Tropical plant enthusiasts should already be familiar with bromeliads. These neotropical monocots form an incredibly diverse group, from the popular air plant genus Tillandsia to the economically important pineapple, Ananas comosus. The archetypal bromeliad in many horticulturalists’ minds, however, are the tank bromeliads. Here, a rosette of leaves creates areas where rainwater is impounded in a central tank and/or leaf axils. While this strategy is important for epiphytes that need to conserve water high in trees, it also effectively creates a pitcher of sorts.
Catopsis sp. growing with highland Nepenthes
Of the thousands of tank bromeliads, only three are considered truly carnivorous – Brocchinia reducta, Brocchinia hechtioides, and Catopsis berteroniana. For more on their natural history and study of their carnivory, Stewart McPherson wrote an excellent piece on bromeliad carnivory for the Florida Council of Bromeliad Societies that can be found here.
I have always been fascinated by the carnivorous bromeliads, although they are difficult to find stateside. I grew Brocchinia reducta when young, but lost the plant over a cold winter. A few retailers have offered plants recently, so I once again have some of these fascinating plants.
My Catopsis was sold as Catopsis berteroniana two years ago, but it doesn’t key well to that species – allegedly, C. berteroniana usually produces a single pup after flowering, and mine produced three. C. berteroniana also has more upright leaves and more copious wax than my plant (although the authority Palací notes that vegetative morphology alone can’t be used for specific identification). I’ll have to wait until it flowers again and find the keys to the species to be sure.
This good-sized Brocchinia reducta is a welcomed new acquisition. Hopefully, summering it outdoors with my Sarracenia will give it a tighter rosette characteristic to the species. We’ll see how changes by the end of summer.
Pardon the pun. My Nepenthes campanulata are looking pretty nice right now and are showing a lot of progress.
The entire setup – both plants are putting a little more size on recentlyMy red Malesiana Tropicals cloneOn the left, my red Malesiana clone; on the right, my Borneo Exotics cloneThe Borneo Exotics clone again
Back in mid-September, I collected a heavy handful of Ginkgo biloba seeds from a neighborhood tree. I potted them in some old Nepenthes media plus pumice and lava rock and stratified them in a refrigerator until December, when I set the pot on a windowsill. Seven months later, I have some nice looking seedlings:
The eight viable seedlings as of July 2016. The seedling in the foreground with the black ribbon around it is the only three-edged seed to germinate – supposedly this should be the single male tree in the batch
From my batch of 20 seeds, I got a pretty lousy germination rate – only 10 germinated, and 2 of those seedlings proved nonviable, although the end result is probably more Ginkgo seedlings than I need.
Ginkgo foliage – note the unique bisected veination from petiole to leaf edge
I noticed that many of the seeds in the pot would initially swell and crack the seedcoat, but lacked radicles (the initial root). After waiting several months on these seeds, hoping they would grow, I finally dissected several of them only to find they lacked embryos! It seems like the seeds I collected were only semi-fertile at best, although the grove I collected them from has plenty of male Ginkgo trees.
Ginkgo axillary bud that might be activating – this seedling shows some early promise and I’m hoping it will continue to branch
For a while, I thought that I had stratified my seeds too early, killing many of the embryos that still needed time and the warmth of autumn to develop. Anecdotally, I collected several seeds from female Ginkgo around Davis in January and dissected them, only to find that they, too, lacked embryos despite the warm fall conditions they experienced.
I’ll probably end up thinning out these seedlings, moving some of them to deeper pots or into the ground but I will keep some as misho (bonsai started from seeds) and potentially practice some grafting with female branches.
Last weekend, the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society had its annual summer potluck at California Carnivores in Sebastopol. The featured speaker was Bill Hoyer, who discussed several outlying Nepenthes (N. pervillei, N. madagascariensis, and N. masoalensis) along with treks to Sulawesi and Palawan.
Bill Hoyer discussing nectar drinking behavior of geckos on N. pervillei in the Seychelles
Besides being a very large retail nursery, California Carnivores has a very large collection of specimen plants. While they have revamped and expanded their Heliamphora collection, which is beautiful in its own right, I only escaped with Nepenthes photos:
N. singalana x hamata Red Hairy — this plant is a monster N. rigidifolia from Malesiana Tropicals N. robcantleyi QoH x KoS — this is one of several larger robcantleyi in the collectionN. maxima Wavy Leaf from BE — I think this is one of the nicest forms of maxima around and I’m surprised it isn’t more popular N. veitchii from the late Geoff WongN. platychilaN. lowii x truncata — a huge plant with forearm-sized pitchersN. hamata lower pitcherThis is probably N. macrophylla, although I didn’t check the pot labelAn N. lowii G. Trusmadi upperAfter seeing this young N. undulatifolia at the nursery collection, I understand much better why this plant is part of the tentaculata group
I don’t have many Pinguicula in my collection, although the few I’ve acquired over the years are pretty much effortless growers. My second Pinguicula was a generous give-away, P. esseriana, which decided to flower en-masse this spring.
I wasn’t very good at growing Mexican Pinguicula in more conventional ways with a dry winter rest. Last year, I noticed that California Carnivores grew some exceptional Pinguicula in Nepenthes pots, so I gave it a try and it’s looking promising so far.
As this quarter progresses, I’ve gotten into a coffee habit of sorts (although I’ve always preferred tea). Our dining commons has plenty of coffee, and when there are take-out cups available, I’ll usually bring some back to the dorm.
But as most Nepenthes growers know, coffee isn’t just the drink of choice for tired undergrads — it’s a pretty good fertilizer, too. While I used to use coffee on the highland collection about every six months, watering the pots with half or full strength room temperature brew, I pretty much halted my fertilizer regimes in late 2014. I switched back to heavy in-pitcher feeding with fish pellets, a technique I used when I first started growing Nepenthes in 2008, to keep my media fresh and discourage soil pathogens.
N. bicalcarata Marudi as of today; notice the increase in size due to a coffee watering in November
And it works well in practice — with a few hitches. Some plants, like N. jamban, have such thick fluid that pellets dropped into them don’t sink, but instead mold at the surface of the fluid; the only things they do seem to catch are isopods, gnats, and springtails, which work well enough since there’s plenty of prey in the highland setup. Others, like N. campanulata, are sensitive to too much food, and feeding them becomes a delicate balance between giving them enough food to increase in size without killing off the pitchers prematurely. And there’s a third category reserved solely for N. bicalcarata — I just couldn’t feed it anything!
The thing about N. bicalcarata is that it’s a myrmecophyte that relies on ants to do most of its digesting; there is some evidence that suggests that the species lacks pitcher fluid enzymes altogether. Camponotus schmitzi maintains the pitcher environment to discourage noxious conditions — Wikipedia has a great section about it. After much experimentation, it became clear that even the smallest fraction of pellets was causing the small pitchers to die, and consequently, the plant was shrinking. In a last ditch effort, I watered it with coffee (diluted to about half strength) in November of last year, seeing as I had nothing else at hand to fertilize it with. While clearly spurring its growth, I don’t think coffee is the end-all be-all fertilizer for Nepenthes growers. Check out the yellow leaves on the picture above, which I’m inclined to think is a deficiency moreso than anything else — I’ll give it a foliar feeding with MaxSea once I’m back home.
But this isn’t quite the end of the story yet. The soil pathogens that kept appearing in my highland collection after the coffee waterings didn’t appear in my N. bicalcarata pot. Besides a little bit of slime mold at the surface and a touch of mold right underneath the subsurface of the media, the media looked pristine. The roots were clearly unharmed — the tips remained white and the root hairs healthy. Even the live sphagnum beginning to grow at the sides of the clear pot seemed untouched, whereas in the highland setup live sphagnum would die back from the tips because of the coffee. So I decided to take things a step further; my N. clipeata is in the lowland tank with the same media and a topdressing of live sphagnum, so I gave it some coffee today.
Here it is pre-coffee. My line of thinking was mostly “it didn’t rot the N. bicalcarata media and I really want some larger leaves!”. N. clipeata takes to in-pitcher feeding remarkably well, but I’m greedy for more growth from it, as it is my favorite species.
And again, right after watering with full-strength coffee. Check out those surface roots!
And now, draining. I plan on flushing it several times tomorrow, and I don’t want to let any runoff into the water column — I have Neocaridina shrimp down there, and caffeine can act as a pesticide in high enough amounts.
As for what’s prevented the pathogens from flourishing, I don’t know. It could be that the closed nature of the tank prevents them from gaining a foothold. It could be that the pathogens only establish themselves when given the cold nights my highlanders need. It could be that the coffee here is somehow better than the coffee I brewed at home. It could be nothing at all!
The lesson here, if any, is that coffee probably won’t work under everyone’s conditions and might not be the best substitute to well-balanced fertilizers or feeding — but the only way you can really know is by trying.
Ginkgo seeds, sans sarcotesta; they still smell a little bit
Ginkgo biloba is another fascinating plant, albeit non-carnivorous. It is known for its status as a “living fossil” and its beautiful fan-shaped leaves, as well as its hardiness (ginkgo trees in Hiroshima survived the atomic bombing!). In my Bay Area hometown, ginkgo trees are extremely popular as street trees, planted by the city for shade. Most of the trees planted around the country are male (ginkgo, like Nepenthes, are dioecious), partially because the sarcotesta, the fleshy orange-yellow layer surrounding the cherry or pistachio-like pit of the fruit, smells like a mixture of rotten meat and excrement. I know of several different locations around the city where there are female trees, and collected a large handful of *ahem* ripe-smelling fruit today.
A three-ridged seed (one of two from the twenty harvested); supposedly these yield male trees
Despite the smell of their fruit, female trees are popular in East Asia for their seeds, which are eaten shelled and roasted or boiled (they make a good soup or congee topping). These seeds will be sprouted instead of eaten, seeing as Ginkgo biloba is my favorite species of tree. My rough handful yielded exactly 20 seeds, which will need a cold stratification period, much like Sarracenia seeds.
A two-ridged seed supposedly yields a female tree; these are much more common (18/20) per batch
Baking soda will neutralize the smell of the sarcotesta, by the way. Cleaning the seeds is a chore best done outdoors. And with gloves.
cantharifera 