Why is this plant stupid? Does it send it's leaves down into the soil? ;-)
>rosulata aff. leaves w/narrow petioles and red-elliptical leaves [$5/tuber]
Try fitting that on your plant label!
I've just picked up a couple more Pinguiculas - caerula (large plant with two
growing points - to replace the last one that died) and ehlersae (which had
an accident on the way home and lost it's long, drooping flower stalk :-(
Luckily there's a new one emerging.) The ehlersae has a nice flower, but
it's rather featureless, compared with the attractively veined caerula flowers.
I also bought a Drosera stolonifera ssp. compacta which has 4 plants of various
size growing in the one pot! The plants are rather small at the moment - a
couple seem to be large seedlings or young tuberlings (?), one of the others
is fairly large, and the final one is only just emerging, but should be a
large mature plant judging by the size of the leaf "bundle" (rosette leaves).
Our erythrorhiza has had a slug attack and some of the leaves got holed, as
did one of our greenhood species. The greenhood orchids are growing very
well at the moment and many are in flower or are sending up scapes. In
particular, the Pterostylis curta ("Blunt Greenhood") massed pot (estimated
to have at least 30-50 plants in it, and bought at a very reasonable price
a couple of years ago). The dozen or so P. concinna's ("Trim Greenhood") look
good too, what they lack in flower size they make up for in the attractive,
neat (hence "Trim" greenhood) flowers - the curta's are somewhat "coarse".
We weren't entirely successful with some of the other species, which didn't
survive the summer dormancy (probably rotted :-( ). These plants are as easy
(or easier) to grow as tuberous sundews and would make a good addition to
any CPers collection (they look a lot like John Wyndham's Triffids is one of
the BBC's (?) TV "mini-series" - I'm pretty sure they turned to Greenhoods and
Sarracenias for they designs).
BFN
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| John Taylor [The Banshee] | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology |
| rphjt@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au | Department of Applied Physics |
| MOKING IS A HEALTH HAZARD. | Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA |
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