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lorisarvendu

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Everything posted by lorisarvendu

  1. Well they're always hungry aren't they? But trust me, this one's been well fed. One of the pitchers had bent in half so I snapped it off, and the stench of the liquid that dripped onto my fingers...ye gods. My 11-yr old lad wants to rename them my "Bum plants" because that's what they smell off. Just Bum you understand. Not my Bum.
  2. Not trying to wind anyone up, although I should know by now that one of the last refuges of the Pedantic is on internet forums. :grin: Although I've picked up almost all of my plants from garden centres, most of them have been labelled with something stunningly unhelplful like "Sarracenia" or even worse "Insect-Eating Plant". Luckily I've been successful in identifying most of them, through them being fairly obvious example of their species/sub-species. I figured this was some form of cross, but thought it might be familiar to more those more experienced than me. Shame really, as I don't know what to call it now. I guess I'll just call it Jim. Oddly enough though, one that was labelled as "Sarracenia Micke" I've been unable to find examples of anywhere else. It's a weird one and I'm beginning to suspect there might be two different plants in the same pot. Most of the of the pitchers look like this, upright but with a distinctive purpurea-like hood. However dotted amongst them are 3 of these. There doesn't seem to be any indication that they are separate plants, so could some of the leaves be "regressing" or something?
  3. Yes I think you're probably right. Judith Hindle it is then.
  4. Here it is. Bit difficult to see as it's mixed in with the others, but it's a fairly standard sarracenia trumpet shape. I like the way the hood stands up at the corners, giving it a kind of "Denis Healey" eyebrows effect. But of course all trumpet pitchers of this type also always remind me of Fozzie Bear.
  5. I'll get a better pic tomorrow, cos it's half -9 pm. But if anyone's in the Long Eaton/Notts area, they have them at Bardills. :)
  6. Hi there all I picked this up at the local garden centre, marked up as just "Sarracenia" (as usual!). It's about 8 inches high with a quite wide brillliant red trumpet (actually a bit more maroon than this pic shows). Can anyone give any suggestions as to what kind of a cross it might be? I would guess there's some leucophylla in there, judging by the white patches on the hood (which you can't see as well in real life). Thanks! Dave
  7. You're right, yes it does, and it almost certainly is! [Edit: its Sarracenia × wrigleyana] I actually had one of these a couple of years ago and I gave it away because I didn't have enough window ledge space (this was before I'd tried an outside bog). Unfortunately when you pick these up from a garden centre they don't have much information on them. In fact this one had a little plastic tag that said "Sarracenia Purpurea" with a (completely wrong) picture of an ordinary purp, so I had no idea what it really was. Our local garden centre (Bardills, on the A52 near J25 M1, if you're in the Derby/Notts area) does have a healthy & variable CP trade, but they don't label them as well as they might. I suspect that most of what they sell probably ends up dead because the buyers don't really know how to look after it. I can see how the growers have been fascinated by the successful cross, resulting in this weird 45-degree hybrid, but I can't honestly see how it benefits the plant. As far as I can figure, psittacina's horizontal adaptation works because it comes from an environment that periodically floods, resulting in aquatic fauna finding their way in. This leaf isn't going to pick up much because a) it's almost vertical, so it's out of the flood zone and b) the hole is too small. But it looked nice and I just had to buy it.
  8. I've had a stone pot hanging around for ages, so I thought I'd try some sarracenias in it two years ago. I was very protective over them at first and kept covering them up with tea-towels when the frost came down, (I even moved them into the garage one cold night!) but last winter I didn't...just to see what happened. And here they are now (July 2009), in the front garden doing very well. I have mainly purpurea (which has been very hardy through the winter), some leucophylla and a stevensii. I have no idea where this capensis came from. I didn't plant it there! But it seems to have also survived the winter. I also had a few more sarracenias in an old ceramic sink out the back garden for a couple of years, but they were suffering from slugs & snails so this spring I moved them into another pot (plastic this time). I have some purpurea, a purpurea/psittacina cross I guess (it's quite nice to look at, but Heaven knows how it catches anything!), and something called S. Micke (??) that I picked up in a garden centre. Oh, and there's a small VFT in there as well. I used black bin liners for both pots, and a simple 1:1 moss peat/sharp sand mix, with a bit of sphagnum moss thrown in. The purpureas seem to like it - this is the first time I've ever had flowers from them!
  9. I had two little bogs in the garden, mainly with purpurea, though there were a couple of taller sarracenias. They both came through the winter ok, but recently one of them has been having problems, leaves going brown etc. I decided to get rid of one bog and transplant the surviving trumpets into the other bog. While digging into the soil, a strange smell wafted up and I realised what had killed off my purpurea. Cat urine. B****rds"! On a separate note, does anyone use river water for bogs? We have a lot of streams in the area (and the Trent just down the road), and it would certainly be cheaper and easier than scrounging rainwater from the neighbour's butt (fnarr fnarr) and spending a fortune on distilled.
  10. A few hours later...Yes it does. And tightly enough too!
  11. I've just noticed this leaf on my long-lived VFT. Just shows how much I take notice of it! I wonder if it can close? I'll have to try it with a fat blue-bottle.
  12. Well, here I am, almost a year on, and how's the little fellow doing? Not bad, actually. You can't tell scale very well, but the relative size of the perlite gives it away, plus the fact that in the earlier photos it was in a small pot like the one on the bottom right...which incidentally has another cutting in it. Figured I've had such success with this one, I might as well try another.
  13. I've not been having much luck with these. I had a cluster of three that I put outside in about May. It got hot so they all went red and started drying up. I brought them in and two kicked the bucket, but the third came back to life. It's been inside ever since, but last week it just started going like this. Since I'm not sure what's upset it, I don't really know what to do to help it recover. Would less light be worth trying? Or less water, or more? Everything else is doing so well, but my green fingers seem to be failing me here.
  14. For a plant that is traditionally difficult to grow, this little chap must like it on my window ledge! (note pencil for scale)
  15. Here's a pic. Does this look ill or is it just me?
  16. Ta for that. Bummer about the leucophylla though, since we have no shed and the garage has no windows. Guess I'll just have to put it on the landing ledge (which has no radiator so is probably the coolest area). Not the best house for CPs!
  17. Hi all I've got a big purpurea (ooer missus) and a nice leucophylla that have been out in the back garden against a south-east facing fence all summer. I've seen posts on here where people are leaving them out all year round (in bogs admittedly, mine are in pots). Nights are starting to draw in, but it's still sunny up here in Notts. Could I leave them outside permanently? If not, is there anyone from this neck of the woods who could suggest when I should bring them in? Might have a problem with the purpurea as I've had to repot it and I don't know if we've got a window ledge big enough!! I've seen photos of sarraceniae (is that the right plural?) under frost in their natural habitat.
  18. My alice is looking a bit sad. There's not a lot of dew on the leaves, and instead of a nice pale green, the leaves are looking a bit more khaki, although it's still rolling up over prey. It's on a window ledge along with three cheerful VFTs and a perky capensis. They all get a good few hours of sunlight (south-east facing) and they've all been fine for the last few years. I use 2:1 Moss peat/perlite mix. The only thing I'm wondering is whether I've been a bit enthusiastic with the watering, due to the hot summer we've had. I particular I tend to pour water over the plants rather than just the soil. Could this be the case?
  19. Well it was starting to get a bit cramped, so I did move it out, and it's doing very well thankyou! Here's the latest pic. The leaf over on the far bottom right has a small fly inside it.
  20. I thought that the motility of sudew leaves was limited to the leaf that the insect was captured by, and furthermore was primarily stimulated by the movement of the struggling insect. I've got a small aliciae that had a bad summer and is recovering indoors. I fed it a bluebottle that I'd just swatted, and which was rather larger than it would normally capture on its own. Sure enough over the next few days I was pleased to see the leaf in question had moved upright and curled over the fly. This was not stimulated by struggling prey, as the prey was already dead. Now a few weeks later three more adjacent leaves have also curled up, effectively enclosing the prey on all sides. None of these leaves had any contact with the fly, so sundews obviously have a much more sophisticated capture mechanism than I'd previously thought.
  21. Cheers for that. Yes it is hard to assess scale. It's about 5mm across. Those greeny-white lumps are perlite. Personally would you leave it in the pot?
  22. Well it's about 3 inches away from the plant itself, not connected in any obvious way (unless there's some kind of tendril or shoot underneath it?) I haven't disturbed it yet, but should I pop it into it's own pot, or leave it to clump?
  23. Hi all I have one VFT, but I suddenly noticed this growing in the pot today. What is it? A bud or offshoot or something? Has it pollinated itself and seeded into the pot? It's very small, but the leaves look the same.
  24. Two of mine have croaked, but one is coming back to life. Hooray! In future I shall provide sunblock.
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