What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Going plant hunting

As most of you know... I think... Their is a bog, type thing on my land that looks to be the type one might find MI CP in, but I have never seen any. Well, I've been studying up on Butterwarts (insted of chem for my exam like I should be) and I know have reson to beleave their may in fact be Butterwarts still alive in the area. I am rather excited, but I am afraid I still do not know the name os the spiecies
tounge.gif
or if it has a visable winter form. However, in the last few months I have learned so much from everyone here about the CPs which I had never cultivated myself that I feel I am also ready to seek out sleeping sundew. Ironically, the area I now suspect is litterally a spunge of dead and live non-vasular plants and you can't even put wait onto it without being sucked in. I've never been pulled in all the way befor, but I did looks my balance and go in up to the hip with one leg, lol. Thank goodness I has a sapling to grab onto. Anyways, I digress. I'm go'n on a plant hunt.

-Darcie

P.S. Past hunts have found
Skunk Cabbage (has this thing ever been tested for carnivorious flowers, I mean what the heck is up with a water filling flower?)
Jack in the Pulpit - hey it's rare
Evening Primrose in bloom - Now THAT was a treat, talk about luck
Maybe an Indian pipe (couldn't find the plant again to varify
tounge.gif
)
Several uncommon Violets
and buttercups

Yah, fairly boring stuff, but they do tend to live in the same habbitat and jewle weed covers EVERYTHING in the spring. Maybe I'll just a dreamer, but it will give me something to do
wink.gif
 
Skunk Cabbage using a water holding technique to draw fungus gnats and mosquito's to pollinate it's large stinking spathe flower. Jack in the Pulpits or Arisaema Triphyllum are not rare, but they are protected. Indian pipes come in two colro forms white and orange, if you found the white ones they are quite uncommon. The orange ones or Pinesaps are more common but both are equally unusual.
 
It sounds like good habitat. Look for any kind of clearing or sunny place in this area, that is the most likely place to find sundews. Just be very careful this time of year, falling into the stuff could get pretty cold. Seriously, there are occasionally holes filled with water that go down a few feet in sphagnum bogs, which isn't dangerous in summer, but with a little snow on the ground, they can be hard to spot. I think the butterwort in Michigan would most likely be P. vulgaris.

BTW, evening primroses came up in my parents flower garden about 5 or 6 years ago. They spread like crazy if they have decent soil and a sunny location, but don't flower the first year from seed. If anyone is looking for them, I have quite a bit of seed I could send for SASE.
 
JUst a couple things I wanted to say:

1) It is -wOrt not -wArt
smile.gif


2) Be prepared to not find anything. COnsidering the time of year the Ping os probably dormant and their dormant buds could easily be overlooked. Might want to wait for spring/summer when they will be flowering and easier to find. Even then it might be hard, Pings are not exactly huge. I also have to say that just because a place looks promising does not mean it will be, I have spent wekends here up to my neck in muck and swamp water (not exactly smart considering the alligator populations in some of the places.
tounge.gif
) looking for CPs and have found a whole lot of nothing. Sometimes these buggers are just elusive.

3) Please remember that it is immoral to wild collect. (I am not trying to imply that you would, this is just a general statment I make whenever anyone says they are looking for or have found wild CPs)

Other than that, have fun and remember to check for leaches when you are done.
tounge.gif
wink.gif
 
Well, it is her property. It would be just like digging up a pretty flower from your backyard, which I'm sure so many of us have done.
 
Legally she can dig it up in her back yard. But would it be the right thing to do morally?  CPs are becoming harder to find in the wild and by taking the plant out of the wild she risks killing it because of transplant shock and also, it will no longer be able to spread itself in the wild.

This is all irrelevant to Darcie looking for CP's as I doubt she intended to do more than look for them.

I think Pyro was pointing out the morality of collecting CPs more for the benefit of the people who may not frequent these forums often and as a reminder from one who is genuinly concerned with the disappearance of CPs in the wild.
 
BCK is correct, I used the word immoral not illegal. It is not illegal for her to collect the Pings if she feels like it. The general concensus of the CP community is that it is ethically and morally wrong to collect these plants from the wild considering: 1) All are in some form or other 'threatened' 2) It reduced the wild genetic stock 3) It is pretty much a fact that wild collected plants do very poorly once dug up and finally 4) Odds are you can find that same plant from a 'domestic' source.

BCK's final statment is also accurate, I was not directing the comment specifically at Darcie. I was just mentioning it there because she brought it up and there migh be someone who reads her post and thinks 'hey, I know a swamp too and I'm going to go out and dig up some of these plants.' It is people like that who I was directing my post at.
 
Yea. Pulling over at swamps/bogs to look for CPs never works. We did so when we rented a cottage this past summer, I even fell in. Ew...

Funnily enough though. The lake we were on was FULL of U. gibba, U. purpurea, U. intermedia, U. vulgaris, U resupinata and on land TONS of D. intermedia, D. rotundifolia and several S. purpurea ssp. purpurea...

Its luck, not a keen eye that will find you plants, unless you've planned to visit a known stand...

I think...
confused.gif
 
LOL, I know I'm not likely to find anything. The snow has just melted so I'm going exploring tomarrow or the day after. The think about the skunk cabage is cool. Oh and the evening primrose is special because it is 100% wild, most of them these days are domestic. Don't worry about me falling into the muck, I know my spung well
smile.gif
last year I salvaged a dear skeliton from it.
 
Back
Top