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Click the flyer or here to go to the main New England Carnivorous Plant Society conference page.

]]> http://hawkdog.net/wordpress/archives/4116/feed 0 http://hawkdog.net/wordpress/archives/4104 http://hawkdog.net/wordpress/archives/4104#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2011 10:23:24 +0000 dr.hypercube http://hawkdog.net/wordpress/?p=4104 The bog garden (construction posts here and here) is doing nicely; the sphagnum is taking off with the onset of some cooler weather, the cranberry foliage is turning red and the sundews are getting a second wind.

The whole thing.

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Drosera rotundifolia

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Drosera intermedia

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Spiranthes cernua v. odorata – blossoms are just opening

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And a couple shots of potted plants: Sarracenia minor Okefenokee Giant fenestrations

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An unknown Sarracenia hybrid

Click through to see notes on what went where.

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Sarracenia purpurea

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Sarracenia rubra

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Cypripedium reginae (1 year old plants, just getting started after dormancy)

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Sarracenia flava (also year-old plants)

They’re either ornata or rubricorpora – I lost the tag on the pot.

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And finally a tribute to Watkins Glen in the ’70s. I was there before the rowdiness got going, but read about it in car magazines. As I recall, burning the bus was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

“The Bog wants the bus! The Bog wants the bus!”

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Info on how they did it is here.

Rather than use a preformed plastic pond, I decided to use pond liner (should be available at any nursery/greenhouse with a water garden section; I got mine from Wentworth Greenhouses). It went like this:

Layout – I used a garden hose to outline the bog. I wanted a teardrop shape; since my liner was 8′ x 10′, I sized the bog at 5′ x 7′ at its maximum. The 3′ extra is to accommodate an 18″ depth (obvious, but…). the teardrop is oriented so that the narrow end points at the low spot in the layout. We’ll see whether I pull it off, but what I want to suggest is a seep/spring that peters out into the grass – I’m going to transplant some Siberian Iris into the drainage area.

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Digging out. A bamboo culm to span the sides, a tape measure for depth readings and a level. Getting the sides perfectly level is less critical with a bog that it is with a water garden – sphagnum will hide some sins. That being said, it’s probably best to avoid pitching the thing like a dang ski jump.

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Dig? Dug!

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Most pond-liner how-tos I’ve seen recommend putting down special underlayment to protect the rubber and if my soil had been a little bonier I might have considered it. It’s not though; I’ve got nice sandy loam down to 18″, so I took the swamp yankee approach – a newsprint protective layer.

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Laying the rubber in place:

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And beginning the fill with a sphagnum peat/rainwater slurry:

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I used 3 1/2 bales of peat

to get it mostly filled up

and then topped it with a bag of long fiber sphagnum (I’ll add another bag if I can find one).

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Voilà!

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Pink Ladyslipper Cypripediun acaule getting ready to bloom.

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Frond unrolling.

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A new-to-me bog. I shall return.

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Update – here’s a link to the spinny version.

Update II – pano taken during a lunchtime walk to a local bog here.

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The commensalism in the title?  Lichens are a symbiosis of fungus and algae. For Sarah, my favorite lichen (because my mum taught me it’s common name when I was about 8 or 9) – a Cladonia, too:

Laggania

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Dunkleosteus

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Speculative sea monster

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Monster fish

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Via @cephalopodcast.

Amereega pepperi male transporting tadpoles (will embiggen maximally when clicked.

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Nepenthes truncata Paisan Highlands

While wandering around the internet looking for info on other Tsangpo exploration, I found the video account of the 2002 expedition on Hulu. Some thoughts -

• Anyone who does not expect to have to re-negotiate with Monpa porters when the porters feel they have the upper hand is not paying attention. It happened to Kingdon-Ward in 1924, to the 1998 kayakers and, as you’ll see below, in 2002.
• The river volume in 2002 is low – and yet the water is still amazingly powerful and complex. Some of it has to do with the gradient and some with the fact that ‘low’ is a relative term.
• I can’t imagine what the holes, hydraulics etc. would be like at 2 1/2 to 5 times the volume depicted below (the conditions that the 1998 group confronted). Mind = boggled.
• If you have Google Earth installed, plugging 29°46’9.59″N, 95°11’13.33″E into the search box will fly you  (close) to the Hidden Falls.

• The map graphics in the video confuse the heck out of me – all I can figure is that south is at the top of the map.
• Takin.