Dreams of spring…

I hate mid-winter in Canberra. Relative to the rest of the Australia, Canberra gets cold. Earlier this week (Thursday), we had the year’s coldest day to date, a –6.25 C morning (21.5F). This morning’s effort – a –4.7 C (23.5F) was not much better, and as I write this, it is already down to 0.2*C (32F). On top of the cold, the days get short and there is not much around growing or green.

This evening, I was flicking through the accumulation of photos on my phone, and came across these, taken of the Sarracenia last November:

These shots are, for me right now, dreams of what I want Spring to look like – Sarracenia flava pitchers reaching skywards. The plants are mostly Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea "’FRT 1-5” and one of Triffid Park’s S. flava var. rubricorpora clones. The coppertop is S. flava var. cuprea x var. rugellii, and the clone of S. flava var. flava I got at the ICPS in Sydney (which turns out to be another Honeysuckle Road, Harleyville plant).

These were (at the time) my outdoor plants, essentially all those that did not fit into my greenhouse. While everything in the greenhouse would come up around September, these plants did not come up until November. We have a saying here – if you plant tomatoes before the date of the Melbourne Cup, you are making a sacrifice to the frost Gods. After the Melbourne Cup there is negligible risk of frosts (well, maybe a one-in-ten year risk of a late frost, but safe enough to cover most years).

My Sarracenia seem to keep to the same rules – the plants grown outdoors did not come up until after Melbourne Cup 2012 (and the last risk of frosts) had been and gone. This is what the same plants looked like a few weeks later.

These photos, and those in the last link above, were among the last I took of our plants before we moved house, so they have a sort of nostalgia. I am watching and waiting to see how they will do at our new place.

Notes on Australian Nepenthes mirabilis – Dave Rentz’s blog

Dave Rentz is an entomological colleague and I do not exaggerate when I say he is the world expert on the Orthopteroid orders – aka the grasshoppers, crickets, katyids, stick insects, leaf insects and cockroaches. He used to live here in Canberra, but was retrenched by the CSRIO along with a number of other entomologists I know in the early 2000s. He moved to Kuranda, which is located in the middle of the rainforest near Cairns in north Queensland, Australia. He is lucky enough to live alongside cassowaries in the tropical rainforest. He runs a blog – bunyipco – that I love because it takes me away from Canberra’s cold and gloom and delivers me instantly to the tropics, along with its fauna and flora.

Nepenthes mirabilis has had a few mentions on Dave’s blog, and when we caught up at the recent CSIRO moth workshop, I learned that he is assisting postgraduate student Gary Wilson with a Nepenthes project. Gary is looking at the biogeography, taxonomy and ecology of Australian Nepenthes, and seems to be doing a very fine job. You can read about Gary here, and his Nepenthes work here.

Here are some of Dave’s blog entries on Nepenthes mirabilis near Cairns, in north Queensland. He takes excellent macro photos of Nepenthes in action, so they are definitely worth reading:

http://bunyipco.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/living-dangerously.html

http://bunyipco.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/night-walk-in-tropical-lowlands.html

Gotcha! Plants at the Garden Expo

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!

Queensland Garden Expo–Gotcha! Plants will be in attendance!

The Queensland Garden Expo is by far my favourite garden show. Personally, I think it is as good or better than the Sydney one. If you are in Queensland, make sure you get to the Queensland Garden Expo on the Sunshine Coast (Nambour showgrounds – you can catch the train from Brisbane, after which it is a 1km or so walk). Aside from the CPs that Gotcha! Plants will sell, it is an excellent day out for everyone, regardless of whether they are hard core gardeners of not.

Have a look at Gotcha! Plants’ website here if you haven’t already to see what they offer: http://www.gotchaplants.com.au/ .

I’ve also reviewed Gotcha’s nursery here and here. As you can see, they have awesome plants, all grown from seed. This could be your chance to get hold of that plant you’ve been after, but never found!

As a bit of nostalgia - I’ve visited nearly every year since 1992, mainly looking for carnivorous plants. I’ve seen a number of nurseries and CP suppliers come and go over the years at the expo, and the number and diversity of CPs on sale rise and fall.

• 1992 had maybe two sellers, one with a few ex tissue cultured venus’s flytraps and some Drosera spathulata that suspiciously looked like they had been grubbed up from somewhere.
• 1993-1996 saw no CPs whatsoever on sale – a few VFTs if you were lucky.
• The expo had a sort of renaissance from 1997 on. One nursery sold Exotica Plants Nepenthes and increasing numbers of Sarracenia from Fly Free Zone in the years 1997-2000.
• In 2001 through 2003, an orchid nursery took over with Exotica’s Nepenthes, while Sarracenia all but disappeared.
• In 2004, the aforementioned orchid nursery again selling large numbers of magnificent Nepenthes from Exotica Plants, plus Fly Free Zone themselves selling Sarracenia, Cephalotus and Drosera, plus Drosera, Dionaea and Utricularia from the just starting out Gotcha! Plants.
• 2005 was supposedly even better (according to my family – I was stuck in Sydney), with Gotcha! and Living Traps selling huge numbers of magnificent plants (including 30 cm Heliamphora!).

Since then, Gotcha! has become the only seller of CPs, but they provide a reliably high amount of diversity and excellent plants (in fact, they provide a better range at their stall than what Triffid Park do at their stalls – with the possible exceptions of Darlingtonia and Cephalotus).

So make sure you go if you can – you won’t be sorry!

Hard core evidence for the uninitiated that Venus’s flytraps ARE NOT TROPICAL!!!!

Although this is old news for CP people, you would be surprised how many people new to carnivorous plants still think the Venus’s flytrap is a tropical plant from the rainforests of Madagascar (especially kids who got their entire natural history education from the movie Madagascar). In fact, most times I see people looking at Venus’s flytraps at a nursery, I nearly always hear someone describe them as being from tropical Madagascan rainforests and having the ability to drop dead for no reason.

So, to help dispel this myth is a photo I took yesterday of my frozen Venus’s flytraps. Note the ice in the tray, and that the Sphagnum moss they are growing in is frozen completely solid.