Plant fest 2004, Florida

6/27:
Today we met up early with 15 folks and headed to Rainbow springs
State Park about 8:15am.
Ay, brave souls indeed.
We arrived about 9:30am to the park and went down to see the invasive
Crypts in bubbling spring.
They had spent some $ on a nice garden alndscaping and the place
looked pretty nice.
We went into a locked gated part of the park and down a steep hill in
jungle like habitat, slipping and climbing under large palm leaves and
over logs.
Ricky said he'd almost eaten one of the large bright colored 8 legged
spiders that are 3 inches across and surely must be highly toxic.
But as we came down to the section near the head spring, we saw large
swaths of peculiar red Crypts doing quite well.
The area was about a 10 meter diameter section about 20-50cm deep in
cool clear hard water, roughly 72F, CO2 averages around 10ppm.
Red foxtail, pennywort, Liverwort, two moss species, some Sag
kurziana, some small tennelus were present.
The substrate was very rocky limestone mixed with some section of
organic matter and sand.
We were allowed to walk over and get a direct good look. About 6 of us
jumped in and waded over to get better looks and photo's.
This part of the trip turned out better than most of us had imagined.
We then rented canoes and headed downstream. We saw large schools of
pumkin seeds, Neon shiners, very large small mouth bass, 2ft snapping
turtles, 3 really cool pieces of driftwood(due to my efforts) with
lots of character and holes, Red Lugwigia, Potamogeton, etc.
We went south to Crackertown(and the source of at least story) in
search of southern cedar roots.
Lewis had a place down the road off of 40 that had several acres of
roots just sitting there. Well, I knew I drove past it bu the time we
saw tidal water.
So the crew stopped and we got out and attacked the area and came back
with many smaller branches of cedar which grows all over here. "Herds"
of crabs all over.
I apologized for Lewis not having any wood it seemed.
But 1/2 the group headed over to Waldo to look at a store for
driftwood rather than continue on...........to the lower Suwanee.
They say good things come to those that wait. Waldo was an 1:15 min
away. They wanted to shoop there before it closed at 5 then they were
going to drive back down later.I stopped in a local bait shop and
asked a nice lady if she knew were I could find some of those pieces
of cedar they had outside their establishment. She said go down to the
light, turn right and you cannot miss it.
Ghori, Cain and the bunch drove almost right by it.
It was less than 5 minutes away.
We found they had better prices also. Anyway, off we went to the lower
Suwanee about 40 minutes away. Braving the fire ants bites, cuts from
palm leaves, flesh eating insects of many forms, we stropped and took
some looks at a number of different blackwater pools. The swamp lily
was in full bloom. We have pictures of this 6-8" across white beauty.
We stopped at the orchid spot. A large lubbber grasshopper crawled up
a blade of grass.
There is a species of Epidendron growing on an old oak tree. Purple
leavers and yellow flowers. I decided to poke back in the woods for
some cedar etc. I found several armadillos scampering about. First
just one, then another and fianlly 2 more. Each were about 6 inches
long, all babies. They ran right in front of us.
I picked one up easily. Anton said they and humans can become lepers.
I dropped it like a hot potato. They disappear into the root of a
large oak.
We stopped about 1/2 mile away at another place and we found more
driftwood than we knew what to do with.
I ran off with a huge beautiful piece. Others found plenty to fill
their deepest desires.
Stopped off for lunch.
We drove home and then hit a local fish shop. I asked if Gilly would
eat a Nunibrach for 1 dollar and double dare."With lots of Tabasco
sauce".
Finally had dinner and then the crew stopped off and attacked the
plants I have left at my place and absconded with most of the tanks I
had laying around. I gave away a bunch of madtom cats(Tom was mad
about it, but they went ot good home).
At about 11pm, I finally got rid of my 10 gallon tanks.

6/28:
I was talking to Bob as he left. We agreed that even someone who
doesn't care about aquatic plants would have had a great time or
someone as passionate as Amano.
That's a broad appeal. Everyone was tanned and worn out by the end of
the 3rd day.
The Santa Fe river canoe trip was exceptional due to low and very
clear water this time of year.
Our first stop was only a few hundred yards down where there, was
Najas, Hydrilla, willow moss on many rocks(like riccia stones),
Shoestring sags, red vals, smaller E tennellus, E rangeri swords,
Chara, Hygrophila ploysperma, hairgrass, Redfoxtail, turtles and wood
all over, fish and more fish.

The moss stones were very nice.

The shallows were very beautiful and looking back over the water, you
would be hard pressed to tell the difference between this and the
Amazon stream/rivers.
Off in the distance a banjo played.

We stopped off at several spots along the way and swam in Lily springs
with it's unique quirky attitude and saw the water just billowing up
from mother earth.
Prior, we saw a section of river that disappeared into a side branch
with about 60% of the flow being diverted back underground.

We saw a gar, about 3 feet long.
No one has kept this native fish in planted tanks for some reason. I
think they are well suited and have a very nice personality.

After liberating some of my enslaved plants, the last of the group
wopndered off to fill their tanks with fish, plants and more driftwood
than they could carry.
Thoroughly exhausted, they survived another plant fest.
Bob brought some Lag's and some nice crypts and a rare african Aroid,
about a 120$ plant in speciality stores.

Kasslemann's Nymphoides was handed out for free to many memebers.
Lots of Blyxa was parlayed to those that were willing.
People saw lots of fish, plants, habitats, we wented to 5 places to
collect driftwood, a couple of stores that sell only that, you will
see 2 large pieces on Ebay soon that I collected that are nothing
short of spectacular.

The smaller branches and their ease of use was shown to the folks
Friday night at my humble abode.
Ricky Cain is 40 years old:-) He got a free dinner at Chopstix's an
Asian place over looking the lake.

Some member's decided to head on down to Florida Aquatic nurseries
since they just could not get enough here.
Friday's group got to see rare Russian Sturgeon, then we took them in
and gave everyone posters for invasive and native plant posters and
cards, shown the reference section, saw some books on the aquatic
plants of Japan, the Aquatic plants of Australia and other nice
things.

I might have a similar thing this following year either here or in CA,
or FL and might do a Marine version that is sure to please.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Is there a website for the pics??


kev

--
Civilization.

An organized system of alternatives to the stone age - CJCherryh

kev wrote in message .4...
Is there a website for the pics??


kev


Last year's:

http://www.aquatic-plants.org/previous_events.html

This years will be awhile but we will get them up soon.

You don't need picture if you came

Regards,
Tom Barr

|| Some member's decided to head on down to Florida Aquatic nurseries
|| since they just could not get enough here.
|| Friday's group got to see rare Russian Sturgeon, then we took them in
|| and gave everyone posters for invasive and native plant posters and
|| cards, shown the reference section, saw some books on the aquatic
|| plants of Japan, the Aquatic plants of Australia and other nice
|| things.
||
|| I might have a similar thing this following year either here or in
|| CA, or FL and might do a Marine version that is sure to please.
||
|| Regards,
|| Tom Barr

So... SO SO jealous... I was atleast told, next year we will be making great
efforts to go...

I just can't get past the fact of having red crypts growing wild... and you
can have some for free... I'd have a cooler full.... hahaha...

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|| ((((º`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸. ((((º ·´¯`·. , .·´¯`·.. ((((º

is that better??

Tom,
Sounds like my kind of trip! I am so glad to hear that you had a good
time. Perhaps next year for me.

Vicki

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before the devil knows your dead!!!
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