Date: Tue, 01 Jul 1997 03:27:27 -0400 From: "Paul V. McCullough" <pvmcull@voicenet.com> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg2520$foo@default> Subject: Drosera Intermedia and other stuff...
Hello again fellow CPers,
Diane and I made yet another excursion into the jungles of New
Jersey in search of the wild carnivorous plants- and- SUCCESS- we found
a new lair of them! (Cool, eh?) Anyway, we found a lake that had a
mini beach where drosera intermedia were growing (along with a few
rotundifolia, but 90% were intermedia) in a tremendous hedge of sticky
mats! Now on first inspection, I didn't know what to make of them- they
had d. intermedia traps (like the little guy that sprung from the soil
next to one of my VFTs- as I related in CP Digest 1125) but they were
also on a climbing central stem rather then the typical rosette that
I've seen. D. intermedia usually has an overall appearance of a cone
standing on its point as the petioles are vertical rather then
horizontal. But these looked like mini trees!
The petioles were tan bronze ending in a deep crimson trap with the
typical intermedia shape. Every trap on every plant was chock full of
bugs! Within two feet of the plants was a bench (Ugh!) and someone had
evidently waded into the lake (probably fishing) and trampled many of
plants into the mud. (sigh...)
Still, I had never seen an intermedia growing like this and not as a
rosette. It bothered me until I got home. Snatching my trusty
"Carnivorous Plants of the World" (Which is almost always within reach)
of the coffee table, I quickly turned to the description of intermedia.
To my surprise, the book stated that when intermedia is grown in
extremely wet conditions, it tends to stalk like this! (I know, many of
you out there may already know this... I didn't...) What's really
surprising to me is that this is two NJ sundew types (filliformis is
also in NJ but I still haven't discovered them) that are both growing in
standing water- and I always believed that the sundew family liked
things drier!
Alas, we didn't take the camera as this outing wasn't really
planned, so I don't have any pictures to show. We'll go back and take
some photos in a few weeks. One bad side of the outing was that we
intercepted ticks running up our shoes (Lyme disease alert!) and legs
and arms- the woods were incredibly full of them as well as green head
and strawberry flies, gnats, and rampaging bees! We found one last tick
running on Diane's sleeve when we got home. One of my rotundifolia's is
eating him up as I type. I also fed one of the VFTs a stink bug that
had hitched a ride home with us. (You touch them, your fingers
stink...)
On VFT trap color- a new trap opened tonight on my big plant and it
was already tinged pink inside... which is an argument for genetics
being the deciding factor in red colored traps, I suppose? I've never
seen a trap open with red color already developing... is this normal?
Dave Evans: thanks for the additional info on pollination of
drosera. I decided not to bother as capillaris flowers open and close
faster then I can get to them. And I don't see any point in trying to
breed adelaes as they are doing just fine asexually. They're
everywhere! They're everywhere! I wonder if they actually seed
subsurface ala grass?
Cheers,
Paul
-- Paul V. McCullough "3D Animation World" http://www.voicenet.com/~pvmcull "CP Page" http://www.voicenet.com/~pvmcull/pics/cp/carniv.htm
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