A garden's chronicles


Welcome,
At the times of social networks, starting a blog might be considered old-fashioned in a way but this is pretty convenient to share in a same place all my obsessions and creations.
"Strange fruits" is mainly focused on carnivorous plants as it is my main center of interest at the moment. You will thus find infos on the plants I grow, my cultivation techniques, my travels, updates on my research and publications as a taxonomist, reports on CP meetings, CP books reviews and much more. You will also find a lot of stuff linked to literature, music, entomology and drawing. I do hope you will find here a couple of interesting things.
Remember that this is a blog. Therefore, you are all welcome to share thoughts and comments.


François Sockhom Mey

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Heliamphora folliculata and Utricularia nelumbifolia, a three years old couple

About three years ago (unless it was four?), I tried to grow some epiphytic Utricularia in the pitchers of my biggest Heliamphora, H. folliculata here. And it works quite well. Each year, I am rewarded by one or several scapes with beautiful purple flowers. I just spray all the plants from time to time and when I give some foliar feeling, the bladderwort, of course,benefit from it. Don't you think that my Heliamphora produce three years old pitchers! When the pitcher where the bladderwort lies wither, I just remove it and set it in another pitcher. The Utricularia does not bother at all. As you can see below, the visual association of both species is quite magnificent.

Can you spot the Utricularia flower in the first photo below?


My H. folliculata is really enjoying the cool temperatures. Since it's producing a lot of pitchers, I am considering to conduct the experiment with some other species of bladderworts like U. longifolia or U. endresii. We'll see.

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