trip report - cairns 1
Andy Falshaw (A.Falshaw@irl.cri.nz)
Mon, 26 Aug 1996 15:55:08 GMT+1200
I've just returned to wet and cool wellington after a week in sunny
Cairns, which for those of you with limited geography knowledge is in
New Zealands west island. Through this list I'd "met" Steve Jackson,
and he kindly offered a choice of 3 trips in the Cairns area;
1) Drosera schizandra on mt Bartle frere; 2) sites round Cairns then
the pub; 3) Nepenthes mirabilis in the wild. I chose 1 and 2.
On Sunday 18th August we sett off for the trip to Mt Bartle Frere.
Steve came to our motel to pick up myself and Ruth (Dr Mrs Falshaw)
in his 4WD. First of all we went to Trevor Hannam's place, meeting
Trevor, his wife Kay and two mini dachsunds.
First cps of the day were Trevors extensive collection - WOW!!
I had only ever seen a few Nepenthes before, mostly sickly things
clinging on in unsuitable climates. Here were loads of healthy neps
growing outdoors with only shade cloth as protection. It was amazing
to see and I was really overwhelmed. I was most intrigued to see nep
seedlings pitchering on their second leaves - tiny little pitchers.
I'd always assumed they pitchered on older growth. Do such small
pitchers catch anything?
As well as neps Trevor has a
range of other cps, drosera adelae, a couple of poorly schizandras,
two very nice macranthas, petiolaris etc. Lots of nice healthy plants
that I'd only ever seen in books. His sarrs had just gone back outside
after spending some time in the fridge for their winter dormancy, and
he was experimenting with drying out as a way of inducing dormancy.
Amazing to see so many wonderful neps, but sarrs being hard work when
I grow sarrs outdoors easily and struggle with the odd nep.
Trevor had darlingtonia in an amzing Heath Robinson type setup. Yes,
its a fridge with a circulating pump and thermostat so that there is
cold water circulating round the roots of plants in a big polystyrene
box. He had his cephalotus in there as well, figuring that the
Cairns climate was too hot for them also. He reckons that a root
temperature of 26C is when they really start to suffer and had his
system keeping the root temp at about 15C, against an air temp of about
25C.
One I'd not heard of was that aldrovandra likes a lot of CO2 in its
water. Trev had a plastic bottle with yeast and sugar in, with a
pipe coming out of the top so the CO2 went into the tank with the
aldrovandra in. Seemed to be working too.
>From trevor's place we set off up the Gillies highway which is a
twisty windy thing, trevor in front in his truck and the three of us
following in steve's 4WD. All of a sudden trevor pulled over to one
side and we thought he'd had a heart attack or something. No - cp
attack more like! On near vertical rocks on the road side were
little splashes of deep red - drosera burmannii, loads of them where
a slow seepage of water flowed over the rock surface. They were
literally on vertical rock with no soil, maybe just a thin film of
algae. One plant had a long stalk with white flowers on. I must
admit I wouldn't have been able to tell burmannii from spatulatha,
but we saw both together later on in the week (part 2 folks!).
Back on the move and Steve was conviced we knew where we were going
really honest and we weren't lost. Trevor stopped next to a school
about 15 yards back from the road, which he swore shouldn't be there.
Turns out the last time they were up that way it was so foggy they
could only see about 4 yards and hadn't seen the school despite driving past
it in both directions!!
After about 1.5 hours of driving we got to a carpark in the Bellenden
-Kerr national park. Trevor plastered himself with insect repellant
as he's allergic to leech bites and had a really bad time on the last
trip. Ruth did likewise and I had a bit of insect repellant on. We
set off down an overgrown track, steve in front on snake watch.
I wished we'd brought some machetes... The track was an ex logging
road, which had been open until the area was declared national park 6
years ago. Amazing to see how much growth had sprung up in 6 years.
After a few yards steve
stopped dead in his tracks - "red bellied black" on the track. It
looked at steves ugly face and slithered away. A bit spooky for
those of us not used to snakes - it was about 3 ft long and an inch
or two across.
We ambled along through the bush, happily chatting away about
all sorts of stuff and I didn't notice the time go by. We walked
about 2-3 km to get to the site.
Then steve and trevor said "along here somewhere,
after the next clearing" and hey presto - a clump of about 20-30
drosera schizandra in almost full sun on the edge of a clearing,
glistening in the sunlight. "Not many there" said the intrepid
guides so off we went again and after a bit more of a walk we came to
the main grouping of plants - there were hundreds of them everywhere!!
They were mainly in deep shade, growing on the side and base of a
steep bank, some in big groups, others odd individuals, but lots and
lots of plants. We stopped for a major photo (trevor) and video
(steve) session. This video is going to be put into the chain video
hopefully. At this point we decided to have a leech check. None on
Ruth or trevor, but I had a HUGE one on my ankle. It came off in a
spurt of blood, and the bite bled for quite some time after, covering
the inside of my boot with blood. YUK!!
The shizandras were in all sorts of spots - some on vertical rock with no
soil, but most in rocky clay which looked just damp rather than wet.
The plants ranged up to a handspan across. Lots had short (maybe 1-2
inches) flower spikes on with unopened buds - maybe a week or so to
flowering??
Most strange was the fact that most plants had no
mucilage and no sign of trapped prey. It seems as though the fresh
young leaves were dewy, but the older leaves had dried out. Steve
and trevor wanted to see how far the schizandras extended on the top
of the bank, but mainly fell on their behinds trying to get up the
slope. Good video footage there.
Most annoying to trevor was trying to figure out why the schizandras
were doing so well in the forest and so poorly in his collection, and
in cultivation in general I hear. No obvious answers. Clearly they
like shade and damp but not wet conditions.
We had a pleasant walk back to the car park, lots of signs of
cassowaries (but no dung tasting, which is some sort of North
Queensland cp initiation I think) and wild pigs. After lunch in the
carpark, (courtesy of steve) watching butterflies and birds and
spotting epiphytic orchids, we set off back to Trevors with me in
his truck this time.
At trevors we looked through various cp newsletters from around the
world that Trevor's trip report from the last time had got into.
Turns out the exact same snake was in the exact same place last time...
I'm sure its a remote controlled plastic one
now, so the next person on that walk, go pick it up to check. I had
another look at Trevors plants then it was back to the motel.
A great day, going through wonderful country, with good company, and great
plants. Many thanks to Trevor and Steve for making a great day
possible.
Part 2: the sewage farm, will follow soon.
Andy