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A visit to Darlingtonia country


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Hi all,

I just came back from a business trip to California. Having said that, I actually had 3 days to spend on my own which I used for a trip up to the north.

Fernando and Bob showed some spring pictures from at least some of the sites I intended to visited, so there will certainly be an overlap there. I hope, you do not mind that.

This first set of pictures will show shots from sites along a small river not too far out of Gasquet, California. As starter, I have two shots of the largest habitat (at least the largest, I know along this road). I visited this site 3 times in the 90's and my last visit was just about 10 years ago (that really makes me feel old...) and since them there seem to be some changes to this habitat.

bersicht1hb1.th.jpg bersicht2th9.th.jpg

After more than 10 years, my memory may not be that correct, but I keep having the impression, that on my previous visits the major part of the darlingtonia plants were growing a few more meters up the road as I still have the memory of seeing the next bridge while standing between the plants. This may or may not be true, but the pictures show the the ground keeps sliding away, so it may be possible that the site I visited then is buried or slid away by now.

On the next slide you can see that the sliding part is not merely coming from my imagination. The steepness does not show very well, but this piece of land with some darlingtonia on top will certainly hit the road in a couple of years from now.

abbruchkantegc0.th.jpg

Now some pictures of plants from this site. As in the previous visits, there were plenty of seedlings and medium sized plants making it a difficult task, not to step on them. In contrast, there were relatively few large clumps of old plants.

darling1yp6.th.jpg darling2mi2.th.jpg darling3ps4.th.jpg darling4cs0.th.jpg darling5ak2.th.jpg ping1ww5.th.jpg darling6oh5.th.jpg darling7kl4.th.jpg darling8hr5.th.jpg darling9yk3.th.jpg darling10sc4.th.jpg darling11zk7.th.jpg darling12ah9.th.jpg

This was by far the largest site, but on careful inspection along the road some other plants could be found. The next is a shady spot at a small, steep creek (you could call if waterfall, if you wish) with lots of P. macroceras ssp. nortensis growing in sometimes extremely dark spots.

The site

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Some plants:

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In most cases the seed pods were open or about to open. However, there was one very late flower still in business:

2ping3wi9.th.jpg

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The third site again is a small creek, larger and much less steep than the previous. Here I found isolated clumps of Darlingtonia, but no Pinguicula.

3bersichtbu6.th.jpg

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On this site it was quite appearent, that something was chewing on the young pitchers. Nearly no pitcher in development was still intact. As I found slime on pitcher of another site, I suspect snails to do the damage, but I could be wrong with that.

3darling2mj0.th.jpg 3darling3lw2.th.jpg 3darling4ok8.th.jpg

More pictures from other sites will follow once I have the time to upload more.

Cheers

Dieter

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Thank you for your nice comments!

The open seed pod I mentioned above, were from P. macroceras ssp. nortensis. D. californica was far from producing ripe seeds. However, I found some seed pods from last year still holding a few seeds. However, old inflorescences can still be usefule as you can see here (well, number 3 may have been something different):

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But then, Darlingtonia hoods aren't a bad spot either...

libellenhe5.th.jpg

If a cobra lily doesn't do the trick, any other lily may be an alternative :tu: :

schwalbenschwanzoj8.th.jpg schwalbenschwanz2mv1.th.jpg

Cheers

Dieter

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Hello Dieter!

Great pics, I really enjoyed seeing what these plants look like in the middle of the summer, at some of the same locations I visited!

Next time you're here for work, let's go out in the field together! ;)

Best wishes,

Fernando Rivadavia

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Next time you're here for work, let's go out in the field together! ;)

Hi Fernando,

I actually thought about sending you an email up front. Unfortunately, the final plans were set quite late and I decided therefore to go on my own. Next time, I will contact you. Promised!

Cheers

Dieter

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