27 replies to this topic

[Vince81]

After the public visit, someone advised me to call for a Kew Gardener. I did that with a red telephonic cabine!
I took a date for the afternoon, and the result was great! More than 2 hours seeing the collection, the private nursery.


MANY BIG SPECIAL thanks to Nick Johnson, who let me to visit these greenhouses, taken his time for me, and answering at all my questions.

I'm going to put the same species by packet, in spite of the fact it's not every time the same plant. I think it's easier to see.


On the door:



When I saw around me:



The difference is here, flagrant: I grow seedlings, they grow plants!


Some R. gorgonias i the foreground, near to the brumisation:




New species, young plants and cuttings:


N. alba:


N. deaniana:




N. kongkandana:


N. bokorensis:


N. treubiana:


N. thai:


I love this one. N. eustachya:

[Vince81]

...
N. maxima:



N. pervillei:


Plant from in-vitro    :


Cute N. villosa:



In a Bromelia, U. nelumbifolia:



N. albomarginata red:




N. albomarginata:





N. ampullaria:






N. bicalcarata:





N. treubiana:

...

[Vince81]

N. danseri:



N. fusca:







N. vogelii:




N. truncata:


N. pilosa x veitchii:


N. veitchii:


Strange N. ventricosa...seems to be a hybrid:




N. tobaica:


In red:


N. stenophylla:




...

[Vince81]

...

N. spectabilis:


N. spathulata:


N. insignis:



2 N. sanguinea:


N. reinwardtiana:



N. rafflesiana:




N. philippinensis:


N. pervillei :



N. mirabilis var. anamensis:


Seems to be N. merilliana x alata:



Again N. maxima:


N. eymae:




Another one:

[i]

[Vince81]

N. rajah[/i]. With difficulties to grow due to in vitro's problem.


N. sibuyanensis:


N. sanguinea:


N. petiolata:


N. macfarlanei:


N. reiwardtiana x macrovulgaris. Purple plant:





And hidden in Kew Gardens:



N. burkei:



Wonderful N. ampullaria 'Cantley's Red' :



Keep cool. They have also terrariums :

[Phil Green]

Fantastic pic's - Thanks for showing.
I've never seem 'behind the scenes' - how lucky of you.
I didn't realise they now had such wonderful Neps.

[Daniel O.]

Wow, millions of pictures, like you have promised it a few days ago.
They have really a very big number of plants and are doing a good job.
For sure you have had a lot of fun there.

Best regards,

Dani

[djh]

fantastic pics.
i,ve never been to kew. but i,ll have to visit some time
thanks for the pics.
      

[faunista]

really fantastic!

[Sebulon]

Wow... Just wow... If someone accidentally let me there, I think my bank account would be empty in a second!  

[D_muscipula]

I do believe I've just added some new nepenthes to my want list.

[gardenofeden]

great pics
I think those terraria are "dew-point" cabinets for cuttings

[christerb]

Thanks for letting us accompany you on this visit to Kew. It must have been a wonderful time wandering about, and seeing all the well grown plants.

It seems that not only we hobby growers have problems with mislabeled plants.

Regards,

Christer

[Vince81]

With pleasure :). Thanks for all the comments.

You see what I meant few days ago, Dani?

Sebulon, no plants were on sale, it was a botanical collection.

Indeed, Stephen, these terraria were used for cuttings, which were placed after in the greenhouse.

Christer, I met some problems of mislabeled plants, and I said them to Nick. He explained he has to take care about a HUGE number of plants, and it is difficult to be ultra-rigorous.
But, really, he tries and he manages to realize a good job.

[Dave Evans]

Dear Vince,

What a collection!  Wow.  Some species are a first time for me, seeing healthy examples of well grown plants!

N. pervillei still looks mad about something though...  Seems like very few people can make this species happy in cultivation.  I'm certainly not one of them either

I realize these aren't your plants, but I noticed some things I'm wondering about.  This looks more like N. burkei to me, than does the plant labeled "N. bukei":


and




While this plant looks like N. ventricosa, and has been mislabeled at Kew as "N. burkei" for a very long time:






This plant could use a new label, when it was distributed, it widely believed N. chaniana was N. pilosa.  However, this situation has now been clarified and the other parent of this fairly common natural hybrid is now known to be N. chaniana with N. pilosa being much rarer and only known from one location:

N. chaniana * N. veitchii; AFAIK, all plants in cultivation are single male clone.




Not only is this not N. ventricosa, it doesn't appear to have any N. ventricosa in it.  I swear this looks like what I would expect from a hybrid between N. eustachya and N. alata!  

and


But it is probably a pure N. alata (in the broad sense)...  Or an example of a hybrid with "hairless alata" species which looks rather intermediate between N. alata and N. eustachya.  This "hairless alata" (and something else/new again) was featured as N. alata in Stewart McPherson's new books.

For comparison, here is a photo of pure N. alata (the plant in the photo is a highlander from Luzon which strictly matches the description by Jebb and Cheek):


I think if you hybridized N. alata pictured above with the "hairless alata", you would like get pitchers very close to these:

Edited by Dave Evans, 11 November 2009 - 23:15 PM.

[calek]

ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR CP'S!
Why when I went to Kew gardens in June, did I not see this awesome greenhouse? I mean it looks pretty big and difficult to miss!
Well, anyhow good pics.

[marcello catalano]

Well, if we talk about mislabelling, then the "insignis" is a N. x coccinea :)
But I know, there at Kew it's difficult to stay behind all those plants. After all, we all have a passion for carnivores here. But there, suddenly your boss comes and say "ok, from tomorrow you'll be in charge for the Nepenthes, the orchids and the bromeliads", or even for the whole tropical nursery. You can't be an expert of everything, so you basically make sure that the plants get watered, at least!! :) One day, someone will take your place, so hopefully he'll make a better job. These guys are heroes, but the problem with "institute collections" is this, there's not just one person following one specific collection for his whole life.
Strange, I see a number of plants of excellent quality, and some others in bad conditions. Maybe they just need some new compost and a bigger pot, who knows...

[rsivertsen]

So true "cello! Reminds me of Longwood Gardens. Curators have their own career paths like everybody else, in any other job, and when a position opens up for advancement, they get repositioned to a higher tier, perhaps growing plants that are totally unfamiliar to them. Some places have union rules that determine these things.

Longwood grew ALL their Nepenthes the SAME way, in hanging baskets. I tried to give them some established N. bical, N. amps and a few other lowland things that needed to be in large pots, and kept fairly wet, and told them NOT to put these plants into those small hanging baskets, but if they needed to repot them, to put them into large pots that could have a small tray of water under them.

A few months later, I came back to find all the lowland plants I gave them were limp and in small hanging baskets, that soon died afterward.

Sad thing is that these plants are all at the whims and mercy of those who are in charge, and if someone new comes in who is NOT at ALL interested in Nepenthes, and would rather have a large Cycad, or cactus and succulant collection instead, guess what; the Nepenthes get thrown into the incinerator to make room for the other plants. Longwood isn't even allowed to just give those plants away either, like they used to do. Just the way it is, a reality check.  - Rich

Edited by rsivertsen, 30 November 2009 - 15:32 PM.

[flycatchers]

marcello catalano, on 30th November 2009 - 15:54 PM, said:

But I know, there at Kew it's difficult to stay behind all those plants. After all, we all have a passion for carnivores here. But there, suddenly your boss comes and say "ok, from tomorrow you'll be in charge for the Nepenthes, the orchids and the bromeliads", or even for the whole tropical nursery. You can't be an expert of everything, so you basically make sure that the plants get watered, at least!! :) One day, someone will take your place, so hopefully he'll make a better job. These guys are heroes, but the problem with "institute collections" is this, there's not just one person following one specific collection for his whole life.
Strange, I see a number of plants of excellent quality, and some others in bad conditions. Maybe they just need some new compost and a bigger pot, who knows...

I think you have struck the nail on the head. People who are passionate about a particular species moved to other areas. So the plants can look good one year and less happy another. The thing that puzzled me when I have visited this private nursery in the past was the overall growing conditions. The bulk of the houses were heated and setup to lowland conditions- and indeed most of the lowlands were loving it. But the majority of the highlands were also in similar conditions and were not so happy! Only one area seemed cooler and that was filled mainly with orchids. Giving better highland conditions would not only help the plants but cut their fuel bill as well! Even so from these batch of photos the majority do look well and thriving so perhaps they have tweaked the thermostat!

My only other criticism is where they cut back large plants, take cuttings and compost the mother plant! Only if another   recognised Botanical garden askes for a particular plant do they supply it. Otherwise it is binned. I fear this is because of the  "institute collections" attitude. Can you imagine if they sold these discarded plants in their shops rather than the Dutch imports they do sell!

Some of their older Neps still have original and now redundant names on their labels. And others clearly wrong like a  Nepenthes ramispina labelled as hamata! I did point it out but on a later visit it was still wrong!

Excellent photos Vince  

cheers

bill

[megamowglee]

Hi all!
Firstly, Vince, thanks so much for posting the pics of your visit on the net, it was good to meet you and always nice to see such a great reaction for the collections!
So, to answer some of the statements made on the thread

Firstly, we don't always compost the mother plant! But as you can guess, the tropical nursery collection as a whole is running at about 25,000 accessions, if we have to keep on average 3 plants per accession, that's a grand total of nearly 75,000 plants, from all over the tropics and all different genera!! If we kept big plants of everything that grew as quickly as Neps, we'd very soon run out of space!! I try to get the large plants out to the public glasshouses, but this is'nt always easy, as we still need to make displays that have a variety of genera... Watch this space though, Nepenthes zone coming soon...

We don't sell plants! Many of the collectors supply us for research only, to sell would be going against everything a place that's here for the plants sake (not the money!)

Even if I left tomorrow, the Nepenthes collections would not be left to the whim of another gardener, to destroy as he/she wishes. We have a commitment to our collections that transcends generations of gardeners. To give you an example - I was just the other day looking at a Bulbophyllum in flower that had been in the gardens since 1899! However, that said, our collections are only as good as the gardener looking after them. For this I am guilty of having some specimens that don't look their best, but I am trying (everyday!) with my team to get them the best they can be. Not making excuses, but this collection is one of 7 plant collections my team looks after, including the threatened island flora collection, some species of this collection are extinct in the wild and only one or two remain in cultivation. So, priorities...

The highland house is predominantly for Orchids. I'm afraid that in the grand scheme of things, the orchid collection is big and old, the highland Nep collection is relatively new, but I try and beg for more space every year!

Naming - Now this is a biggie for me and the team. Let me explain - We are the gardeners, we spend our time looking after the plants, conducting protocols, propagating and teaching the next generation of gardeners. Herbarium botanists do the naming and unfortunately ours are also pretty tied up and have been for a while. I can't just rename a accession, because I need information like the original type specimen authority etc... I promise you though, I'm really trying hard to get some botanists down next year to get to work on the correct naming of the collections, I'm even threatening to send plants to them!!

So, thanks for all the lovely comments, and the feedback... BTW, can anyone suggest a good compost mix w/ ratios for the rajas?
Nickxx