Little Shop and Other Horrors

For the past two or three years, there have been rumors that there's a remake in the works of Little Shop of Horrors.  Not the musical, mind you, but a remake of the original Roger Corman shot-in-three-days 1960 black and white original!  This rumor is dubious, however, and on the web site www.imdb.com (the independent movie data base) the page for this film says "Under Development", but you have to be a "special member" (which I believe means part of the movie industry) to get any details of who's producing the film.  Among some comments is that this alleged remake might not even be a comedy, but a drama !!!!   As Mr. Mushnik would say, "Oy vey!!!" 

 

Many people have seen the 1986 film version of the off-Broadway musical directed by Frank Oz, which had a fabulous cast and great songs (although some songs were cut, like the tango "Mr. Mushnik & Son").  Rick Moranis played Seymour, Ellen Greene played Audrey (as a ditzy blonde, however Ms. Greene is actually a frizzy haired brunette!), Vincent Gardenia was Mushnik, the owner of the floral shop in Skid Row.   Many consider Steve Martin's performance as Orin, the demented and sadistic dentist, his greatest role, and the cast also included Bill Murray, Paul Dooley, Christopher Guest, James Belushi,  and John Candy, all prime actors in the 1980s.  Levi Stubbs was the voice of Audrey Two. 

This very "American" musical was actually filmed in England, believe it or not, and the awesome sets of skid row in New York took months to build.  More incredible were the mechanical "puppet robots" that were created of both the little Audrey Two and it's much larger mature model, an electronically controlled creature that took dozens of people to operate. 

 

This was probably the last of the "monster films" that used actual mechanical models instead of the computer generated horrors that started to appear in the 1990s.  Many interesting problems came up during the filming.  As one example, during the duet of Seymour and Audrey Two ("Suppertime"), the singing gets rather fast and intense and the automated model of the singing plant wasn't able to move it's lips quite as fast as the song demanded.  Rick Moranis had to "mime" his singing in slow motion to match the singing monster, and later the actual voices were dubbed in. 

 

 

I have seen the stage version  several times, (ironically the most produced stage show in America, out-doing the original chestnut "Our Town" in the 1990s) and also own the original hardcover screenplay of the musical (which cost me a lot of money!).  I was always puzzled as to the very different ending the stage version had compared to the film, and a few years ago I found out why.  The original ending was greatly changed before release !

 

When the production company did a couple of previews of the original film (in San Jose, California, and Los Angeles too), the audience was horrified and gave the movie a rather dismal review.  In the original, the "girl" Audrey as well as Seymour, are actually KILLED and EATEN by the monster plant !!!  Most of the audience was shocked, they loved the characters and wanted them to live !

 

 So Frank Oz, the director, pulled the film before release and spent months creating a completely new ending, the cast was called back, as well as special effects people, and they gave us the version nearly everyone has seen:  Audrey Two is electrocuted to death and Seymour and his love Audrey live happily ever after in their cartoonish little house in the country. 

 

However, thank the gods for "Director's Cuts"!!!  In 2012, Frank Oz released a new DVD of the film, including the original (as well as the released) endings.  In the original, not only are Seymour and the love of his life devoured by Audrey Two, the monster propagates itself, and dozens of monster Audreys take over New York City!  Buildings are destroyed, the Statue of Liberty ruined, hundreds of screaming New Yorkers being eaten alive, all to a song called "Don't Feed the Plants!"  (which was cut from the revised version)!  This completely changes the final twenty minutes of the film and it's quite an incredible ending.  What fun!  Also in the DVD Director's Cut version there's an introduction by Frank Oz, explaining the complex history of the film, and an absolutely fascinating and detailed documentary covering everything about how the movie was made. 

 

As to remakes of the Roger Corman comedy (and it really is a very funny film), we'll just have to wait and see............... 

How the Savage Garden Came to Be

The Savage Garden, published 1998

Usually when new writers want to publish a book, they create a query letter that is sent either directly to a publisher or a literary agent.  The query letter is one of the most important things the writer can create: it's supposed to grab the attention of the publisher who then, if interested, asks to see a few sample chapters.  

 

None of this happened in exactly that way when it came to my writing and publishing The Savage Garden.  Way back in 1995, when California Carnivores was just six years old, I got a call from an editor at Timber Press, the largest publisher of horticultural and garden books in America.  He said if I ever decided to write a book about carnivorous plants, he wanted to see it first.  He had a copy of my "California Carnivores Growing Guide."   

 

When I started the nursery in 1989, there had been only two decent and informative English language books on cultivating carnivorous plants. (There were a few written in Japan.)  The best was Adrian Slack's "Insect-Eating Plants and How to Grow Them", but it had gone out of print soon after Adrian's stroke.  The other was James and Patricia Pietropaulos' Carnivorous Plants of the World, which was published by Timber Press.  It was a very informative book, but the text was rather dry and there were few photos.  The authors were the owners of PeterPauls Nursery, which was actually boycotted by carnivorous plant growers due to their having advocated the removal of CP (carnivorous plants) out of the wild, and they had removed many endangered Sarracenia oreophila from their disappearing natural habitat.  

 

When I opened California Carnivores I wrote a tiny four page "Growing Guide" for our customers that basically had a couple of paragraphs on cultivation for each of the most popular genera of carnivorous plants.  In the early 1990s I expanded this to a 16 page booklet that had a few nice illustrations by Judith Finn of the Berkeley Botanical Gardens and a few black and white photos.  We sold about 10,000 copies of this booklet over a few years at two dollars each. 

 

It was in January of 1996, after one of many storms that winter had damaged the old nursery in Forestville, that a man and his wife and baby came in to look around.  There wasn't much to look at since most of the plants were in dormancy, and the place was a mess after the storm's damage.  This gentleman asked about books on carnivorous plants, and I showed him some ruined,  water-logged display copies I had for folks to look at.  The only book in print that we sold at the time was Don Schnell's Carnivorous Plants of the United States and Canada.  This fellow bought a couple of dormant plants and said nothing further, and he and his family left. 

 

About a week later the guy calls me on the phone.  He said he had come up to the nursery because that previous month he had been at a holiday party and a few people were in a corner laughing over something they were reading.  It was my 16 page Growing Guide booklet, which had a few jokes in it.  That's what prompted him to visit California Carnivores.  He said his name was Tom Southern and he was an editor at Ten Speed Press in Berkeley.  He wanted me to write a book for them.  He considered my Growing Guide like an outline of sample chapters.  He said he wanted to visit again and discuss a contract.  I had never heard of Ten Speed Press but when he returned, Tom brought a sample of books they had published.  I was surprised that I owned a few of them, like cookbooks and "What Color is Your Parachute?", a mega-bestseller on finding a career you would love. 

 

Ten Speed Press was actually (and still is) a phenomenon in the publishing world.  Phil Wood, the creator of Ten Speed, was an editor for the New American Library.  He was constantly frustrated that there were many books that were rejected because they wouldn't sell enough copies to make it worthwhile (over 10,000) even though Phil thought that even if they had limited sales, they were important.  One such book New American Library rejected was a book on how to repair bicycles.  Phil decided he would finance the publication of the book himself, and called the company Ten Speed Press.  That book sold over one million copies.  Phil was able to do this and make the book affordable cheaply by inventing the "quality paperback", which changed publishing history.  Instead of hardcover books selling for $40 he was able to do high quality paperbacks and sell them for less than $20.  

 

Tom Southern told me all of this, and that in a few months they would have a contract for me.  I waited patiently, then Phil Wood himself visited the nursery that spring.  He was an impressive character, a sort of cross between Ernest Hemingway and Burl Ives.  The nursery amazed him, and he said they'd like a book about 200 pages long with 100 photographs, but I would basically be free to write whatever I wanted.  In fact much later, as I stated in the acknowledgements of the first edition of The Savage Garden, while writing the book I'd call them and say things like, "I can't do this book in less than 300 pages," and "I'm going to need over 200 photos."   Phil and my editor, Donna Latte, simple said "Okay!" 

 

When it came to the actual writing of the book, I was at first intimidated since I wanted an easy-to-read book that contained as much information that was easy to find among its pages.  I found it at times frustrating going through previous carnivorous plant books to find some simple answer to common questions, such as "Can I grow a Venus Flytrap on my windowsill?" or "How cold hardy is this purple pitcher plant I just bought at the local nursery?"   I must admit that I'm very proud of the way I handled that dilemma.  At the end of each genus chapter I had the green-tinted pages listing such questions, under headings of "Soil Recipes" and "Climate" and "Terrariums" and "Fertilizing".   The later reviews of the book in both magazines and newspapers and on Amazon acclaimed this format.  It made such answers easy to find and quickly.  One reviewer wrote "If only all plant books could be written like this!" 

 

My late friend Randy Shilts wrote several bestsellers.  One was his mega-bestseller "And the Band Played On", about the history of the AIDS epidemic.  I asked him how he organized such a complex story, and he told me he wrote down all the important facts chronologically on index cards.  So when he sat down to write the book he would just follow the events written on the cards.  I thought this was rather brilliant.  

 

So I wrote two outlines.  One was a longer outline that listed chapter and section titles only, such as "The Water Tray Method" and "Pottery and Containers" and "Natural Light".  These sections were more detailed and could be referenced for more information from the green-tinted parts at the end of the genus chapters.  

 

The second outline was for the genus chapters.  It listed information that needed to be covered in a systematic way:  A catchy opening paragraph, when the genus was discovered, where they grew, the climate, what the plants did to catch and eat insects and animals,  and so on.  It made each chapter easy to write by just referring to the outline as to what had to be discussed next.  It was like following a formula or recipe.

 

To make a long story shorter, it took longer for me to finish the book than the contract called for.  They had wanted the manuscript by the end of 1996 for publication the following summer. That was only a few months!    It took me until the end of summer of 1997 to finish the book for publication in 1998. Ten Speed didn't mind.  On top of the writing, I took only one photograph that appeared in the book.  I had tremendous help from many friends and a photographer Ten Speed hired and paid for, Jonathan Chester. 

 

Usually for a first printing of a book by an unknown writer, Ten Speed would release 7,500 copies.  When Phil Wood saw the first galleys of the book, he doubled the first printing to 15,000 copies.  In 1998 the book won the American Horticultural Society's book award, and the Garden Writer's Association of America's Quill and Trowel Award.  It went through about a dozen more printings.....before the Revised version was released in 2013.  But that, as they say, is another story.

 

Peter D'Amato

 

Thread-leaved Hyrbid Sundews

In the Savage Garden (Revised Version), on page 173-4, I discuss the fascinating and mysterious sundew hybrid Drosera x hybrida.  This is a natural cross that has been found a few times in the New Jersey Pine Barrens between D. intermedia and D. filiformis var. filiformis.  It is a beautiful small sundew, reddish in color, usually about three to four inches high, with thread-like leaves that get a little broader towards their ends and stand upright.  The flowers are of the palest pink and being a typical sundew hybrid, it is sterile.  We have several of them growing in our outdoor bog at California Carnivores and they remind me of my youth growing up on the "Joisey Shore" not far from one location where they once grew, Lake Absegami.  

Drosera x hybrida 'Butterfly Valley'

I also discuss in my book the bizarre mutated plant, known as D. x hybrida 'Butterfly Valley'.   Some original specimens of D. x hybrida were introduced to this valley in the Sierra mountains of California, where D. rotundifolia is present, and many cobra plants, Darlingtonia californica.   Strangely, these plants underwent a mutation, possible due to frost while the plants were in flower, and apparently became fertile, producing occasional seed.  You can see my discussion of this discovery in my book.  We have finally produced a number of these plants by leaf cuttings, not seed.  Many of these plants are mature and sending up flower stalks.  Our original specimen of this Butterfly Valley clone was in the greenhouse, and the one time I checked for seed, there was none.  It's possible it does not self-pollinate, and may need insect pollinators or wind to set seed.  We shall see.  They are going on sale now, and I'd like to know if any of our customers have luck with seed production.  They are beautiful none-the-less, and easily propagate from leaf cuttings.  Being temperate to cold-temperate, I recommend them for outdoors where winters are lightly to very frosty.  One interesting possibility is that seed grow offspring may take a bit more after one parent or the other, so variety in the leaf shape may vary.

A very exciting thing for California Carnivores is the new thread-leaf hybrid we will shortly be releasing (some are ready now with more to come).  The co-founder of the Carnivorous Plant Newsletter, Joe Mazrimas, gave us a sample plant a couple of years ago, and I absolutely love it!!!  It is an artificial cross between D. anglica and the thread-leaved sundew known as both D. filiformis var. tracyi or D. tracyi, which is native to the Florida pan-handle.   D. anglica, sometimes known as the English sundew, not only grows in the British Isles but also throughout the northern hemisphere in North America, being a primarily high latitude plant.  It has elongated spoon-to-paddle shaped leaves, and is a green plant with red tentacles.  D. tracyi has long filiform leaves that are nearly pure green.  

Drosera anglica

Drosera filiformia var. tracyi

 

Weirdly, and this often happens with hybrids, the cross of D. anglica x tracyi is a dark red plant, with long thin leaves to about five to six inches.  And the leaves have the ability of movement, mostly near the ends, where they can fold up around hapless prey!   Being a cross between a very cold-temperate sundew and a warm-temperate one, it's cold hardiness will need to be explored.  It may survive happily in climates with very cold winters, as well as milder ones

small Drosera anglica x tracyi

It was Steve Clemesha, a very long time grower of carnivorous plants in Australia, who made this cross in 2008 and sent Joe a sample.  Steve had tried in vane to grow the elusive and difficult D. linearis, without success (like me!) since this Great Lakes species prefers mainly alkaline bogs with very frigid winters.  He experimented, wanting to produce a plant with a similar look to D. linearis (which actually looks most similar to a small D. capensis 'narrow leaf' than anything else).   The best clone he chose is the one we will be offering for sale.  It has not yet been registered by Steve or Joe, but Joe suggested the name Drosera x 'Southern Cross' due to the location down under where this hybrid was made.

Drosera intermedia x capillaris - one of my favorite sundews!

Temperate sundews that are cold hardy were the first sundews I became familiar with growing up on the Jersey Shore near the pine barrens.  Just minutes from my house on the Great Bay, there were many bogs and lakes and sandy streams that were home to Drosera rotundifolia, intermedia, and filiformis var. filiformis (the three native species), and I had also seen the small patch of D. x hybrida  at Lake Absegami, near where I lived.  I discuss D. x hybrida extensively in my book The Savage Garden (Revised), it is the rare natural cross between D. intermedia x filiformis ssp. filiformis.  Only once had I found D. x beleziana, but at the time I didn't know exactly what it was.  This is the natural cross between D. rotundifolia x intermedia.  At California Carnivores we sell D. x beleziana 'Nightmare', a robust individual we propagate from leaf cuttings introduced by Ivan Snyder of Southern California, a plant he found near Tom's River, N.J.  It has always been one of my favorites of temperate sundews, having hybrid vigor. 

However I must admit the past couple of years I have been very impressed with another temperate sundew hybrid, however it was new to our nursery a few years ago and I neglected to include it in the revised version of The Savage Garden.  This plant is Drosera intermedia x capillaris and was discovered in Virginia, a few states south of New Jersey, where the natural northernmost populations of D. capillaris are found.  D. capillaris, commonly known as the Pink Sundew (due to it's usually pink flowers), is a warm-temperate sundew that does not produce hibernacula winter buds.  Usually this species survives frosts but hard freezes kill off the plants in it's northerly ranges, but it comes back the following spring from seed.  However the hybrid of D. intermedia x capillaris does produce rather robust dormant buds, and the plants themselves are deep reddish purple in color with spoon shaped leaves in dense clusters.  The rosettes can reach two to three inches in diameter.  The flowers are the palest pink to white, but do not produce any seed, being, as are most sundew hybrids, infertile.  But the plant can be easily propagated by leaf cuttings taken in spring so the budding leaves have enough of a growing season to grow to a survival size by autumn. 

Another thing about this plant that I love is how readily it produced clumps in cultivation.  If you have one plant this season, by next year you will have two or even three or four closely growing together, and of course the dormant buds in winter are the easiest way to separate them.  This hybrid has become one of my favorites of the small rosette sundews that are cold hardy.

I looked up this hybrid on Wikipedia and it was not listed.  Bob Zeimer's database of photographs of sundews in cultivation (found on the society's web site www.carnivorousplants.org) had a number of photos of this hybrid, but to be honest, I looked at about a third of the photos and none impressed me like the plant in real life.  Most of the photos showed shade grown greenish plants probably grown in greenhouses, and one photo of this alleged hybrid looked more like a true D. intermedia than this cross.   I regret not having included it in my book!  

I should mention that this hybrid does require fairly cold winter temperatures.  They do best outdoors in full sun, and are perfect for bog gardens.  Usually winters in Sonoma County where California Carnivores is located has average January night temperatures in the 30s F (about 2 to 4 C) with highs in the 50s F (about 12 C).  The greenhouse never drops below around 50 F (10 C).  But this past winter was an exceptionally warm one, with winter highs almost consistently in the 60s to 70s F (20 to 25 C).   What we found was that colder temperate sundews like D. intermedia x capillaris and D. x hybrida that were kept in the greenhouse all winter had their hibernacula die in such warm weather, while the outdoor plants with colder nights and cooler days all survived beautifully.  Therefore respect the winter dormancy of this beautiful hybrid and you'll find it a great and easy plant to grow.

Tips for an Easy to Grow Tuberous Sundew (Drosera indumenta)

Winter-growing, tuberous sundews are becoming much more popular to grow since propagated material is becoming more common and folks are getting over the intimidation of trying these beautiful but sometimes challenging plants.  Drosera hookeri (once called D. peltata until Robert Gibson revised this group)  is one of the first I usually recommend since it is easy and reliable, and even produces seed through self-pollination.  

Another tuberous sundew that is equally as simple to grow is D.indumenta.  We have been growing and selling seed-grown plants of this species as D. aff. macrantha 'swamp form'.  Recently, however, we have come to realize that Allan Lowrie, in his huge three volume magnum opus on carnivorous plants of Australia, released last year,  has re-named this plant as the species D. indumenta,  part of the macrantha complex.  Two major differences are that D. macrantha has white flowers, while D. indumenta has pink flowers and is also covered entirely with tiny hairy glands along the climbing, wiry stems and even the petioles of the leaves.

I've grown D. indumenta for many decades, but for a long time had only one plant.  I then grew a second plant from seed; it took a few years for it to flower, which gave me the chance to finally cross-pollinate them and get viable seed (nearly all tuberous sundews need to have their flowers cross-pollinated with another genetic clone).

In The Revised SavageGarden, released in 2013, I have an introduction to the habits and cultivation of tuberous sundews on pages 192 -195.  There I mention that if you are able to get an established, potted tuberous sundew, consider yourself lucky!  This is because growing them from seed can take a few years to reach maturity, and receiving Australian-cultivated tubers gives you the challenge of having to adjust the plants to our reversed seasons of the northern hemisphere.  On page 195 there is the photo of this plant and description, but it is listed as Drosera macrantha ssp. macrantha, which it was known as at the time.  If you have purchased D. macrantha from California Carnivores in the past, please change the tag's name to D. indumenta.  At the nursery we also grow the true D. macrantha, and it has white flowers as identified in Lowrie's magnum opus.  (His three volumes are so enormous, when I made the mistake of lifting them all at once, I got a hernia!  Only kidding!)

Our potted D. indumenta are currently in full growth and rather beautiful.  They can be grown in greenhouses that are cool in winter, often on sunny south-facing windowsills, cool tanks under grow-lights, or even outdoors if you live in a cool winter climate that doesn't get much frost.  This species easily takes minimum temperatures into the 30s F, but our greenhouse has a minimum winter temperature of 50 F and during the day can be in the 70s and even 80s in the afternoon with no problems.

 

We begin wetting the soil in late September and keep the pots wet, sitting in pure water, from late October through spring.  The plants usually emerge from the soil in November/December and grow until about April.  When they turn brown and go dormant, we then dry out the pots slowly.  We still sprinkle them about every couple of weeks during the summer dormancy so as not to desiccate the dormant tuber.  It might be dangerous if the soil gets so dry it shrinks from the edges of the pot.  They make a nice substitution for dormant plants you might grow in a tank under grow-lights, such as removing a Venus flytrap in Autumn for it's dormancy, and replacing it with a winter growing plant such as this.

Be mindful that D. indumenta can get large, but the wiry stems are very flexible.  They usually reach maximum size of three feet in length, but we've had them also reach seven feet on occasion!  There is one right now in our greenhouse that is climbing up the polycarbonate wall, straight up, cementing its longer leaves to the plastic.  If you look closely at climbing sundews, like D. indumenta, you will notice short leaves and long leaves. The short leaves are only for catching prey, while the long leaves are capable of permanently cementing themselves to any physical object. If support is not provided, they will simply climb, droop and scramble over other pots and plants.  When mature, the plants will terminate with large, pink, fragrant flowers, a nice bonus to an already wonderful species.

Winter Dormancy and Carnivorous Plants

Winter dormancy for temperate plants is not unlike hibernation for some animals when cold weather and a shortening of the photo-period arrives gradually in autumn and winter.  For temperate plants like Venus flytraps (Dionaea) and American Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia) and many sundews (Drosera) it  is very important to respect this rest period, for without it a plant may get sickly and die. 

During dormancy many of the pitchers, traps and leaves will turn brown or black and die back to base of the plant.  You can gently remove these once they have died back completely.  Below is a photo of a Venus flytrap in summer and then in winter:

Photo-period is the length of time the sun is out.  If we take North Carolina as an example, where Venus flytraps are native, the photo-period at the summer solstice in June is roughly 15 hours of daylight.  At the spring and autumn equinox the photo-period is about 12 hours.  At the beginning of winter in December it shortens to about 9 hours, and then slowly, about a minute a day, it lengthens.   For typical North American temperate plants, the crucial time for this cooling and short photo-period is about Thanksgiving (late November) to Valentines Day (mid February).

 

Plants outdoors in bog gardens that are set in the ground are much more protected than plants in exposed pots above ground.  Bog gardens can offer protection for most plants even up, in the often frigid winter climates, around the Great Lakes and upper Midwest to New England.  If early snow arrives before deeply freezing temperatures do, the snow will act as a wonderful insulator, keeping the bog just below freezing (32° F) as the snow cover keeps the icy air above the dormant plants.  In autumn as the plants slow down and go dormant, many folks will trim the dying leaves away and cover the bog with extra protections such as a layer of hay, pine needles or burlap.  This will greatly add to the bog's protection.  When the worst of winter is ending the protective covering can be removed.  

If you have potted plants outdoors they can easily take temperatures down into the 20s F for brief periods, but continuous cold below the upper teens can kill them.  Therefore the plants should be moved to a more protected area, such as the coolest north facing windowsills (where direct sun won't warm the pots), or garage windowsills, or even basement window wells, where I'd recommend also covering them with a layer of mulch.  You can also help by running refrigerated water through the pots once or twice a day, or adding ice cubes of  purified water to the soil surface to slowly melt and add to the cooling, if the plants are kept indoors.   

Some folks think the winter temperatures need to get very cold or similar to their native environment but this isn't true.  It's really the short photo-period that instigates dormancy.  At California Carnivores in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, we frequently get outdoor temperatures in the 30s F and even 20s F and sometimes the teens, without any harm to temperate plants.  The greenhouse however is heated to a "sweltering" 50° F if temperatures get below this outdoors, to protect tropical plants such as highland Nepenthes. Day temperatures in the greenhouse when the sun is out can warm to the 70s F without harm to the dormant plants.  Our temperate plants still go dormant and rest happily but will begin growth earlier than the outdoor plants, sometimes as early as late January or February.  No harm has ever been seen.  So indoor areas such as lightly heated porches and windowsills in cool rooms can often be a good place for the plants.  Remember to keep the soil of dormant plants damp to wet even during their rest period.  

Refrigerating temperate plants for at least two months (December and January) is something I usually recommend only to growers in sub-tropical areas such as Miami or the lowlands of Hawaii.  Usually someplace indoors can be found in regular homes in frigid winter climates.  If you do refrigerate your plants, they may be bare-rooted in plastic zip lock bags with a handful of damp sphagnum peat moss or long fibered moss.  Check them weekly for any fungus or mold, and if this occurs treat them with a dose of a fungicide such as Physan.  This is also true for wintering windowsill plants that may develop mold on the soil.  If temperatures are above freezing you can also place them outdoors in the rain which washes away mold spores and fungus.  One drought year when winter rains were sparse, I saw in northern California bogs dormant buds of native sundews being attacked by botrytis fungus (a fuzzy gray fungus) because rain wasn't washing the fungus and spores away. 

Allowing temperate plants a rest period from late autumn to late winter gives them vitality and correct flowering times the following year.  It also give growers a break from the typical routines during the growing season, and when they begin to grow again in late winter and spring, it's a happy time and like seeing old friends again!