Growing temperate pings

[mwwilson]

Hi All,
Back last spring I found the article "European Pinguacula :alternative cultivation method" by Iwein Coopens on the pinguacula.org website.
I checked out every dang garden center,flower shop,and landscape store looking for a nice piece of lava rock to try out without success.After taling to one guy he said they were very popular back in the 80's for landscaping but not so much now.
About a week ago we went on a vacation to western South Dakota and low and behold I FINALLY found one ;D

I have had it soaking in a tray filled with water and it looks like it will work great for what I want it to do. It has great capillarity action even without any peat and with a pan with about 4" of water it reaches 12" above the waterline.

Has anybody used anything similar to grow pings on?

My main plan is to plant it with moss and wait til next spring to plant it with P.grandiflora and macroceras subsp nortensis hibernacula and see how they do.

Take care,
Mark W.

[unstuckintime]

by lava rock do you mean Pumice? i didnt think that stuff realy soaked up the water, but rather just floated atop it. I dont know, maybe i'll try it with a piece of Prime Rose butterwort. (I dont remember how to spell the latin name, exactly)

[Clint]

All pumice is volcanic rock, but all lava is not pumice. Pumice is a certain type. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice

When people say "Lava rock", they usually mean the brown/red/black stuff. Pumice would work great, too. You're referring to Pinguicula primuliflora, btw

I'd try Mexican Pinguicula to practice with before I tried P. primuliflora. I think you'll have better luck as a first attempt.