Succulents and More™

In a recent post , I showed a photo of a painted pitcher plant ( Nepenthes burbidgeae ) in the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory: Nepenthes burbidgeae  at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory This carnivorous plant from the highlands of Borneo has a pitcher large enough to hold a small animal.  I haven't been able to determine what exactly this species of Nepenthes  “eats,” but you might have seen the video below that has been making the rounds on Facebook, reddit, and other content aggregators in the last few days: It shows a Nepenthes  hybrid, Nepenthes truncata × lowii , at California Carnivores  in Sebastopol, CA that caught a rat or a mouse earlier this year. In the video, Damon Collingsworth , co-owner and general manager of California Carnivores, cuts open the pitcher to see what's left of the rodent. It's a pretty amazing thing to see. (Don't worry, it isn't gross.) If you want to find out more about carnivorous plants, Damon Collingsworth is the featu...

My very first post on this blog was about transplanting a black bamboo ( Phyllostachys nigra ‘Punctata’) from a half wine barrel into the ground at my parents-in-law’s property in Mount Shasta, CA . Since then, we’ve added more bamboos, and I’ve repeatedly posted updates (at Thanksgiving , at Christmas , and at Easter ). At 14,179 feet, Mount Shasta is one of the highest mountains in California Every time we visit, I look forward to checking out the progress the bamboos have made. Most of them were fairly small when planted so I know that patience is required, but I’m still eager to see how everything is doing. My favorite of all the bamboos we’ve planted in what we jokingly call “Experimental Bamboo Garden North” is Phyllostachys vivax ‘Aureocaulis’. It made it through the winter with flying colors and I had high hopes for this year’s shooting season, expecting culms well in excess of 1” in diameter. You can imagine how distraught I was when my mother-in-law told me about s...

A few weeks ago I wrote a post waxing poetic about my farfugiums . Since then, something has been chewing on them; in fact, half of the leaves of my variegated farfugium are now gone! This is a very slow growing plant as it is because of the lack of chlorophyll in the leaves, and having even two or three leaves missing will diminish the plant’s vitality even more. Needless to say I’m not happy! Farfugium japonicum 'Argenteum' in its heyday just a month ago Farfugium japonicum 'Argenteum' with chewed leaves My first line of defense was to put wire cages around the plants targeted by these pernicious attacks. I put a piece of plastic on top of this particular cage to make sure nothing could entered from the top. Wire cage around farfugium That worked in the spring when we had similar problems. Back then, I thought the damage was caused by rats, which we do have in our yard occasionally and which we have successfully caught with our trusty Rat Zapper ...