Autumn Surprises
/G=Loyd/S=Wix/OU=1890CHPI/O=TMGB.URC/@LANGATE.gb.sprint.com
Tue, 17 Oct 1995 08:26:00 -0400
From Loyd.Wix@URCGB.SPRINT.COM
This time of year is not my favourite as many of the plants
are past their best and yet it is too early for the tuberous
Drosera or winter flowering Pinguicula. None the less a few
Mexican Pinguicula including some of my hybrids are helping
to brighten up one green house.
Despite the onset of Autumn the weather here in the UK has
been very mild and this past weekend has been full of
surprises:
On friday evening I was inspecting my Heliamphora plants,
two of my H.nutans plants have been looking odd for a couple
of weeks and I had put it down to the crowns multiplying
again as these plants were tissue cultured originally.
Recently two plants had produced much smaller pitchers
compared with those produced earlier in the summer. It now
appears that these plants are going to flower. I am really
excited by this as this will be the first time I will
see Heliamphora flowers in the flesh. Also both these plants
only started to produce adult pitchers at the beginning of
this year although I have been growing these plants for
several years now. Any advice in generating seeds from these
plants would be greatly appreciated.
On Saturday whilst casting an eye over some of my Utrics I
noticed two flower spikes developing on my U.caerulea
plants. This is a tall form of U.caerulea with whorled pale
mauve flowers and originates from Darwin in Australias
Northern Territory. These scapes look as though they will be
quite large, the stalk is currently about twice the width of
U.dichotoma scapes. I was quite surprised to see these
plants coming into flower as they are only a few months old.
Finally, on Sunday I was tidying up a few thing and came to
remove some of the dead leaves from my largest Pinguicula
vallisnerifolia plant in order to prevent fungal infections
from spreading to the hibernaculum. (P.vallisnerifolia is
from Spain and over winters as a small green bud buried in
the substrate). On removing the dead leaves I noticed a
couple of gemmae around the base of the Hibernaculum. In
other European Pinguicula these gemmae may be removed and
potted up to form new plants, however the gemmae of
P.vallisnerifolia should always be left on the parent plant.
Apparently in the new season stolons develop which
carry the gemmae away from the parent plant and by this
method the small plantlets are deposited on the vertical
cliff faces that this plant inhabits. This will be a
fascinating thing to study next spring and I will attempt to
get the new plants to grow on a piece of limestone tufa
rock. I will try taking a few photos of the developing
stolons.
Regards
Loyd.