# ECS 2007 - an eye opening experience



## Ghazanfar Ghori

Here are few pictures and comments from the ECS meeting this year.
From the US - Jim Michaels and I attended. There were over 35 folks
in total. You won't see too many pictures of me in here - I was behind
the camera most of the time.

Jan's backyard









Jim talking to Jan regarding ponds & winters in Emmen









Another section of the backyard.









Jan's greenhouse









Jim thinking 'Daaaaaaayam'.









C. cordata var gabrowski - I think.









A wider shot...









Several 'cordata' types









Laganendra heaven! I think this comprises of ALL known species
of Lagenendra.









Oh yes - they flower ALL the time. No problem.
This is the yellow spathe form of L. nairii I beleive.









Good healthy growing C. zaidiana









Jim, Peter and Roland looking over Peters photos / log book.









Jan's massive collection of preserved spathes..









A closer look...









Friday morning, we headed into the Fagus sp. forest behind
Jan's home. Several folks wanted to stock up on fagus soil.









Walking down to the prime location...









The prime location...









Jan's showing us where the best stuff is hidden...









Jim and Claus heading back with the goods.









Then we were off to visit Aquafleur - aquatic plant nursery.
Here's a shot of the area right outside the nursery.









The back enterance to Aquafluer









Plants!









Cryptocorynes recently planted into pots from tissue culture.









Echinodorus are also quite popular here - a lot of hybrids I've never
seen before are growing here.









Here's a nice one - Echinodorus 'Purpurea'









A lot of the Echinodorus are propagated vegitativly. Here's the
room where the mother plants are kept. Plantlets develop on the
flower stalks and are pulled off and planted into trays to grow out.









Echinodorus sp. in bloom









Echinodorus 'Africanus' plantlets. We brought these back with us.









Echinodorus 'Purpurea' plantlets. We brought these back with us.









There were also a lot of Anubias. Some varieties labels Anubias sp.
with leaf shapes I'd never seen before. These are also tissue cultured
and grown out in massive quantities. All these rows are growing 
Anubias species. This is only one section.









They also had a room that was very frequently misted - maintaining
a very high humidity level. Here, they were growing mosses emersed
on coconut shells. They also had java fern, pellia and riccia growing
attached to driftwood in here.









A nice new microsorum. We brought this back with us.









A fairly brightly colored varigated C. wendtii. We brought this back
with us.









Some of the crypts growing there were in flower. Can you ID it?









Then were were off to Piet van Wijngaarden's home to see his
crypt collection. Piet can most certainly grow them. Lush and massive
growth.

Here's a close up of one of the fish he's got in his planted tank.









In one of many growth trays, C. striolata (swwwwwwwwwweeeeeet)
Just look at the nice pattern and the healthy growth!









Jim probably has more pictures from Piet's setup - there were too many
people walking around in there for me to get a decent shot of anything
and I just gave up.

Moving along - on the ride back to the hotel we stopped to get
the essential picture.









Back at the convention Saturday night, just prior to the main
speaker session starting up. 
From left to right: Neils Jacobsen, Romeo and the gentleman from Gula.
Couldnt remember ALL the names - there were 35+ people there!









From left to right: Piet van Wijngaarden and Jan Bastmeijer.
Piet telling Jan - "These folks from the US are completly NUTS!"









Closed container culture of C. fusca and I beleive C. minima.
A lot of folks are using this method now which they say is very stable.
Once in a while, new fagus soil is added to provide nutrients but other
than that, the bottles remain closed. Not to be kept on window sills - 
but rather under flourecents.









From left to right: Mr. Bogner and Jim.









From left to right: Mr. Bogner and the only brown guy in the Netherlands.









From left to right: Jim and Niels Jacobsen









From left to right: Roland and Jim 









Plant market! Free plants for everyone! Most of the plants came
from Niels collection. An insane amount of plants. Insane!
From left to right:
Kai in the brown shirt in the back.
You can see a glimpse of Roland.
You see Stephan's back.
Martin from Tropica standing infront of the screen speaking with Neils.
And the lady from Gula with a bag of Laganendra nairii I believe.









Peter talking with Xema.









Kai commenting on the specifics of some of the plants on the
table.









Roland checking out the available plants.









From Left to Right: Claus Kettner and Fredi Wasser.
Fredi Wasser - the name should ring a bell - since this man's
name is on a lot of recent collections. He doesn't grow too many
crypts - just goes to SE Asia every year to collect! One of these
years - I'm going to tag along!









A wider shot of the room









That's most of the pictures I have. Jim's got more. There was one day
that I thought my camera battery was done - turns out that the
memory card just wasnt seated tight enough - so I didn't get any
pictures from that day.

A few notes from the experience:

Most of the folks there are focused in growing healthy plants and getting
wild collected plants to flower initially for ID purposes / see variations
from different collecting locations. Another priority is the 
long term cultivation of collections. Some plants here are 
runners of plants collected decades ago! These guys can grow crypts!

Overall - the trip was very enjoyable and it was refreshing to see
how environmentally concious the folks there are. Everyone was
very friendly and even though some of them didnt speak very
good English, they made an extra effort to speak with us.

Next year's convention will be in Vienna. If you can make it out there,
I highly reccomend it. I know I'll certainly try and attend again next
year.


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## ts168

Hi Ghazanfar Ghori, It a fantastic writeup with beautiful taken photo.

Thanks for sharing.....


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## Khamul1of9

Thanks for sharing. Looks cool, but I am wondering what the conversations are like?
Also, how do you bring back a bag of European soil into the US?


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## Ghazanfar Ghori

Khamul1of9 said:


> Thanks for sharing. Looks cool, but I am wondering what the conversations are like?
> Also, how do you bring back a bag of European soil into the US?


Converstations are interesting. Folks share experience growing certain crypts, their
methods and results. Specifics. Fertilization techniques. Collecting trips. Good stuff!

As far as I know - you cannot legally bring back a bag of soil - and we didnt. There are
Beech (Fagus sp.) trees in the US and you can collect that stuff here locally if you need to.
I plan on collecting some from a grove I know of locally to test it out.

The plants we brought back were with permits / phtyo etc.


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## Ibn

Awesome set of photos. Hearing you speak about it this past weekend and then seeing these pictures really helps.

BTW, what kind of alcohol is Jan using to preserve those spathes?


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## Ghazanfar Ghori

Ibn said:


> Awesome set of photos. Hearing you speak about it this past weekend and then seeing these pictures really helps.
> 
> BTW, what kind of alcohol is Jan using to preserve those spathes?


That's a good question. I didnt ask - I'm assuming methyl alcohol.


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## spypet

That was so awesome of you to share it here, thank you  

I was wondering why you'd think they were saying;
"These folks from the US are completely NUTS"
-is it because of your unbridled enthusiasm,
-that you took pictures of everything,
-that you traveled so far to be there,
-that you only spoke English,
-or something else?


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## Ghazanfar Ghori

spypet said:


> That was so awesome of you to share it here, thank you
> 
> I was wondering why you'd think they were saying;
> "These folks from the US are completely NUTS"
> -is it because of your unbridled enthusiasm,
> -that you took pictures of everything,
> -that you traveled so far to be there,
> -that you only spoke English,
> -or something else?


None of the above:
-Peits expression and hands in that photo match up with the fake comment perfectly.


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## Bert H

Thanks for sharing Ghazanfar. How many plants did you bring back? How difficult was it to obtain the phytos?


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## Ghazanfar Ghori

We brought back a significant variety of crypts and laganendras - I think ~40 in total. 
A few 'new' Echinodorus and that new javafern too. The phyto and permit was all taken care
of by Jim. All in all, I don't think it was difficult to obtain the phyto but it did take Jim and Jan
over a day to clean and pack all the plants. Roots have to be trimmed back and devoid of any dirt
and the plants have to be labeled. You'll see some of these plants starting to circulate within the US
as we propagate them out. Already several folks in GWAPA have some of these plants.


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## Xema

Nice pictures you got (only seeing the number of replies comparing with mine, hehehe).

Really a nice experience, a pity my bad spoken english ... I will try to go in the next year, that is for sure.


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## rs79

Geez I'd love a greenhouse like Jan's. Why don't I have one.

Oh yeah it gets to be MINUS FORTY FOUR here.

How cold does it get at Jan's ?


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## DelawareJim

Can anyone from the trip to Aquafleur ID the red variagated Crypt. wendtii in Ghazanfar's picture? I remember it started with an "L" but I didn't write it down and I can't remember the name.

Thanks.
Jim


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## DelawareJim

Richard;

If I remember correctly, Jan said it gets down to about freezing, but Jan has a huge water tank heat sink under the cement floor that helps keep the temps fairly stable.

Cheers.
Jim


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## rs79

What does he use to heat the water? It's a clever idea but I can't see a Dutchman PAYING for hear 

Solar?


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## Phil Edwards

Thank you very much Ghazanfar! Vienna, huh? That's one of the places on my Must Visit list, maybe there'll be another crazy american there next year. 

Could you tell me more about his potting? Did he give any reasons for having some nearly all submersed and others in pots only halfway submerged?

What do I have to do to get put on the list for plants? Pay your children's college tuition?


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## Ghazanfar Ghori

Phil Edwards said:


> Thank you very much Ghazanfar! Vienna, huh? That's one of the places on my Must Visit list, maybe there'll be another crazy american there next year.
> 
> Could you tell me more about his potting? Did he give any reasons for having some nearly all submersed and others in pots only halfway submerged?
> 
> What do I have to do to get put on the list for plants? Pay your children's college tuition?


I didnt ask about the mostly submersed vs. partially - it was quite ovewheming to see all
that.

To get on the list o plants, you must first give up your first born to serve a lifetime of repotting.
Some of the plants are already circulating. Some are starting to grow nicely. Others are dead. 
I've got some distributables from plants I potted up earlier in the year. PM me.


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## TNguyen

Cooooooooool, totally miss this thread. I need to go on here more often. Thanks Ghazanfar for sharing. 


Cheers,
Thanh


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## DonaldmBoyer

WOW! I admit that I am not a huge fan of crypts, but HOLY CRAP!  Very nice write up, Mr. Ghori! I may have to give them another try! It is pretty cool that people will put in the time and effort to go overseas in pursuit of their hobby! Very dedicated people! Thank you for taking the time to share!


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## Martin

definitely a great trip and experience...

I didn't get to take any crypts home... almost... 

I'll have to raid Niels' greenhouse at some point.

How's the Microsorum coming along? 

Meeting so many crypt enthusiats.. hell.. crypt nuts, was great, too bad we missed the most of the Friday..


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## DelawareJim

Ah! This must be one of our Danish friends. Microsorium is coming along great. Slow growing, but it looks really good. Unfortunatley it's doing better than the Crypts right now. I'm thinking about trying it on a slab of EpiWeb inthe back of my main tank. Sort of like a moss wall effect. 

Cheers.
Jim


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## rs79

You have pics of the Microsorium? Um, which Microsorium?


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## AaronT

rs79 said:


> You have pics of the Microsorium? Um, which Microsorium?


Check out the first post of this thread. There's a picture of it about midway down the post. It's a narrow leaved variety, only the leaves branch.


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## rs79

That one? It looks like Bolbitis heteroclita.


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## DelawareJim

Actually, in person it doesn't look anything like Bolbitis heteroclita. The leaf tissue is much narrower along the veins, say a uniform 3/8 inch width. Even along the midrib.

It looks more like a terrestrial Pteris multifida.

http://www.plantdelights.com/Catalog/Current/Detail/02846.html

Cheers.
Jim


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## rs79

Ok but that doesn't look much like the fern at Jan's place.


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## jazzlvr123

AaronT said:


> Check out the first post of this thread. There's a picture of it about midway down the post. It's a narrow leaved variety, only the leaves branch.


So did you get a name of that new fern by chance?


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