My name is Wolfram Diester, I'm a 37 year old german chemist (sewage
treatment, etc.), and I bought my modem about 30 hours ago.
It was about the year 1980 that I killed my first VFT. In 1986 I joined the
German CP Soc. to learn how to prevent such losses, and since about a year
I'm the vice chairman of that club. That job means that I'm the editor of our
society's journal "Das Taublatt".
My CP-collection is not very big: some 30 spp. of Utricularia plus a few
sundews, pitcher-plants etc.
The main interest lies in the collection of informations about CPs. In the
last 16 years I have tried to build up a comprehensive bibliography in the
field of carnivorous flowering plants. Unfortunately it is a textfile on my
old ATARI homecomputer. I have started to convert it to a MSDOS-readable
format, but it will take a while until I can place it in the cp archives. It
contains about 3000 references.
Terry wrote:
> I believe the questions in the "You've got to be joking section" were a
humerous dig
> at CP and in no way were supposed to be taken seriously. In fact I believe
there was
> a question about Charles Darwin's sister's aunt or some such ;)
Unfortunately humour
> does not translate all that well and recently the ACPS had another query
regarding
> the frog eating Utric's of northern Australia from an international
journal.
Hello Terry, I am the dope who took it serious. When I had to fill the last
issue of our german cp journal, I came across the 'CP Trifling Pursuit' in an
old issue of the Bulletin of the ACPS. I thought that such a quizz was a good
idea and in addition to some own question I translated the 'frog eating
Utricularia question'. Meanwhile I learned that this was a real nice joke.
But, I did take the question serious because some time before I had read the
very interesting article about Utricularia in Carribean that may be used to
control water-based germs:
Mark Gibson, Kenneth S. Warren: Capture of Schistosoma mansoni miracidia and
cercariae by carnivorous aquatic vascular plants of the genus Utricularia.
Bull. WHO 42(5): 833-835 (1970)
and there are some more which report on Utricularia as predators of 'bigger'
prey:
B. Dean: Report on the supposed fish-eating plant. Commissioners of Fisheries
of the State of New York, Report 18: 183-197 (1890)
E. W. Grudger: The only known fish-catching plant: Utricularia, the
bladderwort. Sci. Monthly 64(5): 369-384 (1947)
J. E. Simms: Utricularia vulgaris: an enemy of fishes. Nature 30: 295-296
(1884)
Donald L. Baumgartner: Laboratory evaluation of the bladderwort plant,
Utricularia vulgaris (Lentibulariaceae), as a predator of late instar Culex
pipiens and assessment of its biocontrol potential. J. Am. Mosq. Control
Assoc. 3(3): 504-507 (1987)
R. Matheson: The utilization of aquatic plants as aids in mosquito control.
Amer. Naturalist 64(690): 56-86 (1930)
By the way: is there anybody out there who could send me fotocopies of the
last two articles???
And apart from that: I'm looking for copies of a journal called 'The
Carnivorous Plants Digest'. It has been published in New York from 1978 until
1982(?). Can anybody help??
Best wishes
Wolfram