Episode 225: Sinningia
Sinningia leucotricha. Photograph: laurent houmeau on Flickr.
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Transcript
Jane Perrone 00:05
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Jane Perrone 01:19
Need more planty chat in your life? Don't worry. I'm here. On The Ledge podcast, episode 225. Let's go. Welcome to the show. In this episode, I talked to Sinningia expert David Zaitlin all about this fascinating genus, focusing on the species Sinningia speciosa. The totally OTT and glorious and well admittedly a little bit out of fashion, florists' Gloxinia, as it's known, and Sinningia leucotricha. - perhaps I can say the trendy cousin, who's very much in demand right now.
Jane Perrone 02:09
Thanks for all lovely feedback on last week's show from the Chelsea Flower Show. And thanks to Diane for becoming a Ledge End, joining Patreon this week, and Diane has unlocked lots of extra content including the first 50 episodes of On The Ledge ever made, which are only available to Patreon subscribers at the Ledge End and Superfan level, and lots of additional episodes in the form of An Extra Leaf. And there'll be a bonus episode with my guest today, David Zaitlin coming out in a few days time.
Jane Perrone 02:46
No question of the week this week, but do get your questions to me because there's a q&a special on the way. And thanks to Greg who got in touch after listening to Episode 222 about interesting houseplants making their dent in the house plant scene. He told me about a plant that he has come across called Argylia radiata. And this is a plant from Chile and Peru. It's got beautiful orangey red flowers and copes with pretty harsh conditions - not a lot of rainfall and hot temperatures in the summer and can survive down to about two degrees Celsius in winter. So it's an interesting plant that's being posted as a potential house plant. It's got a big tuberous roots, so that helps it to survive when times get tough during the dry season, when it can just retreat into that large tuber. As Greg puts it, "during months of intense drought between rains it lies in weight as a large underground root. When given water, it sends out a new above ground growth". And Greg found one in a nursery in Northern California called Annie's Annuals. I wonder if this is one we're going to be seeing more widely? Thanks for getting in touch Greg. It's lovely to hear from listeners. And I do try to respond to as many of you as I can. And this is the kind of interesting stuff that I love to read about. So thank you for that, Greg.
Jane Perrone 04:18
But now let's talk Sinningias and a bit of background before we start. For those of you who are not overly familiar with this genus, it's part of the Gesneriad family, which includes things like African violets, Streptocarpus, Primulinas, Petrocosmeas, Kohlerias, the list goes on. And there are many houseplants counted among this family. Most of these plants are loved for their flowers, but sometimes they have pretty nice foliage two. And the two species that we're going to focus on in this interview are Sinningia speciosa, which is sometimes called the florist's Gloxinia. It's not a Gloxinia - that's another genus of the gesneriad family. So the usual confusion with names, but florist's Gloxinia, is a rather interesting plant. It's not very fashionable. I'm hoping - and in fact I'm leading a one woman campaign right now to get this plant back on plant shop shelves, because I think it's amazing. It's grown for it's incredibly large, incredibly over the top velvety flowers. It's got large, fuzzy leaves a bit like an African Violet, but bigger, and it grows from a tuber. Maybe this is one of the things that puts people off, but it goes dormant. And then you keep it cool and dry until it really sprouts. So I suggest if you want to go and check out this plant in the show notes, I've put some pictures in there of some cultivars of Sinningia speciosa. And the second species is Sinningia leucotricha. This is a plant that is becoming more and more popular. One of its common names is Brazilian Edelweiss. And it's got these incredibly furry pubescent silvery leaves, tubular orange flowers or red flowers. And again, it grows from Cornwall tuber. And there's a whole band of people who absolutely love these plants. So the range of these plants is mainly in South America. So Dave's gonna fill me in on how these plants grow in the wild, and why they're just such fascinating plants to bring into your home.
David Zaitlin 06:47
My name is David Zaitlin. I'm a scientist at the University of Kentucky. I've worked as a plant geneticist and plant microbiologist for a very long time. And I was fortunate to be able to mix my personal interest in Sinningias with my professional work as well, my growing plants for many, many years, and I think I bought my first Sinningia when I was in college, the year that I went to Cornell University, and I've grown just about every species has to become available. I've been to Brazil, a half a dozen times. Five of those I went on field trips. And so I've seen them in person, and I've done quite a bit of breathing and some genomics with Sinningia.
Jane Perrone 07:32
Dave, I'm so excited to have you on the show to talk about this wonderful genius. But let's start off by defining our terms. What are seen in years where do they grow in the wild? And what marks them out as a genus.
07:47
The centre of diversity of the genus is Brazil, particularly the southern part of Brazil along the Atlantic coastal forest. There are a few species that have about I like to say it's around 75 species. The genus expanded rapidly starting in around the very late 80s or early 90s, mainly through the efforts of the botanist from Switzerland and Alain Chautem, he not only has discovered many things and names, new discoveries, but also he made new combinations taxonomically and just reclassified things - Sinningias that were basically misclassified, and most of the species are found in Brazil. There are a few species that range outside Brazil, one in particular, I think it's an Sinningia incarnata, it's a tall growing species that I think goes as far north as Southern Mexico, but basically their New World tropical plants. And what's really interesting about the genus is that it's incredibly diverse in terms of growth habits, size, you name it. Some NGOs range in size from some of the very smallest terrestrial plants to species that can be metre tall or more. In terms of commercial use, many species are available to hobbyist but the general in terms of commercial species, really the only one that most people would know of is something called the Gloxinia, which are the cultivated forms of Sinningia speciosa. And these have been around in their present form for well over 100 years, and certainly the latter part of the 19th century. Some people may wonder why they're called Gloxinias, and that's an unfortunate area of taxonomy. Before they kind of the modern era of scientific publication, there was no such thing as peer review. And so, in the 18th and 19th centuries, people would discover new plants and bring them back to their institutions. Look at them, see what they thought they were related to and then possibly give them names, put them in a genus. And so that's what happened to Sinningia speciosa.
Jane Perrone 10:04
These florist Gloxinia are a real blast from my past they were very popular in the late 70s and 80s. When I started growing houseplants Do you think there's a chance they might come back into fashion, they're not so widely available as they used to be, are they? It's hard to say.
David Zaitlin 10:23
I remember also in the 1970s, they were available just about any florist or plant shop. Even, you know, somewhat later, around in the US here. large grocery stores often have a flower florist plants kind of section and find them there. Now we see them, we might see them here around commercially grown ones around Mother's Day. And it's kind of funny, I mean, there has been a lot of developments and a lot of breeding work. In this species, some people may know of Charles Lawn, who's a longtime reader of prizewinning Gloxinia is in Australia, he passed away a few years ago, I think it was 95 or 96, much of his material is still available at least as seeds. I will say that if you look on Facebook, on some of these plant groups, there are plenty of people who are growing, in fact there are several groups on Facebook that are devoted specifically to Sinningia speciosa, and as Gloxinia the cultivated form as well. So if you look there doesn't seem that there's much of a lack of interest. But commercially, you if you want them either have to give them the seed or mail order them. It's not like Streptocarpus and other Gesneriad genus that are so very popular. And certainly and I know in Great Britain, Dibleys in Wales, I think probably millions of them.
Jane Perrone 11:52
Yeah, I'm looking on social media, I can see that they're still seem to be popular in places like Iran and Russia, and parts of Eastern Europe, so they haven't gone away entirely. And I'd love to see them back. They're just so delightfully over the top.
David Zaitlin 12:09
One of the great thing is that they haven't really gone away, they're just kind of I wouldn't say they're in hiding, but you know, they're mainly enthusiasts, like myself have them. I moved many years ago, especially after going to Brazil, interested in the wild forms of sin and just VCOs there are many, many discrete wild populations throughout. Well, several states. In Brazil, I visited probably about 20 of them. So to me, that's very interesting, because there's a lot of genetic variation between populations, not not much within populations, but a lot between populations. So from a geneticist standpoint, that's very interesting.
Jane Perrone 12:50
So Dave, you've seen these species growing in the wild in Brazil, what kind of landscapes do they tend to be found?
David Zaitlin 13:00
Well, that's a one thing a good thing about Sinningias in general, they're they don't grow on land that people want to farm. There's a number of species that are epiphytic, that grow on trees and houses, but vast majority of these plants grow on rocky slopes, which are generally not good for agriculture. I have many photographs of Sinningia, especially Sinningia speciosa growing on rocks, where, I guess the tubers are kind of embedded in mossy growth or pockets of you know, humus or I would even say soil. But I have seen some some populations of Sinningia speciosa, especially one of them was above us, we had a hike up through a coffee plantation. And up at the top, there was an area where there was some trees and a lot of bromeliads and then down amongst the litter were planted and then Sinningia speciosa doing just fine in this coffee plantation. So some of them they are in soil, especially around in coastal areas of the southeastern coastal region of Rio de Janeiro state. There's a cape, that sticks out into the Atlantic, Cabo Frio. There's some towns on there. All along that coastal area, there are populations of Sinningia speciosa that are distinct from ones in Rio. Most of them seem to be growing on slopes in soil. But in general, slopes and bodies of water, they usually tend to grow close to bodies of water, like creeks, or in this case on the coast, the ocean, probably because they like the humidity.
Jane Perrone 14:36
So how does that all translate in terms of how we treat Sinningia speciosa as a house plant then?
David Zaitlin 14:43
The nice thing about Sinningia is that they grow very well in the same environments that humans are happy and I recommend that people grow them. If they can get a plant light. They do very well. There are as I said in the wild, they don't grow in pots, but that's how we have to grow them. And most of the people I know, there are good growers in the Gesneriad Society, and I should say, people who are much better growers to me. They usually use peat based, you know, kind of a fibrous, organic side potting mixes with usually some perlite, you want it to be free draining. The thing about me and some of my my friends who were the lazy growers, I mean, I have Sinningias that have been in the same pots for you know, decades. The nice thing about them is that they go through seasonal growth cycles, and they are very reliable they grow once or twice a year. They produce foliage and flowers, and then when they maybe can they go dormant for a little while, and then it starts again.
Jane Perrone 15:41
So is that dormancy period desirable? Is that something you want to encourage? Or can you keep the plant going, if you want to?
David Zaitlin 15:51
Well, some will continue to produce shoots from the tuber are some species of Sinningia but in general, I don't really know why they would go dormant. It might correspond to the more dry times they're in their habitat. I'm not really sure why that is. Some seem to have extended periods of dormancy. But many of them - I would say that many of the wild Sinningia speciosa that I grow, probably have two to three cycles of growth and blooms within a 12 month period. So they're either coming up from the tuber, going into bud, flowering, or then starting to decline. So that takes a number of months.
Jane Perrone 16:38
I like that feature on houseplants I know not everybody does. But I like house plants that go dormant because it means there's something different going on, they're looking different throughout the year. And I find that appealing. I know not everyone likes to see a bear pot, but I think it I don't know, it's exciting when that you see the first signs of life coming back, for me, that's a really good part of enjoying those kinds of plants.
David Zaitlin 17:05
And they renew themselves, you know, every time
Jane Perrone 17:08
Exactly, you don't have to worry about leaf damage or anything because like, like you would do with aroids or something because the leaves are going to disappear and you're gonna get a fresh set, which I like.
David Zaitlin 17:21
As the plants get older, the tubers get larger, they can produce a heck of a lot more flowers, sometimes they'll produce a number. As they get bigger and bigger, they produce more stem. So you've got the plants can continue to get quite a bit larger over time. Also,
Jane Perrone 17:34
The other species that I think lots of listeners wanted to know about. Is the leucotricha. I don't have I'm pronouncing that right, leucotricha, I'm gonna go with that - there's no wrong or right answers on that really are there on this pronunciation business? What can you tell us about this species? This seems to be the one that as opposed to speciosa that everyone does seem to want to grow? What can you tell us about that one?
David Zaitlin 17:59
Well, okay, it comes from, I believe it's in Sao Paulo state - grows on rocks, around waterfalls, and things like that places that are kind of inaccessible to most people. You know, it hasn't really fallen out of favour. It's always been kind of there. I don't have it at the moment. But I know many people in their society grow it. And it's very long lived. I think I know somebody who has a 30 or 40 year old plant, at least it gets where you see it in this country is if you go to big cactus and succulent shows, for some reason they grabbed on to it many years ago because they like you know many of those succulent growers like caudexes you know what that is? A big, thick swollen and usually water storing stems and they call that tuber of Sinningia leucotricha. They call that caudex which is probably incorrect, but when they get nice and big and you raise them up above the soil and put the thing in a big expensive, shallow bonsai type pot. They look pretty impressive with lots of stems on him. For some reason, the cactus people insist, I think even to this day, on calling it Rechsteineria leucotricha. Rechsteineria is a defunct genus, I think it was absorbed into officially absorbed into Sinningia about 1973. And so anyway, sometimes you you still see that name in the succulent world, but it's a very nice species and to my knowledge, it's pretty much only propagated through seed. It's not one of the species as you can take a stem off and root it or root a leaf and get a tuber. Not to my knowledge, it's best grown from seed. And they usually take a couple of years I think to get to the point where they'll go produce a big, you know, show of flowers, but older plants can be very, very impressive. It's still available from seed. I should say that Mauro Peixoto, the Brazilian plant enthusiast who runs a website called Brazil Plants, I know that he has several wild collections that you can get seed from him.
Jane Perrone 20:25
I just love the leaves on leucotricha. They're like soft, they're a bit like Stachys lantata in the garden, just really soft and very flowers that sort of those red flowers are nice, but it's the leaves that do it for me.
David Zaitlin 20:41
I think a lot of people like the combination and those really soft bunny ears when they first start growing.
Jane Perrone 20:47
One other species of Sinningia I wanted to ask you about was Sinningia bullata which has this incredible corrugated foliage. What can you tell me about that one?
David Zaitlin 20:57
Bullata, you know, there's the word 'bullate'. That's quilted, corrugated - that describes the leaf surface the way there is kind of incized size there and that's pretty unique among Sinningias and has a really nice, very lovely, orange tubular flower - unlike leucotricha , the petal lobes are larger, so it's bigger flower. It grows in an island city called Florianopolis. In the wild, it grows, kind of a chain of tubers kind of coming down a rocky slope of a cliff. And so that's why in cultivation, it's just you just can't make it like be a nice pot plant. You can grow a nice specimens of it, but it's not going to be a nice, tidy rosette. It's gonna ramble around a bit. Well, but there's there's another wrinkle here. And like I say, it's been in cultivation, maybe 20 years, it's pretty easy to grow, I have a big old one here, makes a nice big tuber. And sometimes, especially if you have like in a greenhouse, it may never really be without foliage or flowers, stems will new will produce and buildings will die off. In 2014 a young fellow in Brazil, Gabriello Emilio Sahara. I don't remember where he was a student. But anyway, he very interested in Sinningias, he found a population of that species about 200 kilometres south of the original one. And it grows in a in a canyon a little bit inland from the coast, where the plants grow on kind of ledges and rocks. Many of them in full sun, and so they very high light levels. But interesting that form from that area does not really ramble at all. And I recently got seed of that and I have some growing, for some reason, they haven't flowered for me, but they definitely do not have the growth habit of the original collection. So what I intend to do is to cross the two because it looks like the original one, maybe a lot more floriferous and then just select out in the F2. So probably self pollinate the the hybrid between the two forms and get the F2 generation and just look for a tidier growing highly floriferous version. Because the leaves are very same that they have, you know, trichomes are - leaf hairs? So on the undersurface of the leaves, and along the stem these things are just woolly as they can be. And so both forms seem to have that, which may have something to do with protecting their plants from high light levels or some some kind of something that might chew on it. We don't really know. But they certainly have extravagantly developed trichomes.
David Zaitlin 20:58
Yeah, there's still so much we just don't know about a lot of these species isn't there?
David Zaitlin 24:18
I mean, most plants have not been studied. And the funding that's available to study plants is mainly for plants to eat crops, and maybe forestry and other applications. But one thing I forgot that you'd asked before about Sinningias in the wild, other plants you find with them. And like I said the these plants are adapted to grow mainly on slopes and on rocks. They don't apparently compete well with fast growing things like grasses. They'll get swamped out. So that's why they grow maybe where they growwhere they do one thing you do find, I don't I can't tell you how many kinds of begonias I've seen in areas where Sinningia grow in these habitats. And also surprisingly, you'll find cacti that some of these kinds of ceroid type cacti. I don't know, I guess a seed finds, you know, germinates in a crack on the rock. And then you've got this cactus sticking up out of the rock. And then there's some Sinningias growing around it. And, and also, you find a lot of spike oss, you know, Selaginella. Yeah, find a lot of those around there. Sometimes, I think it's Sinningia tubers are embedded in those spike mosses that have been there for a long time.
Jane Perrone 25:31 So we're talking about rocky landscapes for a lot of these Sinningias in the wild. I wonder how that relates to watering in the home setting. I know a lot of people do wick watering,
David Zaitlin 25:43
I can't really say, I've never wick watered. But I know many people who do, I would just tend to keep it damp, generally, leucotricha would, certainly would grow to grows around waterfalls and things. So it's probably getting constant apply of some kind of moisture. Many, some NGOs that kind of as a generality, that grow on these large granite hills in southern Brazil, where a lot of our bathroom countertops, kitchen countertops come from also, by the way. So these granite hills have their own kind of floristic complement. And so many of the Sinningias grow on those, and I've been to them and kind of some of these kind of climbed up, climb up a little bit. They often always have water, kind of just slowly trickling over the surface. Because I think granite, I guess it's not very absorbent. So water that fell on the top of these big things will then trickle down. And so the plants, I think in those environments, now, they don't have a lot of roots, because they're going on the rock, but they have a constant supply of water. But in captivity, most of the changes didn't mean captivity and cultivation. You have them in a pot with a peat based potting mix, they can take some drying out, especially if they have a good size tuber. But you can also see them generally Sinningia speciosa as an example, that you can tell if they're suffering from the lack of water, especially if they're in flower, the flowers are the first things to wilt.
David Zaitlin 25:48
Just going back to the beginning of the interview. What do you think it was about Sinningias that first drew you in?
David Zaitlin 27:04 Well, that's the unknowable question. It's been, it's been, you know, 40 Plus, it's maybe 40 years, I wandered into a little plant shop on the called The Commons in Ithaca, New York. And I bought a little, what I soon found out was one of the what they call miniature Sinningia - that's another whole world - Sinningia tetraploids, which were created in the mid 60s, crossing, Sinningia eumorpha, which is a really nice rosette type species similar looking to wild speciosa, they can be anywhere from white to dark lavender, cross that with some of the very small what they call the micro mini Sinningia pusilla, Sinningia concinna. And these initial hybrids were much larger than a micro miniatures but much smaller than Sinningia eumorpha, they became the foundation of a whole large group, if you call miniature Sinningia today. And what happened was with those original F1 hybrids were sterile, the parents were not closely related. But then through I think, at least in one case, the use of culture scene. So the double the chromosome number, restorative fertility as a tetraploid So, and then there were some other micro miniature crosses with I think Luca Treecko, was one of them, was brought down the kind of reddish flower gene. And so there, there's a whole range of these and you can you can find these through some, some plant dealers have quite a few of them. And then 20 some odd years ago, somebody found one with a double edged flower and, and developed, what we now know will now have is a range of double flower miniature syringes. And like you I'm not really wild about them in speciosa, some of the double flowers are so heavy, that these stems can't really support them very well. And some of them are just plain ugly, you know, sorry.
Jane Perrone 29:31
I know it's probably just as difficult as choosing a favourite child, but is there any particular sin in your species that you're most fond of?
David Zaitlin 29:41
Well, I have done a lot of work, spent a lot of effort with speciosa and particularly the wild forms. I have some beautiful wild type, Sinningia speciosa that I've read that have dark foliage and the light veins and dark rose pink flowers, you know...
Jane Perrone 30:00
And what do we need to know about propagation of Sinningias? Are we talking growing from seed, vegetative...?
David Zaitlin 30:08
The seeds are very small. I don't know how many you can get in a thimble, but it might be many 1000s. They're bigger than orchid seeds, but it comes from the survival strategy, the plant, you put out an awful lot of seeds in the hope that a few of them will produce viable adults. I can't really tell you a whole lot about vegetative propagation that I do mostly from seed. That's why I try to breed Sinningia that would be say, true breeding cultivars. So you can go there and see because many of the hybrids, it's actually not just Sinningia, but many other genera of Gesneriads . People make all kinds of crosses by something like, name it, and then hopefully be able to propagate it vegetatively either by tip cuttings or leaves, or in some cases, rhizomes tend to produce some Kohlerias and some Smithianthas or things produce a lot of underground rhizomes which you can break apart and distribute those. The problem with Sinningias is you can't really divide tubers that well - not like quite like a potato. Some people have, I don't like doing that, because you can lose both of them, you know. Sinningia speciosa, you can root the leaf petiole, and they will generate a tuber from there. And in many cases, that tuber then will produce shoots of its own. I've done a lot of that with a few species. Some are very easy to root, say near the end of the shoot, tip cutting often I root them inwater and then put them in soil. Sinningia bullosa is propagated an awful lot that way, but I haven't had much luck getting any viable seed from that species, but I prefer growing from seed, Growth from seed with Sinningias is where you should have fluorescent, some kind of plant lights, because you can give them you can do it inside, you can give them very even temperatures and supply of light. They need humidity, and once they germinate, you know when they first start getting maybe their first sets of two leaves. And the second set, that's when you can pull them out. I put them in little six pack things, you can get it in nursery, and then when they grow when they're crowding each other then I usually put them in three to four inch pots depending on what they are and how big they are. How big I expect them to get. Yeah, so I've grown, gosh 10s, maybe 10s of 1000s of plants from seed over many, many decades. Well if you have a good source of seed, you know a tiny pinch to give you more than 100 plants. I don't like to throw healthy plants away so I end up with too many.
Jane Perrone 33:12
Well, I wish I live around the corner from you Dave because I would certainly be popping over some plants. Thanks so much for joining me today. And I'm looking forward to chatting further in an extra leaf but for now, thanks so much.
David Zaitlin 33:26
My pleasure.
Jane Perrone 33:39
Thanks so much to my guest, David. That's all for this week's episode. Do remember to send in your questions for the q&a special. And subscribe to The Plant Ledger, my email newsletter, there's a new edition out today. Until next Friday, have a great weekend - bye.
Jane Perrone 34:34
The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops The Road We Used to Travel When We Were Young by Komiku and Namaste by Jason Shaw. All Tracks are licenced under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.
I’m joined by plant geneticist and molecular biologist David Zaitlin to talk about this fascinating genus, with a focus on florist gloxinia - Sinningia speciosa - and Sinningia leucotricha.
This week’s guest
David Zaitlin is a scientist at the University of Kentucky and has conducted several field trips to Brazil to study Sinningias growing in the wild. He has done plant breeding and genomics with this genus too.
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Argylia radiata
The plant Greg emailed into the show about was Argylia radiata - you can see some pictures of the plant on Dave’s Garden.
Check out the show notes below as you listen…
Sinningia is a new world tropical genus of around 75 species. Gesneriad researcher Alain Chautems did a lot of work on the taxonomics of this genus.
Most species are found in the Atlantic coastal forests of Brazil, often growing on granite hills. They range in size from some of the smallest plants you can imagine, up to 1m tall or more. They are often found growing alongside Begonias, spikemoss (Selaginella) and Bromeliads.
Sinningia speciosa aka florist gloxinia is probably the best known species, popularised for the cultivars bred from the species that became popular as pot plants in the 19th century.
Australian breeder Charles Lawn did a lot of breeding work on S. speciosa - his hybrids are still available today.
In the wild, S. speciosa is often found growing on rocky slopes, within pockets of humus or mossy areas, close to bodies of water.
S. speciosa grows from a tuber and goes through a seasonal growth cycle, producing flowers and foliage then dying back and going dormant. You can see images of wild form S. speciosa on Mauro Peixoto’s website Brazil Plants.
Sinningia leucotricha grows on rocks around waterfalls, often in accessible parts of Brazil. You might find this sometimes labelled as Rechsteineria leucotricha. Take a look at Mauro Peixoto’s website Brazil Plants for some images of this species.
Sinningia bullata has corrugated leaves and orange tubular flowers, originally collected from the Brazilian city of Florianopolis. It is a rambling plant that grows from a tuber, and as it grows it creates a chain of tubers joined by stolons.
Sinningias are often raised from seed: in terms of vegetative propagation, it’s hard to divide tubers, and you can also root leaf petioles of S. speciosa.
If you are interested in Sinningias, please join The Gesneriad Society - you can take part in their seed scheme to get hold of seed of some of the more hard-to-obtain species.
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Dill Pickles by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra, Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Namaste by Jason Shaw. The ad music was Dill Pickles by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra.