I started about 5 years ago. My life had been a little slow, having graduated from university but not yet found a job. Being prone to odd and obsessive hobbies, I had been messing around with plants - ordering exotic seeds, growing avocados and pineapples, botanizing my neighborhood, and reading old houseplant books.
I bought that first VFT assuming it would eventually die, but thinking it might be fun to watch for a while - tease, feed stuff to etc. But a few days later the fateful event occurred - I came accross a copy of Adrian Slack's "Insect-eating plants and how to grow them". I still remember the feeling of excitement when I began to realize that my VFT may not be on death row after all. Instead of the palliative care that my other house plant books had recommended, it actually explained how to make the plant thrive.
The VFT was followed by an S. leucophylla that mysteriously appeared in the water garden section of my local nursery, and an S. rubra and Utricularia sandersonii ordered by mail from the US.
When it arrived, the utric was squashed into a plastic bag, had only a few leaves, and was infested with irish moss (which to the untrained eye is almost indisgishable from a utric). But with lots of nursing and close attention it eventually flowered, and I was really impressed.
Of course as I was genetically predisposed to odd hobbies (my grandfather was a pioneer of radio controlled cars and planes, and my mother knits like a woman possessed) it couldn't possibly have stopped there. I now have several dozen species of bladderwort, as well as the VFT and sarrs I started with and some others I have met on the way.
And I lived happily ever after.
I bought that first VFT assuming it would eventually die, but thinking it might be fun to watch for a while - tease, feed stuff to etc. But a few days later the fateful event occurred - I came accross a copy of Adrian Slack's "Insect-eating plants and how to grow them". I still remember the feeling of excitement when I began to realize that my VFT may not be on death row after all. Instead of the palliative care that my other house plant books had recommended, it actually explained how to make the plant thrive.
The VFT was followed by an S. leucophylla that mysteriously appeared in the water garden section of my local nursery, and an S. rubra and Utricularia sandersonii ordered by mail from the US.
When it arrived, the utric was squashed into a plastic bag, had only a few leaves, and was infested with irish moss (which to the untrained eye is almost indisgishable from a utric). But with lots of nursing and close attention it eventually flowered, and I was really impressed.
Of course as I was genetically predisposed to odd hobbies (my grandfather was a pioneer of radio controlled cars and planes, and my mother knits like a woman possessed) it couldn't possibly have stopped there. I now have several dozen species of bladderwort, as well as the VFT and sarrs I started with and some others I have met on the way.
And I lived happily ever after.
