My Aquatic Wetlands Prof. is going to give me all of the Utrics he collected this spring now that we have had our exam over the samples. He has never been able to keep them alive over winter because they make Turrions and then poop out on him and die. I figure I can prolly just give them a nice proper dormency and they will be fine.
Since in the wild they make there dence little turrion and wash up on the mucky shallow shores and then get frozen over I though putting them in some home made muck and poping them in the fridge with maybe a cm or 2 of water on top would do the trick for dormency, but I have never actually done anything with aquatics before. Does anyone have experience and some info to share?
Specifically, I really don't know what I would make the muck out of if I did that... and I am also unsure as to what kind of water would be best to keep them in. I am use to my sphagnum loving CPs but since these guys live in just about any sort of open water source I am not sure if I should be using a different substrait then peat or if they actually prefer water with a bit of mineral content.
Right now I can not be sure which species I have because there is no flower and samples... well these plants are definitly at least 2 diff species, but neither one fits the "size" standards in my books. They are both too big and too small, LOL! I am looking forward to flowers in the spring so I can slap some ID's on them, but my prof seems to remember pink or purple flowers so I am really hoping I got a purple and not just two yellow species (or 2 yellow subspecies). The plants are so unhappy right now that I can't really tell by structure alone, intermedia, vulgaris, minor and geminiscapa seem most likely. Anyhow if it is of any help in knowing how to care for them, here is the list of potential species:
U. purpurea
U. radiata
U. minor
U. intermedia
U. vulgaris
U. gibba
U. geminiscapa
...did I mention I was excited? lol XD
Since in the wild they make there dence little turrion and wash up on the mucky shallow shores and then get frozen over I though putting them in some home made muck and poping them in the fridge with maybe a cm or 2 of water on top would do the trick for dormency, but I have never actually done anything with aquatics before. Does anyone have experience and some info to share?
Specifically, I really don't know what I would make the muck out of if I did that... and I am also unsure as to what kind of water would be best to keep them in. I am use to my sphagnum loving CPs but since these guys live in just about any sort of open water source I am not sure if I should be using a different substrait then peat or if they actually prefer water with a bit of mineral content.
Right now I can not be sure which species I have because there is no flower and samples... well these plants are definitly at least 2 diff species, but neither one fits the "size" standards in my books. They are both too big and too small, LOL! I am looking forward to flowers in the spring so I can slap some ID's on them, but my prof seems to remember pink or purple flowers so I am really hoping I got a purple and not just two yellow species (or 2 yellow subspecies). The plants are so unhappy right now that I can't really tell by structure alone, intermedia, vulgaris, minor and geminiscapa seem most likely. Anyhow if it is of any help in knowing how to care for them, here is the list of potential species:
U. purpurea
U. radiata
U. minor
U. intermedia
U. vulgaris
U. gibba
U. geminiscapa
...did I mention I was excited? lol XD