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Hi Tjark and welcome to teh forums. Looks like you have a nice collection there! Cheers Steve

Hi guys, Just wanted to report a case of self-pollination offspring... So it occurs... But at a veeeery low rate...

That is the point I was trying to make. There are no salts to start with unless the suppliers have used salt laden compost which I find extremely unlikely for obvious reasons.

One of my greatest Ionasii clones is the one of Urs Zimmermann.

Hi everyone. I've built an interactive guide to Nepenthes species: https://www.carnivorousplants.co.uk/resources/nepenthes-interactive-guide/ It includes a lowland/highland temperature chart, and a species list which can be sorted by altitudinal range or alphabetically, as required. I've also created a hybrid calculator, which can estimate the ideal conditions for a hybrid based on its parents' habitats. Many thanks to Rob Cantley of BE for suggesting this feature. I hope other growers find this useful. I'm keen to update and improve it based on feedback - several people have suggested a 'sort by country/geography' feature for the species list, which I'm currently working on. Any other ideas, please just shout. Cheers, Tom

As well as CP's I grow several plants of Aristolochia. These plants have amazing flowers that trap insects for pollination. A. sempervirens These flowers are only a couple of CM long, but the plant gets smothered with them. They have a mushroomy smell which is quite strong. The plant is fairly tardy in the UK. A grifithii Another fairly hardy plant (apparently). A macroura This is by far my favourite. The flowers are amazingly similar to Sarracenia pitchers but they absolutely stink. These are flowers from a couple of years ago, still waiting for buds to form this year. A gigantea This is an extremely vigorous plant that produces large flowers. They have no smell at all I also grow 2 forms of A. fimbriata that I am still waiting for them to flower and A. chiquitensis. I

Lilium catesbaei has been given a bad reputation because it's been nearly impossible to acquire anywhere in the world (until now!) and even expert lily growers have had poor results growing these lilies. Here's an example from B&D lilies: http://www.lilybulb.com/ls25.html Good news is, this plant is now readily available, and we got lucky on our first try and figured it out on our first try. IF you think about growing these like Carnivorous plants (which is the key to success), they're easier to grow than a venus fly trap! Perhaps others haven't had much luck with these plants because they were trying to grow them somewhat like other lilies, except slightly submerged in water. These plants HATE being submerged in any amount of water! So how do you grow these plants? From seeds, you can sow them on the surface of pure, good quality peat moss. Absolutely no treatment is required, but these seeds require light to germinate, so do not cover them! Use distilled or deionized water like you would for carnivorous plants. For best results, the soil temperature should be maintained at or close to around 27C (80F) to get uniform germination. After about 2 weeks, you'll see roots pop out from the embryo, but it can take up to a month for them to fully sprout. Watering is key to success:keep the soil as wet as possible, but NEVER waterlogged! well, there's probably exceptions to the rule, like growing them in tall pots, but if the roots rot, you can't say I didn't warn ya! The roots hate having wet feet and will rot if you keep them wet for too long. As a reminder, water quality is also key, since these plants are relatively sensitive to salts. Anyhow, maybe a month or two after germinating, you'll start to see 2-3 leaves form, and little bulbs will become visible on the surface of the soil! At this stage, you can start fertilizing. While these plants aren't as sensitive to salts in the water as carnivores in general, they're more sensitive than other lilies, and can tolerate only slightly higher salt concentrations in comparison to Sarracenia. I recommend trying 1/5 concentration of maxsea fertilizer (16-16-16) twice a month maximum. Keep in mind, it only takes one over-fertilizing application to kill the whole batch, so be conservative with the concentration and frequency of fertilizers. Here's what they look like when you can start feeding them, although if you want to be on the safe side, you can wait a little longer as these still have sufficient food in the peat and seed to grow at an optimal rate: Once you have hardened off seedlings, you can slowly acclimate them to full sun. They love as much light as you can give them, just like Sarracenia! After being grown for a full season, plants will form a bulb on the surface of the soil and it'll look like this if you kept your plants happy. Every last one of these bulbs bloomed the following year, even the small ones! At this stage, they will naturally start to go dormant, so don't worry if you see leaves yellowing and falling off. Eventually, all you will see is a bulb. If you have a community pot, this is a good time to transplant them into a bigger pot and space them out so they have room to grow for next season. Be very careful, the bulbs are very fragile and will break into pieces if you apply pressure on them. I recommend cutting the roots to ensure bulbs aren't destroyed (just leave a stub and they'll grow back strong the next year). These plants require a cool winter dormancy, and in the wild it has been as cold as -15C (5F) in recent years (edit:I just flowered a seedling after 6 months, no cool dormancy! it was probably caused by heat stress though and the flower was a freak, as it emerged from a side leaf, not the main growth point!). When they are dormant, keep the bulbs moist at all times but never water-logged! Absolutely no fertilizer too, you'll kill them. Once they come back in the spring and you see 3 or 4 new leaves, start fertilizing with the same regime as menitoned above. Around early summer, they'll start to look like this: Late summer to early fall, if the plants are going to bloom, they will start to grow upwards and form a stalk, like this: Some leaves at the bottom may start to turn yellow or purplish, don't worry about it. The plant is translocating nutrients into the flower stalk, and this is totally normal. Continue to fertilize around 2x a month maximum with the 1/5 strength fertilizer. About 2 weeks before the plants bloom, the flower bud will swell up and look like this. This is about the last time you want to fertilize until next year: If you did everything right and have multiple happy plants, you'll end up with scenes like this. They don't tend to bloom all at the same exact time, which is actually nice because the flowers only last about a week, but with staggered openings, the blooming period can last for a few weeks: Lots of flower buds here: Normally, L. catesbaei has 6 petals, but we've found some with 8, and my friend has one with 9 petals! Never documented before until now, we've managed to get 3 heads produced on a single stalk. I'm not aware of anyone ever finding this happening in nature, or in cultivation: We even found a peachy clone, really beautiful: Another shot: Some standard looking clones: I case you haven't noticed, I grow these in shallow community trays with great success. They could probably benefit from a deeper container. Anyhow, a thick layer of moss develops on the surface of the peat after a year or two of growing in the same substrate. Every winter, I scrape this off and replace it with fresh peat. As long as you originally spaced the bulbs out well, they'll keep growing into thicker and thicker clumps year after year. Other online resources suspected these plants are monocarpic (grow, bloom, and then die off) but keep them happy, and they'll continue to come back year after year: So there you have it! PM or email me with any questions you may have (address in my signature line below), or feel free to post here.

Hi All, I have just purchased some pure Neem Oil to use for an Insecticide for a few of my plants. The directions say to add 2 tbsp per gallon and 1 1/2 tbsp of dish soap per liter to help dissolve the oil into the water. So is this concentration of soap harmful to my plants or will they be ok with it? I have a few Byblis that have a bunch of tiny black bugs on them, and a few Nepenthes with scale. Thanks