Well, I have several things I have been working on, so I thought I
would mention them all at one time.
First, I am stratifying some _Sarracenia flava_ seeds and I was curious
as to how long I should stratify them to get good germination. So far,
they have been on wet tissue in the 'frige at about 38F for four days.
Any particularly good results with a certain amount of time and/or
temperature?
Second, I have a bag of uncut "dried" Canadian _Sphagnum_ moss.
I say "dried" because it was packaged dry and I bought it wet (it had
gotten rained on at the nursery where I bought it). Anyway, having
gotten wet and sitting in good light, _Sphagnum_ started popping up
again. (It's kind of hard to come by in Texas.) I have been keeping
this _Sphagnum_ in growing conditions for several months now and several
things have come up. I have gotten what appears to be at least three
species of _Sphagnum_, the gametophytes of something, a fern of some
kind, and recently a "grass-like" plant appeared.
About the _Sphagnum_, I'm not so sure that they are, in fact,
three different species. I think they might be sporophyte and
gametophyte versions of the same species. Does anyone know of a way to
determine something like this, or is this usually not of particular
interest? Like I said, there isn't exactly a lot of _Sphagnum_
naturally growing in Texas, so I find it kind of interesting.
About the "gametophytes of something", does anyone know anything
about ferns that would be found in a _Sphagnum_ bog, especially one in
Canada. The sporophyte fern that's growing is too young to identify as
oActually, I'm not even certain that they ARE gametophytes. They could
be some sort of lichen or strange algae. Does anyone know anything
about fern gametophytes? These are about 1 centimeter across, are dark
green and fleshy, and are putting out "leaves" that look something like
cactus spines, but are in a loose ball, are relatively soft, and are
about 1/3 of a centimeter in length. Any clues?
And finally, the "grass-like plant". It's about 12 centimeters
tall now and is probably two or three months old (I noticed it two or
three weeks ago). The leaves are almost like spines, thin, waxy, almost
like pine needles, but not sharp. It doesn't have much of a root system
and has a "bulb" that is about 1/2 a centimeter in diameter. I was
looking through a Botany book earlier this evening and I came across a
genus that sounds kind of like it. The common name of the genus is
Horse-tail (or something like that; the actual name of the genus starts
with an I. I keep wanting to say it's Isoptera, but that is termites;
not quite the same thing). The book says that they like to live
partially submerged in marshy areas, so it sounds like it might be it,
So my question is, has anyone heard of this plant and does it grow in
Canadian bogs?
Well, that's it for tonight. Laters...
-Matthew