Chicxulub's Nature Preserve (carnivorous plants, orchids, etc)
- Thread starter Chicxulub
- Start date
As with most things involving MFK, the answer to when it was started is a bit convoluted, but yes; it is fair to say MFK became an entity in 2005.
And thank you! I've always looked significantly younger than I am. I am actually 37, but I can still pass for late 20s apparently. I was still getting carded when I went out at 30.
Honestly looking (and often feeling) younger than I am is definitely a blessing imo
Thanks for showing such beautiful pictures of your preserve and its biota, and for saving the area and even your neighbors' pitcher plants. Awesome mission. I feel lucky to feel some connection with someone doing stuff like that, and who keeps fish too.
Finally, your plants and landscape photographs are excellent!
Finally, your plants and landscape photographs are excellent!
Thank you all for the kind words!
F FJB I actually teach for the University of Florida about wetland plants and I serve on the board of directors for the North American Sarracenia Conservancy as the Director of Conservation. Of late my main activities have been modernizing our website and creating a digital herbarium, but the meat and potatoes of my job there is to go dig up plants that will be destroyed and move them to appropriate areas, which is made all the easier by my having eight acres of pristine carnivorous plant habitat for them to go to.
At this point, not so many. I have a 150 up and running, but empty, that I'm using largely to keep a filter going. Aside from that, I've got roughly 1300 gallons of glass in storage, to include a 550, 510 and 365. I moved in November 2019, then the rona hit, and my finances suffered and the tanks never went up ?
A few Swamp Critters from this spring-
The MAGNIFICENT golden flower of the carnivorous yellow butterwort, Pinguicula lutea
The same plant as above, but showing the predatory leaves in a rosette near the ground. This image is a composite, as to have the flower in focus makes the rosette so dark as to be invisible, but to have the rosette in focus makes the flower a blown out yellow-white blob.
Hybrid pitcher plants Sarracenia x formosa; a hybrid of Sarracenia minor and Sarracenia psittacina. This is the less common variant of the hybrid that has S. psittacina as the parent plant.
Southern coastal violet, Viola septemloba
Orange candyroot, Polygala lutea. This plants roots have a remarkably powerful mint flavor that is used to flavor teas and other things.
Yellow pitcher plant, Sarracenia flava. The globes on stalks will eventually become the flowers of this monstrous carnivore with traps that can be nearly four feet tall!
Lanceleafed violet, Viola lanceolata. These things favor the very narrow strip of land between wet and dry habitats in which the soil is out of the water but stillfully saturated. They can be found upland, but in the right spots, such as this colony, they can form nearly pure stands!
Red chokeberry, Aronia arbutifolia. I genuinely don't know why it's called chokeberry as it's edible. They're typically used to make jellies and jams.
Each of these tiny yellow flowers belongs to the carnivorous terrestrial bladderwort Utricularia subulata. This diminutive predator eats microorganisms in wet soil with tiny snap traps in its roots.
The vividly beautiful carnivorous pink sundew, Drosera capillaris. These are medium sized predators similar in mode of action to a venus flytrap, in that each "hand" will wrap up around a prey item to form a fist for digestion. Flytraps are considered cousins to sundews in that they're an exceptionally large and highly modified form.
Southern grass mantid, Thesprotia graminis. My little nature padawan found this thing this afternoon, and was quite pleased with himself for having done so! Can't say that I blame him.
The MAGNIFICENT golden flower of the carnivorous yellow butterwort, Pinguicula lutea
The same plant as above, but showing the predatory leaves in a rosette near the ground. This image is a composite, as to have the flower in focus makes the rosette so dark as to be invisible, but to have the rosette in focus makes the flower a blown out yellow-white blob.
Hybrid pitcher plants Sarracenia x formosa; a hybrid of Sarracenia minor and Sarracenia psittacina. This is the less common variant of the hybrid that has S. psittacina as the parent plant.
Southern coastal violet, Viola septemloba
Orange candyroot, Polygala lutea. This plants roots have a remarkably powerful mint flavor that is used to flavor teas and other things.
Yellow pitcher plant, Sarracenia flava. The globes on stalks will eventually become the flowers of this monstrous carnivore with traps that can be nearly four feet tall!
Lanceleafed violet, Viola lanceolata. These things favor the very narrow strip of land between wet and dry habitats in which the soil is out of the water but stillfully saturated. They can be found upland, but in the right spots, such as this colony, they can form nearly pure stands!
Red chokeberry, Aronia arbutifolia. I genuinely don't know why it's called chokeberry as it's edible. They're typically used to make jellies and jams.
Each of these tiny yellow flowers belongs to the carnivorous terrestrial bladderwort Utricularia subulata. This diminutive predator eats microorganisms in wet soil with tiny snap traps in its roots.
The vividly beautiful carnivorous pink sundew, Drosera capillaris. These are medium sized predators similar in mode of action to a venus flytrap, in that each "hand" will wrap up around a prey item to form a fist for digestion. Flytraps are considered cousins to sundews in that they're an exceptionally large and highly modified form.
Southern grass mantid, Thesprotia graminis. My little nature padawan found this thing this afternoon, and was quite pleased with himself for having done so! Can't say that I blame him.
