Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 23:00:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Derek Glidden <dglidden@geocities.com> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg4072$foo@default> Subject: The Great California Darlingtonia Expedition
Or, "Derek still can't tell the difference between a hill and a mountain,
Matt learns that Birkenstocks aren't the best footwear for bogging, Tina
identifies an outhouse, and it is determined that Craig can get
*anyhere* in California 'in about an hour.'"
In case you can't tell from previous posts and the title, this is another
view of the bog trip that Matt, Tina, Craig and myself made last weekend.
If you were bored with Matt's telling of the tale, then skip this one,
it's very likely going to be longer! :)
Yes, the day started early - even earlier for Matt and Tina, who I once
again want to thank for being kind enough to drive me around the state,
particularly once it became obivous _how much_ driving eventually became
involved!
On the way up to California Carnivores, where we were to meet Craig
Gardner, Matt decided he needed breakfast, so he pulled off the highway
into this teeny little town - so teeny that the first food place he saw to
stop at was a Pawn Shop/Deli. Strange. One more stop and a sandwich, egg
and soda or two later, we were back on the road, and finally made it to CC
just as Peter was pulling up to open the place.
I was very impressed to say the least. I'm not sure if this was a good
thing or bad thing, but it certainly seemed like the plants that were NOT
for sale far outnumbered the plants that were! I wouldn't be surprised if
it came out that he has "one of each" growing in his greenhouse. It was
just a tremendous experience to see all the different kinds of plants that
he has growing there.
I took almost two rolls of film, and eventually I'll have a number of them
scanned and online. Among the nicer plants I took pictures of were some
very nice Sarracenia, a whole ton of Drosera, the biggest, healthiest
looking clump of Heliamphora that I've ever seen, real life or in
pictures, some very nice Cephalotus, some BIG VFTs, and a number of
nice-looking Darlingtonia. A chunk of the greenhouse is relegated to
displays of the different species and types of CP, describing a little
about their habits and habitats. Very well done, and very nice plants.
(It's not just fun, it's educational!)
The particularly neat thing for me was to see a lot (A LOT!!) of highland
Nepenthes growing out and about. I'm from Florida, and if you expect to
grow highlanders, you'd better have some special growing chambers, because
the heat is AWFUL and hard to escape in Florida. At CC, it was the other
way around - his LOWLAND species were in the special hothouse part of the
greenhouse!
Then, of course, was Peter D'Amato. Peter was really nice and very
helpful ith Matt at picking out a good Nepenthes (Yes, Matt, you HAVE A
NEPENTHES! :) to try not to kill. He's a great guy to talk to, and let's
not forget he runs this very cool place!
And, as hard as I tried to control myself, even considering I'd have to
somehow get them back to Florida on the plane with me, I did wind up
coming out of there with about a dozen new plants. :/ Mostly Drosera and
Utrics, though, no several-years-old yards-long Nepenthes, at least.
(although I've heard of this one species that grows well in suitcases...)
I think I was probably in overload by the time we left, because long
after, I realized I hadn't bought any Superthrive like I had wanted. (I
wanted to see if it would make any of my plants grow better, make my hair
grow in thicker or take the spots out of my living room floor...)
Eventually we did leave and followed Craig up to his place to see HIS
plants. Ok, so Craig's greenhouse isn't nearly the size of Peter's... I
do particularly remember some of the HEALTHIEST looking Sarracenia I've
seen! (Prize-winers IMHO.) And a really neat (dish? bowl? pot? ermm, I
couldn't really tell) COVERED with D.aliciae. Imagine - a bunch of dirt,
mounded up high in the middle, plant a few D.aliciae on it, wait a few
years. I have a picture - it was very nifty. And I shan't forget his
"rock with Darlingtonia growing on it." A 1-1/2' or so hunk of granite(?)
with a depression scooped out of the middle and a few plants, some of
which happen to be Darlingtonia. No, they weren't planted there, he talls
me, the seeds wound up there and they just grew. He also mentioned that
this rock didn't get any particular special treatment to keep it cooler
than any other rocks he might have, so if these plants go to seed, perhaps
he'll have a line on some warmth-tolerant Darlingtonia... hmmmm... (Oh
yeah, then we also got to see his inside Nepenthes growing chambers, being
two 55 gallon tanks sort of packed with plants. Not *exactly* Nepenthes
bonsai, but it sure looked close. :)
Anyway ... the long and the short of it being that Matt got a few more
plants (much, I think, to his delight as his chagrin, having been a "I
have a VFT and a pitcher plant" type guy at the beginning of the day. :)
and we hurried off to get to the bog while there was still light.
As should be obvious, if you want to see Darlingtonia, you're going to
have to drive up into the mountains (or "hills" as Matt kept correcting
me. :) where the cool mountain runoff water keeps the plants cool and wet.
So we started driving through the mountains.
Let's explain a couple of things here: 1) Craig had informed us that the
bog was "about an hour away" before we left. Well, it quickly became
obvious that Craig's car was part mountain goat because we lost him any
number of times on the twisty turny roads up there. It also became
obvious that Craig, nice enough guy that he is, has no concept of how long
"an hour" is. :) 2) I'm from Florida. Anything more than 80' above sea
level is at least "a hill" for me. When they get to be four digits or
more above sea level, they're "mountains." If you're from Colorado or
Utah or some state like that where "a mountain" is 5 digits above sea
level, that's one thing. Telegraph Hill in downtown San Fransisco is
pretty close to a mountain as far as I'm concerned. So we drove through
the "hills" or "mountains" or whatever they are, but I'm gonna call 'em
mountains because they're taller than my head. :)
So ... as we drove through the mountains, aside from the fact that Craig
didn't really know how long "an hour" was in the real world, it also
became blindingly obvious that this is NOT the trip to try to make if
you've just had a lot to drink. That's all I'm gonna say about that,
other than, at least there were lots of trees on them thar mountains.
For a deep-South Florida-boy like me, it was a VERY cool trip in and of
itself - I actually saw Redwoods! Wow ... talk about TALL ... of course,
that instantly started the sociopathic side of my brain wondering if there
would be any way to cross a Redwood with, say ..... a VFT....
Finally, I think maybe several days later, Craig DID stop, where one more
thing became obvious about Craig - either he was, in fact, part of some
highly advanced form of CP here to lure us to our grisly deaths, or he has
a spatial sense rivaling that of, say, the Canadian Goose that migrates
12,000 miles back and forth each year to the exact same lakes and ponds.
Because there was NOTHING to distinguish this patch of "trees, dirt,
shrubs and weeds" from any other of the past hundred or so miles we had
just been driving through.
Well, obviously, he just knew where he was going. :)
A few dozen feet into the woods we started seeing plants! Cool! A few
Darlingtonia here and there, a few Drosera rotundifolia here and there!
I think it was probably about this time that we all heard Matt gasp,
"Waaughh! Cold!" or something to that effect as he splushed through a
particularly damp and deep patch of Spahgnum in his sandals. (I was
wearing my combat boots and even THOSE got a little squishy.)
For the next couple of hours Craig continued to amaze us with more and
more plants where he would seemingly sight some distant treetop or maybe
just sense the magnetic fields of the earth, wander a few yards or few
hundred yards off in one direction or other, and bang-o, more plants!
The Darlingtonia were just gorgeous. Several HUGE stands of plants, three
and four feet tall in some places. Many pictures were shot this day of
some number of them.
I actually went through the remainder of my seven rolls of film, but,
alas, one of those rolls wound up someplace between hither and yon and so
if any of you happen to be in this bog and see a roll of film lying on the
ground, that's my fault. I didn't have a chance to use it, so as long as
it's not too wet, feel free to load it up and shoot away.
We also got to see the (in)famous "floating rotundifolia" out there. The
pools of water that had collected were a favorite place for the
D.rotundifolia to grow, and the deeper the water, the bigger the plant,
just floating along on the surface of the water. Perhaps there were a few
hair-thin roots keeping them more or less anchored, but they were very
hard to see if they were actually there. I have one picture of a plant at
least 4" in diameter that's just sort of floating in the middle of a big
puddle.
There were large areas of D.binata that looked like grass at first, then
would suddenly resolve into hundreds of Drosera stems sticking up from the
ground!
Very nice clumps of S.leucophylla, S.rubra, S.minor and S.purpurea were
scattered here and there throughout the bog.
One area was planted with either D.miniata or D.nitidula ssp. omissa, I'm
not exactly sure which. (I bought some of both, and I'm not quite sure
which one it was in the bog, but it was definitely one or the other.) It
was like a red carpet of teeny little plants throughout that area!
Unfortunately, some of what we also saw was the incredible invasiveness of
D.capensis and U.subulata. Whols stands of D.rotundifolia were being
overgrown by D.capensis, and U.subulata was pretty ubiquitous upstream.
The D.capensis seemed to like it "better" up in the dryer parts of the bog
than D.rotundifolia, it would then use those plants as "staging" to
"invade" the wetter parts that D.rotundifolia were more pervasive.. Anyone
know if D.capensis emits any kind of growth-inhibitor? There were areas
that should surely have room for D.rotundifolia to grow between D.capensis
plants, but there were none.
And as if just U.subulata wasn't bad enough, I'm pretty sure we found a
few flowers and strands of U.cornuta growing in one spot. The flowers
were soggy and slightly deteriorated, having tipped over into the water,
but they sure looked like cornuta.
We also got to see a few areas where it looked like plants had been
removed a shovel scoop at a time. Another photo I have is of D.aliciae
with a big hunk of dirt missing from the center of the growth area.
Another is of a D.capensis growing at the bottom of the hole left by
someone having dug up one of the dwarf pines from the area.
Fortunately, this less-happy stuff was more than overshadowed by many many
healthy plants all over the place. Having seen the little bit of damage
that *has* been done by people going through there, it's probably a good
thing that only a few people (and Canadian Geese) can really find this
spot. If a LOT of people knew about it - I doubt it would last much
longer.
As it is, I wound up with somehere around 150 pictures from the day's
trip, lots of them really nice ones, too! once I can get access to a
scanner again, I'm going to scan a bunch of the best in and put 'em up
online. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event, at least
for me. (Although there's never going to be another "first time" I get to
see a Darlingtonia bog. :)
Once again, Matt was great for driving me, and Craig is the kind of person
that makes it even more fun to be a CP enthusiast! It's obvious that he's
been at this MUCH longer than Matt or myself, but I'm not sure which of us
was MORE excited about going to see the bog: Matt, myself or Craig! It
was somewhere between the "adoring father" and the "excited puppy" kind of
behaviour as he led us through the woods to see everything!
Thanks guys!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Derek Glidden dglidden@geocities.com
Web development, database, graphics and general plumbing
Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP (Say No to NT!)
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