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No pansies allowed

A woman who is wild about African violets, and leads others who are wild about them, tries to raise winners.

BRANDON - Mina Menish pushes open a door dripping with ribbons from African violet shows.

"This is the baby shop," she says, leading the way into a room where walls are lined with small African violets.

Here the plants receive the nurturing necessary to turn them into contest winners. They sit under fluorescent lights in trays of water, elevated by a plastic grate. A string hangs from the bottom of their tiny pots into the water below so the "babies" can absorb liquid as needed.

Overwatering, Menish warns, is how most people kill their African violets.

Several times a week, Menish, 72, plucks leaves off the undersides of the plants. She periodically transfers the growing plants to larger pots. Eventually, she will put a plastic ring she calls a training bra around the pot to lift the leaves and force them to grow in an even, wide circle - a sign of a prize-winning plant.

Menish, president of the Tampa African Violet Association, keeps nearly 200 African violets in her Brandon home. She received her first as a birthday gift 40 years ago when living in Boise, Idaho. The plant moved with her and her husband, John, around the country - from Michigan to Minnesota, Colorado and then Florida.

The plant died in 1974, but the Menishes kept buying and raising African violets.

In 1989, they joined the Tampa African Violet Society so they could learn more about how to take care of their dozen or so flowering plants. In 1991, the couple entered their first competition.

When John died in 1999, Mina continued with the African violets. She spends eight to 10 hours a week tending her indoor garden.

The plants are easy to propagate; Menish simply pulls a leaf from one and puts it in a pot of water until tiny roots form. Then it graduates to dirt.

African violets, most of which have thick circular leaves covered by a soft fuzz, come in thousands of varieties distinguished by their blossoms. The Dancin' Devil blooms have pink petals with dark purple flecks; the Red Lantern has velvety, deep purple petals; Music Box Dancer's flowers are purple with white edges.

"You hear a lot when people come to the shows - "Oh, my grandmother had a whole windowsill full. But she didn't have so many colors,' " Menish said.

The plants, she said, have been cross-bred extensively over the past 40 years to create the huge spectrum of flowers.

In competitions, judges give high marks for symmetrical flowers, leaves with no brown spots, a good proportion of blossoms to leaves, a full circle of leaves, and plants that completely hide the soil beneath.

Menish said she's partial to plants that shape well on their own and don't need the help of the training bra.

But like a mother with her children, she refuses to say which of her many African violets she likes best.

"I couldn't possibly choose."

The Tampa African Violet Society presents its 28th annual judged show and sale titled "Violets in Song and Dance" from noon to 7 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Hillsborough County Farm Bureau, at State Road 60 and Mulrennan Road in Valrico. Admission is free. Plants are priced from $4.55. Call 681-1910 or 251-1581.