Wacky Weather

Lucky (unlucky?) for me most of my carnivorous plants are grown indoors. Lately we've been having some weeeird weather: hail, water spouts, torrential rain, tsunami warnings and thunder & lightning! Outdoors my Sarracenias keep on keepin'-on and a lot of them are starting to put up flowers. That's always a sure sign of Spring for me. I just trimmed off the old pitchers from last season yesterday. I'll have to post some photos soon of the first flowers and pitchers of the season coming up!

My Newest Roommate

So this past weekend I attended my fourth (or maybe it was fifth???) Pacific Orchid Expo here in San Francisco. I'm always in awe at some of the amazing orchids I see there so I can imagine how bad it must be for true orchid aficionados. My favorite exhibit (AND sales booth) always belongs to Andy's Orchids. They have an AMAZING selection of species orchids. In years past I've gone to their sale booth without a plan only to find myself dazed and confused an hour later not knowing what to buy. This year I decided to make things easier on myself and go with an orchid native to a place where most of my favorite Nepenthes come from: Borneo. After finding a friendly salesperson and giving her my criteria, she was able to track down a few orchids from Borneo for me. I'll admit that it still wasn't a piece of cake when it came time to choose but boy did it help! I ended up leaving the show with a Bulbophyllum macranthum. It's not in bloom yet but the photos that I've seen online of the flower are growing on me :] Check it out:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080228065153/orchids/en/images/thumb/d/d5/
Bulb_macranthum.jpg/220px-Bulb_macranthum.jpg

Snow in SF?!?!

I got a kick out of the following website: http://www.isitsnowinginsfyet.com/

Apparently it was created after word spread that snow was expected in San Francisco. It turns out we DID get some afterall but it was a light dusting and only at higher elevations (i.e. Twin Peaks). Sadly I didn't see any of the white stuff and I hope my CPs growing outside fared alright. I'm worried I should have dumped the water out of some of my saucers that my Sarracenia and Drosera were residing in. Hopefully they didn't freeze solid. Guess I'll find out soon enough...

The Lamentation of Mount Roraima

I recently found out about an expedition to Mount Roraima in Venezuela in the month of April. It would have been one of those "trips of a lifetime" to go explore one of the grandest tepuis in South America. On the mountain there is a fantastical array of fauna, flora and earthly formations. For carnivorous plant nuts such as myself, we would have the opportunity to see Heliamphora, Drosera, Utricularia and even some carnivorous bromeliads. To top it all off, the trip was being lead by Stewart McPherson (author of such books as Pitcher Plants of the Americas and Glistening Carnivores)!!! It also happens to be the 100th anniversary of Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Lost World, which was inspired by Mount Roraima. As some would say, this would have been a trip of EPIC proportions. But alas, I got ahead of myself and later realized that it just wasn't in my budget to go on the trip at this time. SIGH. :( I estimate the total cost to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,000. I hope they have another trip there in the near future but that, presently, is still unknown. I urge anyone with the funds to contact Stewart McPherson right away to see if there still might be an opening in one of the two expeditions headed to Mount Roraima in April. For now I'll have to make due with this Heliamphora heterodoxa x minor in my living room...

SPECTAcular SPECTAbilis Hybrid!

Nepenthes spectabilis 'Giant' x spathulata

This is one of my newer, favorite hybrids that I got towards the end of 2010. It took a while to get settled-in but recently has put out two GORGEOUS pitchers and the growth rate of the plant seems to have increased considerably. I'm real excited to see how big the mature pitchers on this plant will be. I just hope it doesn't out-grow it's home!!

Purple People Eater

What's not to love with a name like that?? I recently acquired a Sarracenia hybrid called 'Purple People Eater' from California Carnivores. Peter D'Amato told me it was a seed-grown hybrid they made back in the 9os whose heritage was lost. Apparently, a customer who purchased one of the originals brought in some divisions of his mother plant recently and I pounced on one of 'em! You gotta love those mystery hybrids. From the looks of it though it definitely has some S. purpurea in it. Right now the plant is dormant so all I've got to admire are some shriveled pitchers from this past growing season. Also, the plant isn't as large as photos of others I've seen online so it still has a lot of growing to do as well. Hopefully with a little TLC it will end up looking like this one:

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh214/txwatcher91/P1080852.jpg

Hortus Botanicus

I've kinda been procrastinating about uploading my photos from my summer trip up to Mendocino County, CA. Fiiinally I got around to resizing and saving some of them from my visit to Hortus Botanicus in Fort Bragg. Let me just say that if you've never been there and you live in the Bay Area, then you really should make the effort to get over there. It's such a cool little nursery with an emphasis on weird botanical delights. I'm talking succulents, orchids, bromeliads, South African natives, Australian natives and last...but certainly not least...CARNIVOROUS PLANTS! The owner, Robert Goleman, has a very impressive personal collection of carnivorous plants as well as many different genera of CPs available to purchase. I've attached a few photos below of the many Sarracenia species and hybrids residing there. Enjoy!

{FYI: another post about HB is likely to follow with more photos}