Hi everyone,
bad news: I've gone astray and flirted with the neighbors' wives. Apart from Nepenthes, I now have a whole stable of sundews as well as two cephalotus. Why? Last week I came home with my newly purchased 105 mm macro lens, all gung-ho to take some real close close-ups of my D. binatas (some of the sideshow plants I keep outside the Nepenthes shadehouse). To my great horror I found that a full week of daily 34 C and no rain had killed them all to the last man. Infuriated at having no pretty dew drops to practice my macro skills on, I made a few calls in the CP community, and three days later I was proud owner of 30 different droseras which now populate the tanks that in colder days serve for wintering my lowland neps. Also, I guess having sold off two-thirds of my 300 neps (I'm moving to Borneo in a while and can't take them with me) has taken a greater toll on my soul than I had anticipated.....if I can't have hundreds of neps around me, I need to substitute with something else - even if the substitute is a genus that for years I've been ridiculing as "eye cancer catalysts" onnacounta their insidious tininess.
The cephalotus was a gift. And believe me - the cuteness factor is so strong with this genus, I'm fixing to get me a whole acre of it! (OK, a whole windowsill first)..
So here are some photos. Most of the droseras are still babies (under a centimeter across), but pretty nevertheless.
D. dielsiana
C. follicularis
D. burmannii
C. follicularis
D. paradoxa
(For the gear queers out there: Pentax K10D, Sigma 105 mm macro, an entire stack of extension tubes with a total of 64 mm, and a cheapa$$ tripod that's causing me endless grief...)
bad news: I've gone astray and flirted with the neighbors' wives. Apart from Nepenthes, I now have a whole stable of sundews as well as two cephalotus. Why? Last week I came home with my newly purchased 105 mm macro lens, all gung-ho to take some real close close-ups of my D. binatas (some of the sideshow plants I keep outside the Nepenthes shadehouse). To my great horror I found that a full week of daily 34 C and no rain had killed them all to the last man. Infuriated at having no pretty dew drops to practice my macro skills on, I made a few calls in the CP community, and three days later I was proud owner of 30 different droseras which now populate the tanks that in colder days serve for wintering my lowland neps. Also, I guess having sold off two-thirds of my 300 neps (I'm moving to Borneo in a while and can't take them with me) has taken a greater toll on my soul than I had anticipated.....if I can't have hundreds of neps around me, I need to substitute with something else - even if the substitute is a genus that for years I've been ridiculing as "eye cancer catalysts" onnacounta their insidious tininess.
The cephalotus was a gift. And believe me - the cuteness factor is so strong with this genus, I'm fixing to get me a whole acre of it! (OK, a whole windowsill first)..
So here are some photos. Most of the droseras are still babies (under a centimeter across), but pretty nevertheless.
D. dielsiana
C. follicularis
D. burmannii
C. follicularis
D. paradoxa
(For the gear queers out there: Pentax K10D, Sigma 105 mm macro, an entire stack of extension tubes with a total of 64 mm, and a cheapa$$ tripod that's causing me endless grief...)
(tjhe plant's still reeling from relocation shock)
