Hi y'all
My name is Lance and I live in Santa Barbara county, Ca. I don't know if many of you know but Santa Barbara has tons of orchid nurseries which is why I got interested in the first place. Aside from growing orchids I also grow many Carnivorous plants. You all know the venus fly trap, right? Well... theres a lot more species of CP's that have different trapping mechanisms to trap different things. Heres some pics of my Nepenthes (tropical pitcher plants) which live in situ with some tropical orchids in the wild.
Nepenthes X Ile De France. This hybrid was created by Lecoufle several decades ago. As you can see the trap is similar to a pitcher that you drink from, with the digestive fluid at the bottom.
Nepenthes X red leopard...hence the name, this pitcher plant looks like a red leopard.
Anyways, the reason I got into orchid growing is because Nepenthes flower randomly at random times (basically the opposite of orchids). This makes it very hard to create some cool hybrids. Also, Nepenthes are a-sexual, with only 30% of all plants being female. A mature Nepenthes may flower next month, or in 20 years. I hope that I can expand my witty amount of orchids and hopefully make some cool hybrids to share!
- Lance