|
BACPS | Newsletter |
| Winter 2006 |
 |
Next Meeting: March 25, 2006 |
| BACPS at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show | |
| January Meeting Minutes | |
| Member Interview: Tony Gridley | |
| Treasurer's Report | |
| Winter Photos | |
| Upcoming Events | |
The new carnivorous display case at the UC Botanical Garden |
by Stephen Davis
Location: UC Botanical Garden, Berkeley
Program: The Carnivorous Syndrome in 3D
Time:12:00-4:00 p.m.
3D Movie: Mike Wilder is flying down from Oregon to show us his 22-minute 3D movie The Carnivorous Syndrome in 3D, a fantastic 3D movie of carnivorous plants close up and often with time-lapse photography. He will also show us how he used Lego robots to accomplish this cutting-edge film. This will be a lot of fun -- complete with glasses! Please see the review in the Fall 2005 BACPS Newsletter for details.
Q&A Panel: A panel of some of the best growers in the country to answer questions you have on carnivorous plants.
Beginners Corner: Help from our members to answer any questions of beginners. There are often free plants for first-time attendees.
by Stephen Davis
Judith Finn and Stephen Davis will be presenting "Carnivorous Plants: Incorporating These Unique Plants into the Garden" at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show at 2:15 on Saturday, March 18. It is a half-hour presentation, with an overview of carnivorous plants by Judith Finn, and then an overview of how Stephen Davis built his bog garden and how plants can be incorporated into the garden. It should be fun, and the exposure will be fantastic for educating people on CP.
This is the third largest show in the country, and it is exciting that the UC Botanical Garden, Berkeley, thought to include us when they were asked by the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show to do a series of presentions on different plant-related topics.
by Judith Finn
Date: January 28, 2006
Location: UC Botanical Garden, Berkeley
Attendance: 36
Stephen Davis opened the meeting by reminding people that the best way to see carnivorous plants is to visit them in situ. Harry Tryon informed the audience that the best time to see California native Pinguicula and Darlingtonia in Northern California along the Oregon border is in April and May. Please contact him for personally guided tours at (707) 457-3705. He has access to private property as well as personal knowledge of places difficult to discover on one's own.
On June 1-5, the International Carnivorous Plant Society Conference will be held at Frostburg State
University in Maryland. It is a very centrally located place, so there will
be field trips to bogs in West Virginia and Pennsylvania as well as Maryland.
There are inexpensive accommodations at the University. Please check out
the ICPS website.
Stephen told us that the show date at the Lakeside Park Garden Center in Oakland is Saturday, August 26. We need a lot of help the day of the show for setup, etc. Doris needs help managing the "plant hotel." Please consider joining us in this group effort so that we can have a wonderful show. Remember also to bring in well-grown "common" species along with your glorious special plants. I heard many people moan that they could have easily won a ribbon because there was no competition in some genus.
Stephen also asked for suggestions on speakers or presentations that members would like at future meetings.
Bill Weaver showed us a sharpening tool for our dull pruners. It is called Multi-Sharp, and you can buy it online at gardenshoponline.com.
Judith Finn thanked all the members for their generosity for the donation to the carnivorous display case that is housed in the Fern, Carnivorous Plant and Orchid House. The staff and members of U.C. Botanical Garden are extremely pleased with the much-improved exhibit.
Joe Mazrimas and Larry Logoteta did a group presentation on some of their adventures to see carnivorous plants in the wild.
Joe Mazrimas's first slides showed pictures from the Valley of the Moon, so called because of the devastation caused by miners in the 1870s. The property is now fenced off and patrolled by dogs because of renewed gold mining. The area is peppered with Drosera rotundifolia, Lycopodium, and native cranberries.
The next series of slides was on his trip in 1999 to the bogs of North
Carolina on US Highway 17, Routes 130 and 211. The Great Green Swamp used
to be thousands of acres of bog, but now it is being drained and planted
with pines for fiber pulp. In the remaining pockets of water there were
Sarracenia such as 'Coppertop' and natural hybrids of
S. flava, 'Ruby Throat' and 'Maxima.'
In one acre of savannah land Joe showed us Sarracenia rubra ssp. rubra, S. purpurea, and Dionaea muscipula (Venus flytrap). Plants respond to the sunlight. On the side of the road on Route 211 there were Drosera filiformis to be observed.
On Nature Conservancy land (1000 acres) there were Sarracenia minor and Venus flytraps in the grass of the savannahs. There were big clumps of Sarracenia flava and S. purpurea.
Next he took us to New Hampshire to the cool greenhouse of George Newman, which was filled with orchids and Darlingtonia californica. He has also successfully grown some of the Sarracenia outside in his cold state.
Next stop was a place near Lake Michigan. Two hundred yards from the lake were Drosera linearis, Sarracenia purpurea, and D. rotundifolia. Joe also showed us hybridized crosses of D. linearis with D. rotundifolia and Drosera anglica growing in 2 to 3 inches of water.
Larry Logoteta showed us a bog in Nevada County which has the most southern native location for Darlingtonia californica. It unfortunately is located in a logging area also used as a cattle ranch. Larry and Mike Ross were delighted to find all-green pitchers on some of the Darlingtonia that were growing in a seep in a small area on the edge of a bog. Larry described a large stand of 18-inch-tall specimens growing up the hillside with water bubbling down and an area in Chester (Plumas County) where there were Drosera growing near springs bubbling out of the ground.
Joe and Larry also talked about their visit to 8 Dollar Mountain Road in Oregon off US 199. The temperatures reach 100 degrees, so the Darlingtonia pitchers have a brownish color from the hot southern exposure. The water is cool, but the plants probably become dormant in the summer heat.
Albert Huntington brought in Sarracenia, and Lois Ochs brought in some
Sarracenia and D. slackii.
Joe Mazrimas brought a beautifully dried Nepenthes veitchii pitcher with red leaf and a gold peristome.
Lois Ochs showed us some Sarracenia purpurea.
Dominic Diaz exhibited his wonderfully grown apricot-colored Pinguicula 'Frasier's Beauty' and Drosera macrantha ssp. macrantha.
Judith Finn brought in two different accessions of Darlingtonia californica -- one from the coast of Oregon (Coos County) and the hardier type from Mt. Shasta in California. She also showed a pitchering Nepenthes northiana.
[For more of Albert Huntington's photos of the meeting, go to http://www.bacps.org/20060128/]
by Tony Gridley
As I said in the last issue, I would like to make self-introductions a regular feature again because I liked reading them in the old newsletters that Joe and Albert posted on our website. I also said that because it's my idea, I suppose I should go first. Then someone suggested an interview format, with pictures. Well, OK, I suppose we can try that, but, the newsletter staff being what it is, this meant that I had to interview myself......
INTERVIEWER: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview.
Say, how much are you paying for an apartment like this?
TONY: I thought we were here to talk about plants.
INTERVIEWER: Sorry. Of course. Tony, why carnivorous plants?
TONY: Well, I used to grow orchids, but now I live in a ferociously sunny apartment on San Francisco's Russian Hill, which my orchids didn't like. I started looking for houseplants that would be diverse, interesting, challenging, and, above all, sun-loving. After walking past the CP display in the window of Plant-It Earth in San Francisco maybe 50 times, I bought a Drosera capensis.
INTERVIEWER: How did that go?
TONY: It grew like a weed. I also liked the fact that I could go away
for a few weeks and just leave it in a bowl
of water. Around that same time I saw a copy of Carnivorous Plants of the World, which lists some CP
nurseries in the back. It was time for a major plant order.
INTERVIEWER: Which of course is the collection you have now.
TONY: Actually, all those plants died, except for two. The Sarracenia leucophylla lived only because I put it out on my fire escape, and the Utricularia livida -- a plant I didn't even order -- I put on the windowsill because I didn't know what else to do with it.
INTERVIEWER: You KILLED the rest?
TONY: I fell into all the traps -- ha ha, get it? -- of new and inexperienced growers. For instance, "green moss" instead of sphagnum pretty much did in all the Nepenthes fairly quickly. It was bad.
INTERVIEWER: But you've had several kinds of plants in the past, right?
TONY: Oh, I come from a long line of plant enthusiasts. My great-grandfather had a legendary cactus collection, my grandfather had a epiphyllum lath house, and my mother raised show-quality hanging-basket fuchsias before the fuchsia gall mite arrived in the Bay Area. Now, on my father's side... are you asleep?
INTERVIEWER: Er, no, just resting my eyes. So, getting back to the mass murder...
TONY: Hey!
INTERVIEWER: ...unfortunate demise of all those plants, why didn't you just give up on CP?
TONY: Because in the summer of 2001, I spent an afternoon at the UC Botanical Garden and stumbled on The Savage Garden in their bookshop. I bought it immediately and read it straight through like a novel. Aha! Now I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing wrong. I spent the rest of the year in India and Nepal, but started buying plants when I got back and came to my first BACPS meeting in 2002.
INTERVIEWER: Tell us about your setup.
TONY: It's nothing special, that's for sure. Most of my plants sit in plastic
trays of water. Some plants live on the fire escape, and the rest are on the windowsill.
INTERVIEWER: I see the term "windowsill" is generously defined to mean the top of bookcases, a card table, and stereo speakers, and inside some big plastic tubs, as well as the actual windowsill. Anyway, what kind of water do you use?
TONY: Whatever comes out of the faucet. San Francisco supposedly has pretty good water, plus a world-famous natural misting system. Sometimes I buy distilled water for the spray bottle, especially a couple of weeks before the show.
INTERVIEWER: How often do you feed your plants bugs?
TONY: I don't feed them bugs, and wouldn't consider doing so. They're on their own in that department.
INTERVIEWER: How many plants do you have, and what kinds are they?
TONY: About 100, in most of the genera -- Byblis, Cephalotus, Dionaea, Drosera, Heliamphora, Nepenthes, Sarracenia -- but my heart belongs to Utricularia.
INTERVIEWER: For the flowers, of course.
TONY: Partly for the flowers, but also because the world is a more wondrous place that contains such amazing lifeforms. The coolest flowers and most amazing traps, incredible diversity, no pests to speak of -- what's not to like?
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned the need for a challenge. What's that about?
TONY: I feel that's a significant aspect of this hobby for many people. For me, the first challenge was getting CP to grow at all. Then I decided to see if I could grow Sarracenia from seed, the directions being so complicated and all. This led to my next challenge, what to do a hundred eager young Sarracenia seedlings. Most of them ended up on the raffle table, and I still have more than I can take care of. My current challenge is to see what happens if I put epiphytic utrics in big plastic tubs under that card table.
INTERVIEWER: Well, I think I've heard just about enough. Tony, thank you very much.
TONY: My pleasure. Come back any time.
by Joe Mazrimas
| BACPS TREASURY REPORT | ||
| Jan. 28, 2006 | ||
| ASSETS | BALANCE | |
|---|---|---|
| Sellers | $49.00 | |
| Raffle | $101.00 | |
| Auction | $60.00 | |
| TOTAL | $210.00 | |
| Current Balance (01-28-06) | $210.00 | |
| Previous Balance (11-19-05) | $2248.62 | |
| TOTAL | $2458.62 |
| 
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|
Drosera pauciflora |
Drosera peltata W. Australian form |
Sarracenia leucophylla in late February |
March 18, 2006: BACPS at the
San Francisco Flower & Garden Show
March 25, 2006: Spring Meeting
May 13, 2006: Summer Meeting
May 20, 2006: Bug Day at the Randall Museum
June 1-5, 2006: ICPS Conference, Frostburg State University, Frostburg, Maryland
August 26, 2006: BACPS Annual Show and Sale, Lakeside Park Garden Center in Oakland
November 11, 2006: Fall Meeting
January meeting photos -- Albert Huntington; Drosera pauciflora and Drosera peltata -- Glenn Rankin; UCBG display case, interview photos, Sarracenia leucophylla -- Tony Gridley
The BACPS Newsletter is a quarterly publication produced by the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society.
Please send newsletter submissions to Tony Gridley (tgridley@comcast.net). For more information on membership, subscriptions, or events, please visit our website: www.bacps.org.