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Earlier this year when I was living in Mississippi I posted about my pitcher plants not thriving like they should have been, and eventually I figured out the cause... It was because the soil I used had waaaaaaay to much LFS in it (I think I used LFS, peat, and sand in a 1:1:1 ratio), and over...

Humboldt County, CA

This past spring I got some Sarracenia flava rubricorpora pollen to use on my S. alata "black tube", and despite some initial problems - I had to pollinate the flowers as I was in the process of moving to Mississippi and my pollen got waterlogged in the cooler - I did end up getting some seeds...

I spent much of my free time in Mississippi herping, and ended up finding some pretty cool stuff! Here are just a few shots I took after the last set I posted a while back. Nice pink Southern Copperhead. Western Mudsnake (my main target species while I was down there). Only found one...

Hola everyone! Haven't been able to post much lately because my internet access is extremely limited (just my phone unless I drive to find wi-fi), but this past weekend I went to De Soto National forest to check out the CPs and look for herps. I checked two new species off my list, Sarracenia...

Ever since I made the trip down to Mississippi from California, some of my plants have been acting weird. At first I thought it was just a consequence of the two-week drive it took to get here (not much light in the car), but because some plants have improved and others haven't, I'm wondering if...

So... It's been about a month since moved down to Mississippi for work, though I move back to California at the beginning of August. Today I went out looking for Sarracenia in the wild, and I wasn't disappointed. Only got one species, but it was still great to see it in its natural habitat...

Today I was thinking about how when cell cultures (human cell cultures, at least) grow for too long, they eventually decline and die because mitosis shortens the protective telomeres on the ends of the chromosomes to the point where the coding DNA becomes damaged and the cell cannot divide...

A few months ago I bought a Drosera cistiflora that was a small rosette no larger than a dime. Since then, it has put up a stalk that is now about 2.5" tall and still growing quickly. Does this species always bloom when it puts up a stalk? Or will it just be leaves until it dies back in the summer?

I've found that the soil in my Darlingtonia pot has settled a bit and moss has grown over the surface, and the water no longer drains as quickly as it used to. After a while it starts to spill over the edge of the pot into the catch pot below, which means it isn't flowing over the roots. When I...

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to assist a biologist in his study involving a disjunct relict population of Desert Night Lizards (Xantusia vigilis) here in Northern California. The normal range of the species is the Southern California deserts east into Nevada and Arizona; there are...

A couple of my Sarracenia are starting to send up their flower buds, and I figure I might as well try my hand at propagation since I have some interesting plants this time around. My Sarracenia alata "Black Tube" has surprised me by making two buds, and though unfortunately I don't have another...

In mid-April I will be moving down to Mississippi for about three and a half months for a new job, and most of my plants are coming with me, but I just know those warm, steamy nights would do my Drosophyllum and Darlingtonia in quickly. So I'm wondering if I might be able to find someone in an...

Yesterday my Honl Traveller8 softbox finally arrived, so today I went to go take it for a spin. What a difference it makes! The photos look like they were taken in bright ambient light with little/no flash (and an awesomely small aperture), which is the ultimate goal with flash photography...

Not much to say here, I accidentally ordered way too much Spanish Moss online and need to get rid of a lot of it. If you want some, post here. Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a subtropical bromeliad, closely related to the air plants you see in the store. It's not a real moss, nor a...

Yesterday I headed out to the Sierras with a list of places to see... One of them I knew had Darlingtonia based on some quick Google research, and a few other places within that same ultramafic rock formation that looked like they might be the correct habitat as well. I went to the known place...

I'm more a fan of CPs that don't need to be pampered (i.e., ones I can just put outside and forget about aside from watering), so I've never had any Nepenthes before. My sister bought two plants a couple months ago, but then had to travel for work and is going to be gone until sometime next...

Has anyone ever attempted to cross the different genera within this family? Like Sarracenia × Heliamphora, Darlingtonia × Sarracenia, etc.? I've always wondered if something like D. californica × S. psittacina would be possible since they resemble each other so much, but it actually turns out...

OK, so here's the deal. Sometime within the past week a large deer died next to my driveway, and I'm just letting nature clean it up (don't worry, it's a long driveway so it's not right near the house). As you can guess, in addition to the dozens of vultures hanging out, there is also thousands...

I've been reading a while that in cultivation, many dewy pines die after flowering. Why is this? Is monocarpy common in this species in the wild as well? The two main reasons I've heard of is that the plant simply exhausts itself while flowering and setting seed, or that watering it after it has...