As promised, here are some photos (albeit crappy iphone ones) of Gotcha! Plants’ setup at the Sunshine Coast Home and Garden Expo in Queensland. John and Sue always put on a magnificent show, with lots of beautiful Nepenthes, VFTs, sundews and Sarracenia. As I have said before, Gotcha! is definitely Australia’s best CP supplier – their plants are always fresh, seed grown and John has definite talent with his breeding program. This contrasts with the other Australian suppliers, which, while they offer a quality product, restrict themselves to the same clones ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Every time I visit John and Sue, they have something new and exciting – they are true masters of the Sarracenia!
It always bugs me that the show is held mid-winter, as so many plants are not actively growing or flowering at that time of year (including Sarracenia). Accordingly, Nepenthes are always the stars of the show. This year, John had some lovely plant, including a very large N. sibuayensis hybrid that was almost pink. I love Nepenthes, but always try to avoid looking at them because I can’t really grow them here (although I have experimented with an N. khasiana hybrid that has done well and is newly set up in a special pot with another favourite, Drosera adelae. I’ll post on them when the setup settles in more). To make matters worse, I really, really love lowlanders like N. ampullaria and N. rafflesiana. Occasionally, they turn up down here, like the beautiful N. x hookeriana that was nearly dead from the cold at Masters on the weekend (Masters is Lowes rebranded for the Australian market. They sell Triffid Park plants, not the cubes of death of the North American market).
Here is the Sarracenia display, which mainly consisted of leucophylla, purpurea and rubra hybrids (they are about all that looks good mid-winter), and an S. minor. John’s S. purpurea is actually an S. rosea, and in my opinion it is the best on the Australian market. I have grown them to immense size before, and after having to give my original plant up to make room for the move, made sure I got another to replace it. I really like the S. x moorei x S. flava (mid-photo), which appear to be made with Gotcha!’s giant S. flava var. rubricorpora.
And to close, a view of the Nepenthes on offer (although much too blurry – my apologies). Again, I try not to look too hard or too long at them…
More on Nepenthes coming up…
