriad Reference Web is one of the "Desafinado" types, flowering from a terminal cluster, with peduncles, rather than the extended axis of the "true" waechter/arenicola, which does not have peduncles.

Light vs. Darkness

This photograph shows what a plant does when there is not enough light.  Both plants are in 5" (13 cm) pots.  The stalk on the left is 9 inches (23 cm) tall.

Both plants are S. sp. "Waechter".  The only difference was that the pot on the left spent the winter in a sealed container with a bunch of other tubers, while the pot on the right was sheltered from the rain but not in the dark.

One can imagine two strategies for a plant in darkness.  First, make as much photosynthetic (leaf) surface as possible, to capture every possible photon. Second, put every bit of reserved energy into extending a stem, in order to get above whatever has been shading it.

Plants have had millions of years to choose between the two strategies, and the photograph makes it clear which strategy was the winner.  Especially when the plant has a substantial energy store, such as a tuber, the odds are much in favor of making a long stem rather than large leaves, but even newly-sprouted seedlings show this behavior.  It should be noted that the strategy was evolved during the millions of years before sealed plastic tubs existed.

Publication

Etymology (of the suspected name-to-be): From Latin arena ("sand, beach") + -cola ("resident on").

The English word arena does indeed derive from the Latin arena (or harena) through the obvious transfer of meaning, from sand to a sporting venue with a sandy field to any sporting venue.