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Post by BarryRice on Mar 28, 2007 15:10:58 GMT
Hey Trent,
My work periodically takes me to Florida. I'll make sure to warn you next time...
Barry
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Post by BarryRice on Mar 22, 2007 16:07:23 GMT
Hey Steve,
Whereabouts do you live? My wife and I are big fans of the delta area and visit whenever possible. The food in the New Orleans area is always FABULOUS. Meanwhile, the food in the rest of the gulf coast? So sad...
B
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Post by BarryRice on Mar 12, 2007 23:58:40 GMT
Hey Paul, Good to see you here! I wish I was as rich and famous as Barry, too. Unfortunately, I'm only saddled with his "good" looks. Cheers Barry
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Post by BarryRice on Mar 22, 2007 16:03:54 GMT
Welcome aboard, Clint! I'm glad you like the new format for this!
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Post by BarryRice on Mar 13, 2007 0:00:17 GMT
Clearly, here is a person with baggage.
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Post by BarryRice on Mar 12, 2007 17:56:12 GMT
Hey Folks, I've got a lot of hats on regarding carnivorous plants. I photograph, grow, and study them. I write about them, and edit Carnivorous Plant Newsletter along with Jan Schlauer. I also serve as the Director of Conservation for the ICPS. Doing this editorial work has given me the responsibility of trying to help others get their work in print, too. First and foremost, I just like seeing carnivorous plants in the wild. This has molded my relationships with carnivorous plants. I grow them to enjoy them when I'm not seeing them "for real" in the wild. I love to photograph them, to try to capture how I see them in my mind's eye. And I like to learn about them, hence the scientific work I do with them. I try to live up to a phrase I heard a mentor of mine say, many years ago. He was a director for a state program of The Nature Conservancy, he told me that he tried to live his life in such a way that he was "worth more to those animals alive, than dead." I try to do the same. I amuse myself by maintaining two large carnivorous plant web sites. The first is the CP FAQ ( www.sarracenia.com/faq.html). The other is my fictional photography gallery, Galleria Carnivora ( www.sarracenia.com/galleria/galleria.html) For my day job, I work for The Nature Conservancy as a scientist for the Global Invasive Species Initiative.
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BobZ
Mar 22, 2007 16:08:30 GMT
Post by BarryRice on Mar 22, 2007 16:08:30 GMT
Not to mention the fact that Bob is active in theatre, and is currently holding a starring role in an Arcata theatrical production!
Barry
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Post by BarryRice on Dec 4, 2007 20:30:37 GMT
If a person had managed to grow carnivorous plants with enough skill and over enough years to have accumulated a large greenhouse collection full of "beautiful and rare cultivars," I would not call that person an "inexperienced grower."
Barry
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Post by BarryRice on Dec 3, 2007 17:42:45 GMT
Thanks for suggesting that I be on such a list. However, I still believe that it is the individual grower that decides whether a plant has merit. For example, 'Wacky Traps' has a bimodal appeal. Some people hate it, some love it.
At least once/month, someone sends me photographs of a carnivorous plant and asks me if it is "worth cultivar status". My gut feeling, that I try to convey as sensitively as possible, is that anyone thinking about establishing a cultivar name should be sufficiently experienced with the group of plants they are growing, that they shouldn't feel they need to even ask that question.
Barry
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Post by BarryRice on Nov 20, 2007 19:47:30 GMT
Uh, what do I have to do with 'Red Sawtooth'? I've never grown the plant, nor have I ever seen seen the dang thing except for photos!
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Post by BarryRice on Nov 16, 2007 20:15:58 GMT
Hey Alexis,
Heh heh heh. I agree that there are lots of names out there, but in terms of trying to force growers to register them? It's like shouting at a brick wall. I've been trying the "proactive" approach for years. Things I've tried include....
1)Trying to convince, bully, finagle growers to register their good plants.
2)Trying to assign other authors to research existing clones and register the names.
3)Doing #2, myself---hence 'Dentate Traps', 'Justina Davis', etc.
4)Proactively contacting growers and asking them about plants in their collections that should be given wider distribution, and names too: 'B52.'
The bottom line----after years of trying to get collectors to register their plants, I've pretty much thrown in the towel. It's the old cliche---don't try to teach a pig to sing: it wastes your time, and irritates the pig.
B
P.S. I'm a horticulturist too, so don't get bent out of shape by the analogy using the noble porcine beast in its imagery.
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Post by BarryRice on Nov 12, 2007 20:45:29 GMT
Hey Folks, As promised, I spent a few hours this weekend taking photographs of some of my Dionaea cultivars. I only photographed the ones that were looking really nice, and did not make a complete photographic inventory of the collection. Can you tell, from the pictures alone, which cultivar or named clone is which?: www.sarracenia.com/galleria/g343.htmlTo be fair, I admit that I didn't try at all to follow a uniform standard in my photography, and just followed a photographic muse in my work. EVEN so, one would think that since most Dionaea cultivars are described on appearance, it would be relatively easy to pick out which clone is which. But you really can't (mutant forms, of course, aside). For your pleasure, below is a photograph of some of my plants. They're a little abused in this image, as I was moving the plants around, photographing them, and feeding them:
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Post by BarryRice on Nov 9, 2007 20:15:08 GMT
Hey Folks,
You know, this morning I was looking at my Dionaea collection. I think I have around thirty different clones of Dionaea, most of which carry cultivar names, or bear as-yet-unestablished breeder names such as "Paradisea" or "Burbank's Best," etc.
I gotta tell you...while my collection is looking really great right now with a whole mess of brightly colored, beautiful traps, they sure don't seem to be living up to their cultivar names.
For example, while the various plants named for their red colorations surely are red (such as 'Red Piranha', 'Red Dragon', 'Clayton's Red Sunset'), they are easily matched in intensity by some of the other clones in redness.
And in agreement with what others have noted, my "Burbank's Best" plant---which a few years ago was almost all-green, has turned into a plant with nice red coloration.
And as for size? Three clones that are supposedly remarkable for their size ('Jaws', 'B52', "A2") are somewhat larger than the other plants, but for the last year the largest-trapped plant in my collection has been an entirely unnamed clone I got from Dean Cook several years ago. Meanwhile, my giant of last year---a simple old 'Dentate Traps'---is looking pretty boring this year.
All in all, in some ways, I think that the state of Dionaea cultivars is in shambles, and the differences from one so-called cultivar and another is fictitious at worst, or inconsistent at best.
I should temper my harsh comments above by saying that I'm really talking about Dionaea cultivars that are named, based only upon the details of red coloration or so-called trap size. The plants with really clearcut cultivar characters do seem to be living up to their names. Faithful little 'Justina Davis' is still absolutely green, with no red at all; the 'Fused Trap' plants are still fused, and 'Wacky Traps' is still as wacky as ever. (And so on.)
I guess what I'm thinking right now is that growing a bunch of separate cultivars is ensuring that I've got some genotypic diversity in my collection, but I'm not sure I wouldn't be getting the same phenotypic diversity with a set of thirty plants of the same clone. (Recall Aidan's photos of two specimens of the same clone, looking completely different.)
As a final attempt to explain the jumbled thoughts in my unsettled mind, let me put it this way. If you pulled the name tag out of the pot of one of my color-variant cultivars, and asked me to ID it for you, 'Justina Davis' is the only one I'm sure I'd get right!
I'll try to take some pictures this weekend to explain more what's on my mind.
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Post by BarryRice on Jan 22, 2008 17:06:07 GMT
I agree with the comments that storing information on silicon-based wafers (i.e., the internet) and carbon-based film (i.e., paper journals) are both strategies that have their benefits. For this reason, the ICPS publishes all new cultivars and all new Latin-named taxa both in CPN and on the ICPS web site.
Cheers
Barry
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Post by BarryRice on Jan 16, 2008 19:30:06 GMT
Hey John,
In general, I agree with you. There is only one thing I wish to add, though. In order to be established, a cultivar description and photograph must be published in a journal. This takes effort by the editors (i.e., yours truly for CPN), and also consumes resources in both journal space and the cost to print them.
I estimate that publishing a single cultivar in CPN costs the ICPS about US$500 because of color page processing and printing costs. Since we publish CPN with about two cultivar photos per page, in reality the cost probably translates to closer to $250-300 per cultivar. But this is significant, when you compare this to the ICPS's total conservation grant program of $8500 for 2007.
So, I'd rather folks show SOME restraint in deciding which plants to be published in CPN as new cultivars!!!!
Barry
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