Post by Steve D on Mar 30, 2007 20:02:42 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Tales of Mystery[/glow]
Darlingtonia Arises from the Grave!
Last year I ordered a Darlingtonia californica, the first I have tried since I was in my teens. (The last one I killed with youthful enthusiasm and ignorance.) This time, decades later, I was going to do it right!
I read all I could about this tricky, finnicky plant. It detests warm roots. Some people place its container into a custom sized hole in a styrofoam cooler, with a cooling system keeping the inside of the insulated container cool. Some people place ice cubes of distilled water on the soil surface.
I didn't want to go to that much bother, but I did want my plant to survive. So, afraid it might die if I didn't go to some effort to accommodate its particular preferences, I planted it in a polyurethane foam insulating planter (as I do most of my carnivorous and other plants that are not in conventional porous red clay pots), and then I placed moist long fiber sphagnum all around the plant and strung between the nice-sized pitchers, for a total depth of about an inch and a quarter (perhaps 3.5 centimeters), and kept the moss moist, figuring that the evaporation from the moss in my arid climate would help to cool the plant's crown and soil and roots beneath.
It seemed like a good idea. But it wasn't. In fact, it was a terrible idea that caused the tortuous slow death of the plant. I watched in horror as, day after day, one pitcher after another began to turn brown and then die back to its base.
Transplant shock, I thought. It will adjust and pull out of it. But it didn't, and after a few more days I uncovered the crown of the plant, buried and suffocated under the pile of long fiber sphagnum, rotted to the core. Heartbroken, I removed the LFS from around the crown of the dead plant making a circle of exposed medium perhaps 5-6 centimeters wide. I couldn't stand the idea of simply dumping the plant and its medium into the compost pile without a period of grieving and perhaps futile hope that somehow some of the plant might have survived my mistreatment, although all visible evidence told me otherwise.
I kept watering the dead plant, keeping the medium just moist as week after week passed and my hope faded. Then, about 5 weeks later, I saw two tiny green threads had emerged from the planting medium within the previous two days from a location near, but not at, the previous crown of the plant. Although I thought it was probably grass or some other plant, my hope immediately sprang to life again.
During the rest of the year (2006) those two tiny original spider-web sized shoots were joined by about half a dozen more, each a little more developed and robust than the last! I was overjoyed. Still, it was depressing to think I had killed an almost mature Darlingtonia, forcing it to desperately try to grow a new crown from its roots.
Then, just when it looked like it might be resurrecting itself from its own grave, it stopped growing. I was extremely apprehensive. Was I doing anything wrong? I worried and fretted, but decided that the tiny plant might be going into dormancy since--well, since everything else in the greenhouse that had a yearly dormancy was doing so. Could it successfully survive a dormancy? Would it rot or be too dry or not moist enough or would I kill it from my own ignorance as I had done to my first Darlingtonia many years before?
To the contrary, it survived and this season it came out of dormancy with a vigorous growth spurt! It is growing great now. I took all of the long-fiber sphagnum from the top of the growing medium and replaced it with more medium (1 part sphagnum peat, 1 part sand, 1 part perlite). I now take no special care to "keep its roots cool!" other than to keep it in an insulating polyurethane foam planter like most of my other CP.
Here's a photo of this previously tortured but now (hopefully) happy little resurrected plant, with a thimble for size reference--
Best wishes all--
Steve
Darlingtonia Arises from the Grave!
Last year I ordered a Darlingtonia californica, the first I have tried since I was in my teens. (The last one I killed with youthful enthusiasm and ignorance.) This time, decades later, I was going to do it right!
I read all I could about this tricky, finnicky plant. It detests warm roots. Some people place its container into a custom sized hole in a styrofoam cooler, with a cooling system keeping the inside of the insulated container cool. Some people place ice cubes of distilled water on the soil surface.
I didn't want to go to that much bother, but I did want my plant to survive. So, afraid it might die if I didn't go to some effort to accommodate its particular preferences, I planted it in a polyurethane foam insulating planter (as I do most of my carnivorous and other plants that are not in conventional porous red clay pots), and then I placed moist long fiber sphagnum all around the plant and strung between the nice-sized pitchers, for a total depth of about an inch and a quarter (perhaps 3.5 centimeters), and kept the moss moist, figuring that the evaporation from the moss in my arid climate would help to cool the plant's crown and soil and roots beneath.
It seemed like a good idea. But it wasn't. In fact, it was a terrible idea that caused the tortuous slow death of the plant. I watched in horror as, day after day, one pitcher after another began to turn brown and then die back to its base.
Transplant shock, I thought. It will adjust and pull out of it. But it didn't, and after a few more days I uncovered the crown of the plant, buried and suffocated under the pile of long fiber sphagnum, rotted to the core. Heartbroken, I removed the LFS from around the crown of the dead plant making a circle of exposed medium perhaps 5-6 centimeters wide. I couldn't stand the idea of simply dumping the plant and its medium into the compost pile without a period of grieving and perhaps futile hope that somehow some of the plant might have survived my mistreatment, although all visible evidence told me otherwise.
I kept watering the dead plant, keeping the medium just moist as week after week passed and my hope faded. Then, about 5 weeks later, I saw two tiny green threads had emerged from the planting medium within the previous two days from a location near, but not at, the previous crown of the plant. Although I thought it was probably grass or some other plant, my hope immediately sprang to life again.
During the rest of the year (2006) those two tiny original spider-web sized shoots were joined by about half a dozen more, each a little more developed and robust than the last! I was overjoyed. Still, it was depressing to think I had killed an almost mature Darlingtonia, forcing it to desperately try to grow a new crown from its roots.
Then, just when it looked like it might be resurrecting itself from its own grave, it stopped growing. I was extremely apprehensive. Was I doing anything wrong? I worried and fretted, but decided that the tiny plant might be going into dormancy since--well, since everything else in the greenhouse that had a yearly dormancy was doing so. Could it successfully survive a dormancy? Would it rot or be too dry or not moist enough or would I kill it from my own ignorance as I had done to my first Darlingtonia many years before?
To the contrary, it survived and this season it came out of dormancy with a vigorous growth spurt! It is growing great now. I took all of the long-fiber sphagnum from the top of the growing medium and replaced it with more medium (1 part sphagnum peat, 1 part sand, 1 part perlite). I now take no special care to "keep its roots cool!" other than to keep it in an insulating polyurethane foam planter like most of my other CP.
Here's a photo of this previously tortured but now (hopefully) happy little resurrected plant, with a thimble for size reference--
Best wishes all--
Steve
