Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 14:00:51 -0800 From: Wim Leys <leyswi@lin.vlaanderen.be> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg881$foo@default> Subject: Cleaning CP's : What you should not do
We had a pretty cold winter in Belgium. In my unheated greenhouse
temperatures stayed about -5 C for a month. All the pots were rock hard
frozen. In the greenhouse stand Sarracenia's, VFT's, Darlingtonia's and
Drosera's.
My VFT's needed cleaning (removal of brown or black traps, leaves and
old flowers). The cold lasted so long, I decided to do this while they
were frozen. Cleaning up the plants went fast. Normally, if you pull too
hard at the leaves, the whole plant can come out of the soil, now the
frozen soil prevented this. Except for cold hands, I was glad I did it
at that time, because the cleaning went so easy.
One week after the cleaning, I visited the Botanical Garden of Louvain.
I had helped them during last spring with their new artificial bog that
was specially created for CP's and I was wondering how the plants would
deal with the cold winter. I met the garden keepers, and they told me I
should not have done it (cleaning plants while they are frozen). They
said that even extremely hardy plants can be killed by touching them too
much during frost. Many conifers may produce brown branches during
summer, only because people pull at the branches to remove the snow
during winter. The branches get micro cracks that will kill them later
in the year.
One week later, the leaves of the VFT's looked like unfrozen lattice. A
few weeks later however, it seemed everything had healed and I was
convinced that nothing had gone wrong.
Last weekend many leaves had a pale brown shine "in" them, like if the
coloration was only present in the interior of the leaves, and not on
the surface. Those leaves came off easily from the plants.
When I started repotting them, it became obvious that the brown shine
expanded from the part of the leaves above the soil to the parts in the
soil. When the brown shine reaches the place where the roots are formed
and where the leaves originate, it infects all the other leaves and
starts spreading to the surface. Whenever this happened, the plant could
not be saved. I already lost many, many plants this way and I have not
yet repotted all of them.
Whenever possible I removed all the leaves with a brown shine. I don't
know if this will stop the spread of the infection. The brown coloration
will probably become visible a few days after the infection.
I am facing the possibility of loosing 100 % of my VFT collection. OK, I
was looking at ways to decrease the amount of plants in my greenhouse,
but sure this was not one of them.
Morale : Don't even think of touching a plant when it is frozen. Wait
until it is unfrozen to clean it, take cuttings, ...
Oh my poor babies, what has daddy done to you !? Will those of you who
will survive, ever forgive me ?
Wim
-- Wim Leys, Belgium mailto:leyswi@lin.vlaanderen.be
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