First off, I grow all my Nepenthes at my office! Second, I'm not a
real person---rather I'm just the winner of the 1991 Alan Turing
contest!
>BTW, my D. agnata now seems like it may have two developing seed
>pods, but the stem on the oldest one is now drooping. Do they
I wish I knew, but my only Mexican Ping that flowered didn't produce
seed even after pollination.
>Nope, Barry doesn't have an SEM; he's an ASTRONOMER. Still, I suppose if
>you put Nepenthes pollen in Barry's chair, then climbed up on top of the
>observatory and looked down the 'scope the wrong way... might be as good
>as an SEM. Waddya think, Barry?
Oh yeah, I forgot to respond to this. As Miguel points out, in astronomy
we look the other way (up) usually. However, since I do a lot of
instrumentation (I make stuff to observe with) we do actually use an
occasional SEM to examine our detectors which are fabricated chemically
to have structures on micron size scales...
>I've used the SEM for taxonomy work, but only on IMPORTANT plants which
>have GREAT significance to botanical study... Echinocactus polycephalus
>for example.
Mike, we spent thanksgiving in Mexico, near San Carlos in the Baha area.
While we were there we saw weird cacti I've never seen before. They
were BIG. One looked like a Saguaro but had fewer and larger lobes, and
the other looked like a small Organ Pipe but with a bunch of longer
brown needles near the tip. Talking a little Espanolish with the locals,
I found they were called ``Cardon'' and ``Senida.'' Have you heard of
these? They were pretty cool. (pronounced kar-DOAN, last syllable rhymes
with ``moan'' and seh-NEE-tah)
I was looking at my Nepenthes this morning and I made a few interesting
observations. I found a pitcher sitting in the bottom of the terrarium,
in the moist gravel. I snipped this pitcher from the plant about two
weeks ago and it still looks fine! It must be sucking water through the end
of the tendril in the moist gravel.
Don, that X superba?? from you continues to amaze me. Today I noticed that
some of the leaf tendrils do not leave the leaf at its tip, but rather
from beneath the leaf just short of its tip! I thought N. rajah was the
only plant to do this.
Last night I read something that interested me. It is thought that the
tendril and pitcher of Nepenthes are thought to be the actual leaf. What
about the thing we normally call the ``leaf'' of a Nepenthes? It is
thought to just be a leaf petiole with wide wings!
Also, to bring up an old thread. I saw a picture of an N. bicalcarata
hybrid, N. `Nina Dodd' which *Does* have little teeth.
There. An entire posting from me that doesn't even mention the U-genus,
and concentrates on Nepenthes!
BAMR