I haven't bought any from Allen, but I have a couple/few species of Stylidiums.
(some of which were bought from Fred Howell, but (true to form?) some of them
were incorrectly labelled...) Probably the most common (and easiest to grow?)
is the Grass-leaf Triggerplant S. graminifolia (spel?), which occurs locally
in our area (and many other native bush sites in the area of eastern Australia,
for that matter). It's very hard to resist the temptation of triggering of
the flower columns when you come across them anywhere - kids love them too!
Rica Erickson has a book on Triggerplants (called "Triggerplants", naturally)
in the same format as her "Plants of Prey" (same publisher too - W.A. Uni.
Press, or something like that). It's about the only book I've seen on them
and it also covers the close allies of Stylidium, Levenhookia (styleworts).
BTW, I once mistook a miniture triggerplant for a bladderwort as it was growing
in typical Utric terrain (near U. dichotoma) and had the distinctive small
upper and large lower lipped flowers. The split lower lip looked a bit
suspicious though... (Still, it was a welcome discovery of an interesting
little plant).
>In Connecticut I also found a wild legume which looked much like the sensitive
>plant. It would fold up its leaves if given a stiff whack! There are other
>plants families with pulvini. One that comes to mind is the prayer plant
>family Marantaceae. These fold up their leaves at night into a "praying
>position". (This is a really neat family with many highly ornamental species).
We used to grow a little native creeper which also had night-closing leaves.
It was commonly called Twining Glycine and it has triple-leaves (trifoliate?)
and small purple pea flowers. Unfortunately, they appear to be short-lived
plants and are difficult to come by, even in areas where we knew the used to
be found.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| John Taylor [The Banshee] | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology |
| rphjt@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au | Department of Applied Physics |
| MOKING IS A HEALTH HAZARD. | Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+