Date: Fri, 28 Feb 97 09:57:44 GMT From: saharris@iafrica.com (Eric Green) To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg753$foo@default> Subject: Feeding CP
Hi!,
A short while back Davin and I were discussing the feeding
habits we force upon our Heliamphoras, and the feeding of the
juveniles came up!!!, and, very similar to Tom's experience with
fish flakes, having accidentaly dropped some on to a Drosera leaf,
and it enjoying it, I experimented with pollen.
Below is a modified version of what I had written to Davin at
the time.
A very good overseas friend sent me 2 hetero x nutans, both
juvenile, but apparently different clones. For three years they
only produced juvenile leaves, I became despondent, I find in the
3rd year they usually start with their adult leaves, I looked
around for something more regular to feed them with, besides the
small insects I found periodically. Somewhere I had read that
pollen was high in nutrients, and every day I was seeing the adult
flowering Heliams dropping their old pollen sacks all over the
place, (most are about 4-5mm long and shaped like a banana) I
started feeding these to all my juvenile pitchers, I believe there
was a dramatic change in some of my plants, but in particular, one
of the hetero x nutans promptly produced adult pitchers, and with a
little help from large beetles, snails etc. grew into a huge plant,
overlapping a 35cm pot, with pitchers up to 33cm. The other is
still a juvenile!!!!!!!!!!.
Shortly after the plant had reached this size, my friend
decided to visit South Africa and looked me up.
He sees the plant and cannot believe it is one that he sent me,
apparently he had grown the two clones, sent me a bit of each, one
shortly after died on him, and the remaining one looked like my
juvenile form. He found it hilarious when I told him about the
pollen story, I'm still not sure whether he found it ridiculous, or
just that no one in Europe had tried it, because of a lack of spare
pollen sacks.
Another Heliam story!!!!!
I was admireing my Heliams today, and realised there were four
bees going from pitcher to pitcher, drinking nectar from the nectar
spoons!!!, the only entrance to my grow area is a pretty normal
sized door, midway of a white fibre-glass construction 14 metres
long, and 5m wide. After about the 4th or 5th pitcher the bees
tended to appear drunk, approximately 10 pitchers were visited by
each, they tended to loose their footing at times, but none fell
into the pitchers, two flew into Cephalotus flower spikes, (SA bees
are usually pretty good at flying, the wind at the Cape of Storms
can be devastating at times) and each had problems finding the door
upon exiting, zig zagging a metre or two each side of the door
before finding their bearings. None of the flowers were visited!!!!.
ALL THE BEST Eric
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