Utrics and fertilizer and off track

Barry Meyers-Rice (barry@mips3.as.arizona.edu)
Tue, 31 Jan 1995 22:56:36 -0700

For fertilizing my plants, I use label strength miracid. It is applied as
a foliar spray once/week to my tuberous _Drosera_, once/month to my
Mexican Pings, and a few times/year to my Southeastern USA Pings.

For Utrics with large bladders, you're making life hard for yourself looking
for _U.humboldtii_ because this plant is considered very desireable to CPers
and would be hard to obtain. I suggest you go with _U.longifolia_ which has
quite respectable bladders and grows very quickly. You can let stolons grow
into soil-free water and then obtain very nice views of the bladders. It is
a vigorous grower and will tend to do this anyway out of the bottom of the
pot!

Regarding plant names, I agree completely with Rick's comment on how
cultivars cannot be propagated by seed. Even the selfing of a cultivar,
even if the cultivar is a pure species, is not genetically identical to
the cultivar. Mass production of cultivars is best done by tissue culture
or lots and lots of leaf cuttings (if possible).

>Ah! Jan's comments on the task of the scientist "...to collect the existing
>opinions of his/her colleagues, to add own knowledge and results, and to
>decide..." is very interesting! I'm used to "hard" sciences (e.g., math,
>chemistry, physics) where the 'objects' are stable enough that the matter of
>personal opinion in classification rarely enters the picture. I've also

Funny! I'm in astronomy (a hard science which is really just all the other
sciences lumped together and applied towards studying the universe) and I
think personal opinion has a great deal to do with it! I took a course on
radio astrophysics taught by an astrophysicist who insisted on detailing
some dreadful theory that was largely discounted long ago (it involved
clusters of black holes). So why did we spend weeks on said theory? If you
guessed the instructor was the originator, you're right! Just one example.
Tesla vs. Edison, anyone?

>How do all of these light measurements equate to microEinsteins? I am
>using a Licor light sensor, units are in microEinsteins. TIA, Kathleen
>Heldreth

Micro-einsteins? Are you kidding? I've never heard of this unit! And I
thought *I* was a micro-einstein! Guess I've been relegated to femto-einstein.