For those interested in Heliamphora at Hungry Plants, they had H.
heterodoxa, H. minor, H. heterodoxa x minor, and H. heterodoxa x nutans about
a month ago. The plants I saw were H. heterodoxa x nutans in 2" pots. I
define a nice plant (based on these hybrids) as immature pitchers 1-2" long
with 3-4 growth points. These were rooted plants (from tissue culture) in 2"
pots. The friend who took me over to the nursery got a plant and said it is
doing fine and the pitchers are starting to open. The plants are $25 each or
$80 for a set of 4 (1 of each sp. or total plants I don't know). I'll see
what's available now and let you know.
Barry, I'm not sure what propagat. methods he's using, but I think from a
commercial standpoint its whatever's the fastest. Supposedly their main
greenhouse has 100,000 VFT's and VTF's, tropical ping., Sarracenia, and
Drosera are appearing all over this area with the HP label on the pot. The
current price of a VFT is $4 which is the same as bootleg plants from the
wild. Ron hopes to push the price down even further which will make wild
collecting less profitable. The areas where VFT's still grow wild are
economically depressed and the story is a poacher can make several hundred
dollars off of a days collecting. If fines go up and prices go down maybe
this stuff will diminish. Nice idea if.... Conservation-side economics?
Jeff.