Pygmy Drosera:
I have two D. occidentalis: D. occ. ssp. occ. and D. occ. ssp. australis that
are producing flowers. I haven't caught them with their flowers open, but
I can tell the petal colors look salmon-pink/almost orange on the
australis and white on the other. Other than that, the plants look identical.
Is flower color the only difference between these two? Strange to base a
whole sub-specific designation based on just this. I also have D. oreopodion
that has just now decided to produce gemmae! These are new plants just
started from gemmae last November.
Sarracenia:
Most are losing their petals and setting seed. The S. flava has opened its
first pitcher of the season a few days ago. I like the S. alata flowers with
the light yellow petals that expand widely toward the tips. There's a problem
with mosquito larvae found in the water trays. I heard a drop of baby oil in
each tray will suffocate and kill the larvae without harming the plants.
For water, I'm using rain water stored in a 30 gallon heavy plastic garbage
can. It will fill whenever it rains, but all the water is usually used
in only a 7-10 days. A lot is used for topping the water trays that the pots
of Sarracenia are sitting in.
I expect the info for buying in-vitro N. rajah will arrive any day (I hope).
A recent message from the Usenet newsgroup on Malaysia says the whole
island of Borneo is well on its way to being clear-cut for timber. Great
expanses of bare land can be seen from Mt. Kinabalu where once was all
rain forest.
Did anyone get a seed update from Gordon Snelling? Does Allen Lowrie have
any seeds of good Drosera or Nepenthes species for sale?
Michael Chamberland is back! He decided GEnie was too expensive for
internet e-mail - cost was 30 cents for EACH incoming and outgoing e-mail!
He now has a 1-week trial account at a local BBS. His address is:
michaelc@indirect.com (Michael Chamberland)
Feel free to write to him.