Rob-Rah

Why is the spat x viet so pale? I grew this a number of years ago and the pitchers were a nice reddish colour with patterns on them.

You should be able to get hold of seeds reasonably easily.

Nice. Can you give some indications about the conditions in that last tank? Light, heat? Best wishes.

Chiltern Seeds used to list it - not sure if they still do

Hi all, I don't know if it is of interest to people here, but I am going to try to get interest going in another area of interest for me: the flora of the Australian bush and the Southern African Veld (and the cape flora particularly). I notice there is no interactive web-resource for the protea family at present (the forum on the Finebush website gets almost no traffic at all and is fairly useless). I have started setting up a new forum for all this: http://gondwanaflora.proboards105.com If you're into sourthern hemisphere plants, and the Myrtaceae, Proteaceae and Ericaceae families from there, feel free to join up. And feel free to make any suggestions for improvements and changes as appropriate over on that forum. With best wishes.

Oops - I have mis-remembered. The plant I was thinking of was C. cunninghamii (C. cooperi is not very hardy at all...). Still be interested in seeing progress of your plants though!

I wonder - could you post a pic of your young C. cooperi? It is meant to be a species that is expected to grow outdoors in the UK - frost and snow in the wild - if I am correct in remembering. I played with spores of it a few years ago but didn't really do very well, and didn't consider it much loss as I expected extrenely slow growth. But what you have said implies the opposite. So would love to see pics! Best wishes.

Don't all bromeliads do the same?

I wasn't ever looking terribly hard but I have never seen pings (or any CPs) in Plitvice when I was there. Karstic ecosystems are perhaps not the best place for them, but I don't know. ;-)

Aliciae is much easier to keep happy too ;-)

I love the slightly ghostly quality of the flowers of lords and ladies in spring in the woods. There are some nicely variegated names cultivars around too.

I have had mine planted out in SW London in a shady corner of my garden for around 5 years now with various other species! However, I am considering taking up and potting the Arisaema ones that don't do as well in the open soil. Some are fine there, some I feel would do better in pots... Although this one does flower fine out of doors it never reaches more than a couple of feet. All the Arisaema I have tried outdoors have been fine there, but have been planted deeeeeeeep. Over a foot in most circumstances. This offers fairly secure frost-protection. The stem can have a lovely milky-chocolate brown colour. Very snake-like. Cheers.

Well, might as well feed back. Nothing germinated as yet a few weeks later. No Byblis rorida, B. lamellata, B. gigantea, Roridula gorgonias or R. dentata. Not even Drosophyllum (which is usually like mustard and cress for me). Seed from various sources. I didn't expect to see germination from some of the tropical utrics (U. lasiocaulis, U. arnhemica, U. leptoplectra), but it's annoying to have an aparrent toal failure. The moss is just starting show promise in some of the pots though. Think I will go back to my sarras and runner beans. Pants. I guess if I am really patient then the Roridula and Drosophyllum might come up in their pots if left a few more years in the greenhouse. How long do I leave the Byblis before I chuck them away? Alternatively, does anyone know an effective way to treat already-sown pots of seeds with GA3 (I have mixed up some fresh today for treatment of other seeds, and may as well use it if possible.......). Thanks.

No it isn't - it comes from half a world away in South America.

More acidic soil might help. I know it affects S. purpurea's colouring.

How did you germinate the D. hilaris?

My outdoors barrel-bog flava is showing its first red proto-pitchers at soil-level already.

Joseph's ability to keep his pings amazingly happy despite (or maybe because of) using conditions that have led to the deaths of plants of many of the rest of us has been a source of much interest and lively debate on this forum for a number of years if memory serves! Just do a quick search of topics. :-) I believe Vic was doing some comparative testing with conditions with some of his plants after seeing how well Joseph's do as well. I think the theory has something about the presence of microorganisms/nematodes in the soil, but I forget....... However, for me, and note again that I grow with cold and comparitively dark UK winters, I have only had rot and death when I allowed properly dormant plants moisture in dormancy. The trickiest time for me has been spring, knowing when it is safe to start watering. I have very few Mexican pings (any more)...

I let the plants tell me when to water them. When they start putting out summer leaves (and therefore the roots that take up moisture) then I start watering. My gypsicola usually doesn't start until around the start of June or later. I have had too much rot in winter rosette of Mexican pings to ever attempt any other mode of watering at all now.

Lovely. I have one big question to ask you... How do you keep the soil so clean and free of moss and algae? My own plants are very easily buried by mosses. Is it just a matter of picking them out, or do you grow with the soil surface slightly under water? Thanks.

P. gypsicola is a real bone-dry dormancy plant. It grows in xerophytic conditions (not the nice, moist, mossy rocks that many other Mexican pings hang out on). I lost one to the barest of moisture in winter (hence I moved to tufa growing). But then again, I grow with cold winters (2C perhaps). Indoors it may do better. I woulnd't personally leave it sitting in wet soil when in doprmant rosette though :-/ Incidentally, the plant in the middle of your pic looks very unhappy.....

Mine took a couple of months to settle in, and even more to get it to pitcher. Getting it established was a bit tricky, and the first plant I tried expired quickly. Now it is established it grows as well as any I have. Mine's in a small tank with no artificial heating under normal household temperatures (c.16-28C I guess). It sits near a SE facing window, but gets no direct sun. It has light supplemented by a mere 15W tube. It shares this tank with a few other lowland neps amongst other things. It is growing in a 4" diameter round plastic mesh pot in a mix of mostly seramis with some sphagnum moss mixed in, whcih is kept quite wet most of the time (but seramis by nature cannot really get waterlogged). This year it has produced two extra basal rosettes, and the main stem is around 10" tall. It pitchers readily for me now (but didn't produce any for around 6 months of acquiring it), and they are long-lasting. I would post a photo, but the last time I took out of the tank for photos the pitchers dried out and died within mere minutes! It likes the humid conditions. Best wishes.

I grow mine on a lump of tufa (no soil). It makes it impossible to overwater. The tufa stands in the water trays when the plant is in summer growth, and sits out of them, compeltely dry, the rest of the year. This was the plants emerging from dormancy last year. They are - of course - currently dormant: Cheers.

I have grown aristolochioides with a min of around that this winter and it is fine. Don't know about the rest though. Then again, clones in cultivation may vary in their tolerances, so there's no guarantee....

Thanks so much!