Greetings!
Last week, while in the process of hacking back a Nepenthes thicket that appears to have "gotten away" from me lo these past six months, I accumulated quite a pile of fresh pitchers clipped from the plants that I grow in a commercial greenhouse.
Epiphany: I loaded about 20 of them into the car, handed them off to my talented little wife, together with some clipped horsetail stems and a Rosenthal bowl and, ¡Voilá! had a very nice looking (if odd) table arrangement. Used three excellent alata clones, mainly var. boschiana, some maxima CSUF lowers, purple tobaica lowers, x mixta 'Superba' and eustachya. Syringed the pitchers with a couple of cc's of distilled water and, so far, so good. Couldn't bring myself to top it off with some nice inermis uppers from the backyard...
Question to the group is whether anyone has seen Nep pitchers being commercialized in the cut flower/foliage trade? It seems that there are enough nurseries that grow them now to generate plenty of "spares" from their mother plants. The new generation hybrids that Geoff Mansell is producing by the boatload would seem to be a natch for such a market.
Best regards,
SJ
Last week, while in the process of hacking back a Nepenthes thicket that appears to have "gotten away" from me lo these past six months, I accumulated quite a pile of fresh pitchers clipped from the plants that I grow in a commercial greenhouse.
Epiphany: I loaded about 20 of them into the car, handed them off to my talented little wife, together with some clipped horsetail stems and a Rosenthal bowl and, ¡Voilá! had a very nice looking (if odd) table arrangement. Used three excellent alata clones, mainly var. boschiana, some maxima CSUF lowers, purple tobaica lowers, x mixta 'Superba' and eustachya. Syringed the pitchers with a couple of cc's of distilled water and, so far, so good. Couldn't bring myself to top it off with some nice inermis uppers from the backyard...
Question to the group is whether anyone has seen Nep pitchers being commercialized in the cut flower/foliage trade? It seems that there are enough nurseries that grow them now to generate plenty of "spares" from their mother plants. The new generation hybrids that Geoff Mansell is producing by the boatload would seem to be a natch for such a market.
Best regards,
SJ