Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 16:01:15 -0400 From: "Mellard, David" <dam7@cdc.gov> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg3434$foo@default> Subject: CP's do the weirdest thing
A few weeks ago I travelled home to Summerville, South Carolina, and
visited some of my favorite cp sites. At the Lighthouse Road site,
which is a small (maybe 1 acre), very shallow swamp, I found the
usual D. intermedia and D. capillaris. The area has had limited
rainfall over the summer and the shoreline had receded a bit. I had
trouble finding both Drosera and what I found amazed me. In one
small area, I found D. intermedia with old flower scapes from
summer that had small plants on the scapes. The plants were just
now recovering from the low rainfall and the dead leaves from spring
and summer dominated the newly developing leaves from the recent
rainfall. The stress of the summer drought must have induced the
plantlets that were now present on the scape.
I realized now why D. intermedia prefers wetter conditions than D.
capillaris. D. intermedia flowers in summer while D. capillaris
flowers predominantly in spring. The wetter conditions are needed
to maintain the D. intermedia plants during the summer droughts
while having already developed seed by the time summer droughts
arrive, D. capillaris plants can die back during the droughts (if
forced) and come back from seed . Because D. capillaris is so wide
spread, this observation may not apply everywhere. Although, I do
remember visiting a D. capillaris site outside Ft Myers where the
owner told me that the plants die back every summer because of the
dry weather. While there, we walked out into a small field that
earlier was covered with capillaris but could find nothing but dead
plants because of the dry weather. She said they come back with the
rains.
D. capillaris were space, both along the margins of the swamp and
in the right of way down the road. Young plants were present,
though, again probably induced by the recent rains. I will go back
in a few weeks and will surely find them bouncing back.
David Atlanta
P.S. You won't find Lighthouse Road on any map. It's our local
name for the road, having gone their as high school students on
Friday and Saturday nights because of the local ghost stories. It
was quite scary and was a good excuse for holding hands.
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