storm

Wayne Forrester (forrestr@mendel.Berkeley.EDU)
Sat, 16 Dec 1995 09:48:06 -0800 (PST)

HI,
As many of you probably know, we had a huge storm move through
here (Northern California) Tuesday. I visited California Carnivores
yesterday to find that they were officially closed, but the proprietor
Peter D'Amato was there cleaning up, and let us walk through. The
greenhouse suffered substantial damage, with large sections of the
sheathing blown away. There were still large holes yesterday which he was
fixing. Remarkably, there was almost no damage to the plants. He said a
few plants had some leaves broken from being blown from benches but
that apparently no plants were killed.
Of course, I couldn't leave without buying a few plants. I picked
up a nice D. adelae. Also got a nice plant I hadn't seen before called
D. slackii, which has the most vivid red coloration. The last plant I
bought was a young N. madagascariensis. Does anyone out there have any
tips on madagascariensis culture? I currently have it in a heated
terrarium under fluorescent lights growing alongside N. gracilis and N.
ventricosa.
The beautiful conservatory in San Francisco also suffered
substantial damage in the storm. Current estimates for repairs are about
12 million dollars. Pretty substantial. They have a wonderful collection
of Nepenthes, among others. I don't know whether those plants were
damaged. Hope we don't get anymore storms like this one anytime soon.
Cheers,
Wayne Forrester