Nature on RESEARCHUT

Nepenthes

rrs@researchut.com (Ritesh Raj Sarraf) — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 08:46:56 +0530

Of the many things we care for in our garden, having some Carnivorous plants was also one to have.

Plants are tricky. A lot of information they pass. And depending on where you are and what plants you are with, the results can vary. The Nepenthes family isn’t native to where I live but I still wanted to have them. While not impossible, though a difficult task to bring up such species.

So plants are tricky; tricky because they are saying things all the time; but all you need to decode those signals is time and patience, to closely observe to what they exhibit and then try to relate.

Thankfully the Nepenthes have pitchered well.

First Nepenthes

My very first attempt resulted in a failure. Now that I’ve been able to grow a young plant to have it fruit many pitchers, I conclude that the first plant I got was an unhealthy one. The same does reflect in the picture that I took.

Second Nepenthes

This was the second attempt with a different one. Thankfully, this one has prospered. The pitchers that follow are all from this plant.

Nepenthes

It is a tropical pitcher plant found in the rain forests. Caring for them can be very very tricky.

The below pictures/videos are in order, as and when they developed.

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March 2022

The very first pitcher blooms

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April 2022

The second pitcher

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May 2022

Moar pitchers

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June 2022

Pitchers, Pitchers….

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July 2022

Many more to follow….

Pests

Thankfully, so far, no pest problems have occurred. Possibly, because the usual pests are part of the diet.

Care Tips

Bottom line is that you need to ensure your Nepenthes has the Tropical Rain Forest type habitat. Whatever it takes, build that.

Lotus to Lily

rrs@researchut.com (Ritesh Raj Sarraf) — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 21:52:30 +0530

The Lotus story so far

My very first experience with water flowering plants was pretty good. I learnt a good deal of things; from setting up the pond, germinating the lotus seeds, setting up the right soil, witnessing the growth of the lotus plant, fish eco-system to take care of the pond. Overall, a lot of things learnt.

But I couldn’t succeed in getting the Lotus flower. A lot many reasons. The granite container developed some leakage, which I had to fix by emptying it, which might have caused some shock to the lotus. But more than that, in my understanding, the reason for not being able to flower the lotus, was the amount of sunlight. From what I have learned, these plants need a minimum of 6-8 hrs of sunlight to really give you with the flowering result, whereas the setup of my pond was on the ground with hardly 3-4 hrs of sun. And that too, with all the plants growing, resulted in indirect sunlight.

Lotus to Lily

For my new setup, I chose a large oval container. And this one, I placed on my terrace, carefully choosing a spot where it’d get 6-8 hrs of very bright sun on usual days. Other than that, the rest of the setup is pretty similar to my previous setup in the garden. Guppies, Solar Water Fountain etc.

Initial lily pond setup

The good thing about the terrace is that the setup gets ample amount of sun. You can see that in the picture above, with the amount of algae that has been formed. Something that is vital for the plant’s ecosystem.

I must thank my wonderful neighbor who kindly shared a sapling from their lily plant. They already had had success with flowering the lily. So I had high hopes to see the day come when I’d be happy to write down my experience in this blog post. Though, a lot of patience is needed. I got the lily some time in January this year. And it blossomed now, in October.

So, here’s me sharing my happiness here, in particular order of how I documented the process.

Monday morning greeted with a blossomed lily

Lily Blossom Closeup

Beautiful water reflection

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Dawn to Dusk

The other thing that I learned in this whole lily episode is that the flower goes back to sleeping at dusk. And back to flowering again at dawn. There’s so much to learn in the surrounding, only if you spare some time to the little things with mother nature.

Lily status at dusk

Lily the next day

Not sure how long this phenomenon is to last, but overall witnessing this whole process has been mesmerizing.

This past week has been great. 🙏🏼

Insect Camouflage Plant

rrs@researchut.com (Ritesh Raj Sarraf) — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 19:57:12 +0530

I was quite impressed by the ability of this insect; yet to be. The way it has camouflaged itself is mesmerizing. I’ll let the video do the talking as this one is going to be difficult to express in words.

Plant Territorial Behavior

rrs@researchut.com (Ritesh Raj Sarraf) — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 22:35:19 +0530

This blog post is about my observations of some of the plants in my home garden.

While still a n00b on the subject, these notes are my observations and experiences over days, weeks and months. Thankfully, with the capability to take frequent pictures, it has been easy to do an assessment and generate a report of some of these amazing behaviors of plants, in an easy timeline order; all thanks to the EXIF data embedded. This has very helpfully allowed me to record my, otherwise minor observations, into great detail; and make some sense out of it by correlating the data over time.

It is an emotional experience. You see, plants are amazing. When I sow a sapling, water it, feed it, watch it grow, prune it, medicate it, and what not; I build up affection towards it.

Though, at the same time, to me it is a strict relationship, not too attached; as in it doesn’t hurt to uproot a plant if there is a good reason. But still, I find some sort of association to it.

With plants around, it feels I have a lot of lives around me. All prospering, communicating, sharing. And communicate they do. What is needed is just the right language to observe and absorb their signals and decipher what they are trying to say.

Devastation

How in this world, when you are caring for your plants, can it transform:

From This

Healthy Mulberry Plant

Healthy Bael Plant

To This

Dead Mulberry Plant

Very Sick Bael Plant

With emotions involved, this can be an unpleasant experience.

Bael is a dear plant to me. The plant as a whole has religious values (Shiva). As well, its fruits have lots of health benefits, especially for the intestines. Its leaves have a lot of medicinal properties.

When I planted the Bael, there were a lot of emotions that went along.

On the other hand, the Mulberry is something I put in with a lot of enthusiasm. Mulberries are now rare to find, especially in urban locations. For one, they have a very short shelf life; But more than that, the way lifestyles are heading towards, I was always worried if my children would ever have a day to see and taste these fruits.

The mulberry that I planted, yielded twice; once very soon when I had planted and second, before it died. Infact, it died while during its second yield phase.

It was quite saddening to see that happen. It made me wonder why it happened. I had been caring for the plants fairly well. Watering them timely, feeding them the right amount of nutrients. They were getting a good amount of sun.

But still their health was deteriorating. And then the demise of the Mulberry. Many thoughts hit my mind.

I consulted the claimed experts in the domain, the maali, the gardener. I got a very vague answer; there must be termites in the soil. It didn’t make much sense to me. I mean if there are termites they’d hit day one. They won’t sleep for months and just wake up one fine day and start attacking the roots of particular plants; not all.

I wasn’t convinced with the termite theory; But still, give the expert the blind hand, I went with his word.

When my mulberry was dead, I dug its roots. Looking for proof, to see if there were any termites, I uprooted it. But I couldn’t find any trace of termites. And the plant next to it was perfectly healthy and blossoming. So I was convinced that it wasn’t the termite but something else.

But else what ? I still didn’t have an answer to that.

Thinking

The Corona pandemic had embraced and there was a lot to worry, and worry not any, if you change the perspective. With plants around in my home, and our close engagement with them, and the helplessness that I felt after seeking help from the experts, it was time again; to build up some knowledge on the subject.

But how ? How do you go about a subject you have not much clue about ? A subject which has always been around in the surrounding but very seldom have I dedicated focused thought to it. To be honest, the initial thought of diving on the subject made me clueless. I had no idea where to begin with. But, so, as has been my past history, I chose to take it as a curiosity.

I gathered some books, skimmed through a couple of pages. Majority of the books I got hold of were about DIYs and How to do Home Gardening types. It was a decent introduction to a novice but my topic of curiosity was different.

Thankfully, with the Internet, and YouTube®️ in particular, a lot of good stuff is available as documentary videos. While going through some, I came across a video which mentioned about carnivore plants. Like, for example, this one.

Carnivore Plant

This got me thinking that there could be a possibility of something similar, that did the fate to my Mulberry plant. But who did it ? And how to dive further on this suspicion ? And most of all, if that thought of possibility was actually the reality. Or was I just hitting in the dark ?

Beginning

To put some perspective, here’s how it started. When we moved into our home, the gardener put in a couple of plants stock, as part of the property handover. Now, I don’t exactly recollect the name of the plants that came in stock, neither English nor Hindi; But at my neighbor’s place, the plant is still there.

Here are some of the pictures of this beauty. But don’t just go by the looks as looks can be deceiving

Dominating Plant

We hadn’t put any serious thought about the plants we were offered by the gardener. After all, we never had ever thought of any mishap either.

Plants we planted

Apart from what was offered by the builder/gardener as part of the property handover, in over the next 6 months of we moving in, I planted 3 tree type plants.

Mulberry
Bael
Rudraksha

The Mulberry, as I have described so far, died a tragic death.

Bael, on the other hand, fought hard. But very little did we know that the plant was struggling the fight. Our impression was that we must have been given a bad breed of the plant. Or maybe the termite theory had some truth.

For the Rudraksha plant, the growth was slow. This was the very first time I had seen a Rudraksha plant, so I had no clue of what its growth rate could be, and what to expect out of it. I wasn’t sure if the local climate suited the plant. A quick search showed no objections to the plant in the local climate, but that was it. So my theory has been to put in the plant, and observe.

Here’s what my Rudraksha plant looked like during the initial days/weeks of its settlement

Rudraksha Plant

The Hint

Days passed and so on. Not much had progressed in gathering information. The plant’s health was usual; deteriorating at a slow pace.

On day, thinking of the documentaries I had been watching, it hit my mind about the plant behavior.

Plants can be Carnivores.
Plants can be Aggressive.
Plants can be Invaders.
Plants can be Territorial.

There are many plants where their aggression can be witnessed with bare human eyes. Like creepers. Some of them are good at spreading tentacles, grabbing onto other plants’ stems and branches and spread above it. This was my hint from the documentaries. That’s one of the many ways plants set their dominance. That is what hit my mind that if plants are aggressive on the out, underneath the soil, they should be having similar behavior.

I mean, what we see as humans is just a part of the actual plant. More than half of the actual plant is usually underneath the soil, in most plants.

So there’s a high chance to get more information out, if you dig the soil and look the roots.

The Digging

As I mentioned earlier, I do establish bindings, emotions and attachments. But not much usually comes in the way to curiosity.

To dig further on the theory that the problem was elsewhere, with within the plants ecosystem, we needed to pick on another subject - the plant.

And the plant we chose was the plant which was planted in the initial offering to us, when we moved into our home. It was the same plant breed which was neighboring all our newly planted trees: Rudraksha, Mulberry and Bael.

If you look closely into the pictures above of these plants, you’ll notice the stem of another plant, the Territorial Dominator, is close-by to these 3 plants. That’s because the gardener put in a good number of them to get his action item complete.

So we chose to dig and uproot one of those plant to start with. Now, while they may look gentle on the outside, with nice red colored tiny flowers, these plants were giants underneath. Their roots were huge. It took some sweat shredding to single-handedly remove them.

Dominating Plant Uprooted

Today is brighter

Bael

I’ll let the pictures do the initial talking today.

Healthy Bael

The above ones are pictures of the same Bael plant, which had struggled to live, for almost 14 months. Back then, this plant was starved of its resources. It was dying a slow death out of starvation. After we uprooted the other dominant species, the Bael has recovered and has regained its charm.

In the pictures above of the Bael plant, you can clearly mark out the difference in its stem. The dark colored one is from its months of struggle, while the bright green is from now where it is well nourished and regained its health.

Mulberry

As for the Mulberry, I couldn’t save it. But I later managed to get another one. But it turns out I didn’t take good, full length pictures of the new mulberry when I planted. The only picture I have is this:

Second Mulberry Plant

I recollect when I brought it home, it was around 1 - 1.5 feet in length.

This is where I have it today: Majestically standing, 12 feet and counting

Second Mulberry Plant 7 feet tall

Rudraksha

Then:

Rudraksha Plant

And now:

I feel quite happy about

Rudraksha Plant

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All these plants are on the very same soil with the very same care taker. What has changed is my experience and learning.

Plant Co-Existence

Plant co-existence is a difficult topic. My knowledge on plants is very limited in general, and co-existence is something tricky, unexplored, at times invisible (when underneath the soil). So it is a difficult topic. So far, what I’ve learnt is purely observations, experiences and hints from the documentaries.

There surely are many many plants that co-exist very well. A good example is my Bael plant itself, which is healthily co-sharing its space with 2 other Croton plants. Same goes for the Rudraksha, which has a close-by neighbor in an Adenium and an Allamanda.

The plant world is mesmerizing. How they behave, communicate and many many more signs. There’s so much to observe, learn, explore and document. I hope to have more such observations and experiences to share 🙏

Cicada Insect

rrs@researchut.com (Ritesh Raj Sarraf) — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 15:58:08 +0530

Pandemic

With COVID-19, this was the first nation-wide lockdown in my lifetime I’ve witnessed. I guess the feel must be same for many many more people across the globe.

It was almost the same time, a year ago, when this lockdown first struck.

It being the first time, I wasn’t then really prepared on how to handle it. With everything literally shut down, there was nothing to do than sit where you are. But personally, it wasn’t that difficult. That’s because I’m not much fond of moving around frequent.

But still, it was quite shocking because literally, all the resources around me, were shunted.

Tabebuia

At my home, I have a Tabebuia tree, that I planted myself 2 years ago, in 2019. April 2020 is special because that was the first year I witnessed my Tabebuia tree blossom. And April, this year has been equally delightful, as they’ve blossomed again, in higher numbers.

But this post is about Cicada. The only reason I mention Tabebuia here is because the blossoming of Tabebuia and the surfacing of Cicada happened at the same time, then (2020) and now (2021).

Cicada

So, the same time, April last year, I first noticed these scary looking insects. You can see the images I took, below. But to describe them; they look just like house flies. But imagine the fly 50 times the size. Yes, the insect roughly is around 2 inch in length and 1 inch in width. The first time I noticed them, I was worried. It felt like dooms day for a second. You know, with pandemic, global standstill, and then such a big giant fly.

Later, I did some search on it and came to know of some very interesting things about this wonderful insect. For example, “One genus, the periodical cicadas spend most of their lives as underground nymphs, emerging only after 13 or 17 years.”

But, as I understand, the species that visits me is the annual cicada, “The annual cicadas are species that emerge every year. Though these cicadas have lifecycles that can vary from one to nine or more years as underground larvae, their emergence above ground as adults is not synchronized, so some members of each species appear every year”

These magnificient creatures come in clusters of 20-30 on the trees in front of my home. And, at timed hours of the day, depending on the weather, they start buzzing. And that can be quite loud at times.

They have visited this year too. And I’ve ensured to take more pictures of them. And it seems they’re socializing better because apart from the trees, they also occassionally sit on the ceiling of the front balcony.

Cicada on the front balcony ceiling

It doesn’t look like the pictures are able to give the right perspective of how big these insects really are. Maybe if I can get a shot where I could have it next to any object, that’d give a better prespective. Until then…

… Luckily, in my archive, I did have some pictures from last year.

Cicada 2020

For the record, this one was not dead. It was just smart enough to pretend dead when I curiously poked it