Sarracenia Collecting

Carlstrom_Rick (Carlstrom_Rick%P-AME-HQ.CCBRIDGE.SEAA.mrouter@seaa.navsea.navy.mil)
6 Mar 96 12:33:00 EST


Over the weekend I went to "Home and Garden" show in Northern
Virginia. There was a nursery there that specialized in water
gardens. On the shelf of their display was a copy of Schnell's '76
book "CP of the US and Canada". I asked if they set up CP bog
gardens. The woman who represented the nursery said "not right now
but we hope to start by the fall or next spring...We sent some people
to Louisiana/Georgia and collected a few thousand plants of 5
Sarracenia species...We hope to start setting up cp bog gardens when
we learn to successfully cultivate these plants".

It seems a terrible shame that they sent people to the wild to
collect plants that are readily available in cultivation. Equally
disturbing is the indication that they took several thousand plants
partly as an experiment to learn how to properly cultivate them.
Another disturbing portion of the conversation was that they held the
Schnell book in high regard, a book which clearly states on page 112
that the basic rule is not to field collect with few exceptions.
Ignorance may have played a role, whereas some other unnamed nursery
in the northeast US try's to hide its field collection, these people
apparently are proud of it. This field collecting may have been
motivated because its the quickest way to economically full stock a
nursery with mature plants.


Rick