Today's photograph is contributed by van+s@Flickr (original image | BPotD Flickr Group Pool). The plant in the image was cultivated indoors at the United States Botanic Garden. Thank you for sharing, van+s!
Aeschynanthus speciosus, or lipstick plant, was previously featured as a Plant of the Week (main page) – as always, when a BPotD entry overlaps with a Plant of the Week entry, I enthusiastically recommend visiting the PotW site for more information. Tidbits gleaned from the PotW page include the distribution of this species (southeast Asia) and its ecological strategy (it's an epiphyte).
A detailed look at the genus Aeschynanthus is available on this page via the The Genera of Gesneriaceae. A more concise treatment of the genus Aeschynanthus can be found on Wikipedia (see Aeschynanthus). I was particularly interested to read the derivation of the generic name.
It is nice to see a gesneriad, albeit one of the warmer growers. Some of the Asian gesneriads are very cold tolerant and some can be grown outside over our winters here on the Pacific West Coast.
While the genus Aeschynanthus includes species and cultivars that are referred to as "lipstick plants", A. speciosus is not one of them. The name derives from the emergence of a red flower bud from within a tubular calyx, in the manner of lipstick emerging from a tube. This is characteristic of species like A. lobbianus (properly A. radicans) and A. pulcher. See the photos at http://gesneriads.ca/aeschyn4.htm and http://gesneriads.ca/aeschy26.htm, and the antique print at http://gesneriads.ca/aeschynanthus_lobbianus.htm.
You may also be interested in an online article, posted at http://gesneriads.ca/artaesch.htm. The author is the late Mary Mendum of the RBGE, and I believe it is still relatively up to date.
A variety of other articles are due for posting on this website, and are in hand, including an overview of the Gesneriad family by Anton Weber
(a co-author of the website on Gesneriad genera that is cited in the Aeschynanthus note).
Ron
Thanks Marilyn and Ron.
I have a plant that has the same flowers as this but the leaves are not as glossy and the backs of them are purple with white veins. The plant flowers almost all year round but also leaks a sort of sticky sap all year round as well. Is there some way to prevent it from leaking??? I love the plant but it makes such a mess.