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  • #61
Some great plants, thanks for sharing the photos Ron! Nice collection of various U.humboldtii, I noticed it slows down a lot it's growth a few weeks after repotting, he sure doesn't like it.

Peter
 
  • #62
Thanks for the generous comments. :hail: I just hope that now that I'm increasing hours of light that some of them will bloom (especially the big, robust ones).

I'm not using a summer/winter transition, mainly because I'm lazy and forgetful.
So - how many hours do you keep your lights on? (12?)

Something I noticed, your U. endressii leaves look thicker than mine. We both have the same clone so it can't be that. I'm getting larger leaves but they are thinner.
If this is true, it's probably due to my lower humidity. :censor: In the winter, the combination of much lower air moisture levels in the house and lower temps - hit my plants hard. First, I kept reducing the gaps over my tanks (to hold the humidity in) but then noticed that the cold air in the basement was causing massive condensation on the glass. I've insulated most of the tanks exterior so the humidity should be higher (but the meters are being shipped - so I'm not sure what level is). Next step is to install small fans inside the tank to increase air circulation & reduce stratification (bottom is very humid, top is dry).

No fair your Jikta is larger than mine now!
:-D Hopefully it keeps growing!

I noticed it slows down a lot it's growth a few weeks after repotting, he sure doesn't like it.
That's the thing, growth actually increased for a month or two after the repotting! None of the plants showed any signs of distress and started to grow & add leaves very quickly. Then my largest started to regress. It was quite the turnaround .. hopefully it will stop the slide & restart it's good growth... :boogie:

Time to see some flowers ... :water: :drool:
 
  • #63
Thanks for the generous comments. :hail: I just hope that now that I'm increasing hours of light that some of them will bloom (especially the big, robust ones).

So - how many hours do you keep your lights on? (12?)

14 on/10 off

If this is true, it's probably due to my lower humidity. :censor: In the winter, the combination of much lower air moisture levels in the house and lower temps - hit my plants hard. First, I kept reducing the gaps over my tanks (to hold the humidity in) but then noticed that the cold air in the basement was causing massive condensation on the glass. I've insulated most of the tanks exterior so the humidity should be higher (but the meters are being shipped - so I'm not sure what level is). Next step is to install small fans inside the tank to increase air circulation & reduce stratification (bottom is very humid, top is dry).:

Thats kinda funny, I can't get mine to lower and you can't get yours to raise. I "thought" I hit the sweat spot in one of my vavariums...but 6 days later...the UG pot looked bad and too dry :censor:. Good thing its a weed. I'm blaming it on unusually warm winter here.
 
  • #64
Since I'm setting up an Utric. nephrophylla tank here: http://www.terraforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125487

I'm taking down this little setup and going to reset it up with probably some Utric. tridentata to see how that does.

Anyway I figured someone might want to see the results, this was planted with a single stand layer of LFS topped with ADA aquasoil. The light levels were pretty low, thus the taller growth. Divisions of this one moved over to medium light levels quickly resumed normal growth but stopped flowering. None of the other nephrophylla pots I have in other conditions grew as well or flowered as much as this did. Over the last 6 months or so there has always been an open flower or a stalk heading up. I filled the undrained container once a week. I've replicated smaller setup's with mini-african violet pots filled with ADA aquasoil with good results, but the flowering never took off like this.

The dish as it was today.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39807474@N07/5364023357/" title="Utricularia nephrophylla by randallsimpson, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5364023357_9eacee75c3_z.jpg" width="640" height="428" alt="Utricularia nephrophylla" /></a>

After I removed the driftwood.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39807474@N07/5364023701/" title="Utricularia nephrophylla by randallsimpson, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5206/5364023701_a3aec15ae8_z.jpg" width="640" height="428" alt="Utricularia nephrophylla" /></a>
 
  • #65
Yesterday, I set up a bunch of small cups of Aquasoil for utrics, including U. nephrophylla, U. pubescens, U. warburgii, U. blanchetii & a small form of U. reniformis (so far). If U. geminiloba ever volunteers an aerial stolon or looks big enough to safely divide, I think I may need to try some of it also. Iirc, it shares it's lithophytic tendencies with U. nephrophylla - so maybe it would work.... ???
 
  • #66
OK, an update on U.campbelliana. The flower stalk is much bigger now, but it seems the flower has taken out a lot from the plant. Most if it's leaves are dead, only one clump and a few small ones are left. I think it's normal though, such a small plant needs a lot of energy to form the flower whicg is quite large compared to the size of it's leaves.

88839238.jpg
 
  • #67
campbelliana redux

Well, I'm jumping on the tree fern bandwagon myself. I was not satisfied with the current growth of my U. campbelliana so I decided to drop back and punt.

Upon unpotting I was pleased to find nice subsurface growth. I found it interesting that the growth was limited to the top 1/8-1/4" of the substrate. I didn't notice any downward tendencies.

I had a 24" half section of tree fern trunk and an extremely slow growing sphagnum species (less then 1/2" per year) that seemed perfect for this application.

campby1_hf.jpg

campby3_hf.jpg

campby2_hf.jpg


I'm letting the trunk hydrate a bit in a new sphagnum culture before placing it in it's new home, she was bone dry.

Wish me luck :)
 
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  • #68
so apparently, quelchii was going through "me" withdrawls while i was away and desperately wanted me to come back home....so, guess what it did for me while I was away:

SavedPicture-3.jpg


coming back from seeing campbelliana in the wild, i was surprised to find that it does not actually grow on porus media, like our tree fern, but on solid, SMOOTH tree trunks with the aid of epiphytic moss. a slight scratch on the moss indicates that campbelliana, as well as the moss is grown very VERY thinly across the tree trunk, just one plant layer thick...

that being said, if it aint broke, dont fix it.
 
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  • #69
so apparently, quelchii was going through "me" withdrawls while i was away and desperately wanted me to come back home....so, guess what it did for me while I was away:
Very cool!! (now if mine would only do that!!) If the stalk aborts now that you're back, the plant might be trying to send you a different message ... :-O

coming back from seeing campbelliana in the wild, i was surprised to find that it does not actually grow on porus media, like our tree fern, but on solid, SMOOTH tree trunks with the aid of epiphytic moss. a slight scratch on the moss indicates that campbelliana, as well as the moss is grown very VERY thinly across the tree trunk, just one plant layer thick...
Wow! Great info.... That sounds ideal for one of those water-filled clay containers that one of the orchid-folks told me about (Swords, RSS, both?). There is an orchid grower who uses sealed (on the bottom iirc) terracotta drainage tiles filled with water to grow epiphytic plants on the outside. The tiles sprout all kinds of small mosses. If I remember, I'll look around for the pics from that guy's site (unless someone beats me to it...).

Congrats on the U. quelchii stalk and looking forward to the tons of pics from your journey - as well as the stories ... :hail:
 
  • #70
Here is one of them http://www.swampstick.com, I've been wanting to try humbo in one of those but have not gotten around to it. They use the old terra cotta water pipes overseas with great results.
 
  • #72
Nothing new with the campbelliana stalk, the flower bud just got a bit larger - 4 months and still no flower! But I recently heard it takes even up to 6 months for the flower to develop, sounds crazy:D

Here's the terrarium, the campy sits on the xaxim slab:
37342760.jpg


U.quelchii developing flower, can't wait to see it!
67176496.jpg


Also some terrestrials will be flowering soon:
79448205.jpg


Peter
 
  • #73
This weekend, while sending stuff out (& doing some repotting now that NASC helped me free up space), I found some tubers ...

1st was a U. geminiloba that I was sending out:
Ugeminilobatubers051511RS.jpg


.... then a U. alpina that was growing in a 3.5" pot. I was moving it into a 4" square net pot and was shocked at all the 'marbles' ... :0o: (they were scattered all around the perimeter of the pot):
Ualpinatubers1051511RS.jpg

This plant has been in a 'resting phase' for a few months now - no new leaves...

The one thing I've found with those 4" net pots is that my plants have all taken off when switched over. However - when you make a utric happy, there's both good & bad ....
Ualpinaxhumbopot051511RS.jpg

(pardon the misc. debris on my basement potting bench). I'm definitely having issues keeping plants from invading the pots of their neighbors. Even the U. quelchii (not shown) is busting out and sending leaves & rolons out from everywhere (20-30 leaves...). Moof - is this why you've got glass around the pots of your big utrics?

Some unrelated comments/observations from the past few months:

- a month or 2 ago, I allowed aerial stolons from both a U. nelumbifolia & a U. humboldtii clone to reach the lower reaches of my 75 gal tank where there is a layer of live LFS (I felt reasonably safe since all of the other utric pots are sitting on pots to raise them closer to the lights). Within a few weeks, both had launched the largest leaves that I've seen from any of my plants to date. Then a week or two later, the U. nelumbifolia sent up three simultaneous flower stalks. The largest was over 1/8" diameter near the base. I've had to train it multiple times to keep from frying in the lights - it is probably close to 3' long. I'm not sure what the two plants find down there that is so much better than in any pot - but I'd love to find out ... :scratch: I'm also thinking that I'm going to need to stop this experiment soon before those two completely own the tank (although - I sure would like to see a U. humboldtii flower 1st) :-O
- I'm not too happy with my treefern experiments - the U. asplundii has grown and colonized the slab but doesn't appear as happy as the others in LFS netpots. The U. jamesoniana has grown but not very well. It seems that the treefern is probably staying too dry in my environment - even with at least one spraying every morning. I'm playing with some ideas now related to the terracotta 'branches' filled with water ...
- the U. unifolia that I got last year isn't U. unifolia. It's apparently u. asplundii - should have flower pics (lots) in a week or three.
- U. 'Jitka' continues to grow with new leaves approaching an inch ... :0o: I gave it it's own net pot this weekend - hopefully I didn't kill it (same with my largest U. geminiloba).

Congrats to those with the new flowers coming!! :hail:
 
  • #74
so...being frustrated at the glacial pace campbelliana has been growing, and seeing how amazingly they grew out in the wild, i decided to remount my sorry piece of utric differently than from the past. i've decided to add a layer of sponge between the wood and my moss/utric. while i didnt not see anything like this in the wild, i am making the call that trying to replicate conditions in the wild is an exercise in futility since i cant account for ALL the variables (shadow, photoperiod during the time of day, temps during the day, rain frequency, cloud cover frequency, etc etc etc) this is a feeble attempt at helping the plant grow in constant conditions, and hopefully allow it to grow at a faster pace.

i got a spongefilter lying around (the fine type) and chopped it up into square pieces...
WP_000127.jpg


then i placed the sponge on the cork mount, then placed my sorry piece of campbelliana on top of that. i didnt want to use fishing line because it could destroy whatever runners the utric had, plus, it would have compressed the sponge which would have prevented it from doing its job. so i used a bag used to hold those vermicelli noodles to bind the sponge and plants together, i believe the same material is used to make loofahs---i'd say it works perfectly. (err....pardon the magenta)
WP_000126.jpg
WP_000125.jpg


the whole idea is to create tiny water reservoirs yet at the same time provide drier conditions for the utric to grow. more mass allows inertia swings between wet and dry to be kept at a minimal. sponges should be saturated via capillary action from the moss. excess water would be stored in the sponge, until the plant requires it/the moss starts to dry out.

so in theory, this should work--knowing campbelliana requires slightly drier conditions than others...but who knows? let's hope for the best.
 
  • #75
As mentioned in my previous post, here are two pics from some plants flowering now.

First up is one of the flowers from the plant that has now colonized the live LFS in the lower regions of my 75 gal tank - U. nelumbifolia. It can't compete w/ Kula's colors (maybe I'll be able to focus in future pics): :blush:
Unelumbifoliasze052311RS.jpg


Next is one of the 1st flowers from my U. asplundii - there are many more coming along that should be opening over the next few weeks - so I hope to add & improve ... it's just such an interesting, intricate flower ...
Uasplundii052311RS.jpg
 
  • #76
WOW! VERY NICE RON!
while your nelumbifolia's lacking in pigmentation, the asplundii is certainly not. that clone has a very nice dark purple to it. most flowers i see are more pastel colored---either that, or they're always taken from far way. :p
 
  • #77
Cute flowers Ron :)

Here's my Utricularia campbelliana. Only the astute eye can pick out both of the leaves :lol: It's mounted... well, I took a chunk of cork bark, smeared a small layer of peat in the crevices, applied some swathes of sheet moss with fishing line, and stuck a little piece of 'root' (stolons?) between two big chunks of moss. The peat will have essentially washed out at this point because the cork sits vertically against a terrarium wall, with the bottom 1" under water. I think the bottom cork/moss wicks water up to keep the whole thing kinda moist at all times, because sometimes I don't water for a week but the moss doesn't die (and the terra isn't too terribly humid).

P5230034.jpg


The plant seems to have shifted to the lower half of the moss - I'm not sure if that's because it's shadier or wetter there, but well.. it can do what it wants as far as I'm concerned.
 
  • #78
Aloha Ron,

maybe the nelumbifolia you have is a different form/population/clone??? from the one i am growing? I seem to see this species being grown in all sorts of media (LFS chunks with perlite, live sphagnum, peat sand, etc). Also, semi aquatic to full on wet terrestrial. maybe multiple clones with different flower color and different growth habits?
 
  • #79
Campby update:

2.... maybe 3 new leaves
Woohoo, while not much it's still the most aggressive vegatative growth Ive seen so far

:)
 
  • #80
OK, the more I read about U. reniformis, the more confused I get. I'm going to receive some seeds of reniformis (large form) soon, so have been checking out cultivation requirements. Some sources say that it should be grown wet, whilst others have it growing in open orchid like composts - quite contradictory conditions ???
 
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