nicotine and pings

Barry Meyers-Rice (barry@mips3.as.arizona.edu)
Thu, 4 Aug 1994 10:10:14 +0700

>>my grandfather. He took pipe tobacco, mixed it with water and
>>created a nicotine slurry. He put the diluted juice into his

>Beware!
>The fermentation-process does not inactivate tobacco-mosaic-virus
>(TMV). I cannot think of a moreefficient way of spreading this

>For virus-diseases the only cure is burning your plants!

Well, Andreas, to be entirely accurate isn't there the possibility of
meristem tissue culture near the growth tip? If I recall some reading I
did, cells near the growth tips of orchids have been tissue cultured before
they were infected by the virus from the rest of the plant. Virus-free
plants were rescued from infected plants this way.

Unless you are growing a large number of plants or are suffering from many
small caterpillars, I think the best way to handle them is to just remove
them manually. After you remove them, rinse the plant with water---that way
if more remain you will be alerted to their presence by the appearance of
more caterpillar excrement---small black droppings---as well as continued
leaf damage.

>First some good news: My Ping just put up a neat flower, I am tickled
>pink. This plant seems to want to colonize my entire terrarium, since
>it puts out tiny plantlets from the leafs continuously.

For your information, your ping is probably _P.primuliflora_. If the
flower is pink with a white ring around the entrance to the corolla tube
(like a primrose) the id is a sure bet. But I have a clone with a nearly
completely white flower, so don't trust that description completely.

David, thanks for printing the full french catalogue. If anyone decides to
make an order, call me....

Barry