Saturday, October 28, 2006
Ever have to relive a childhood memory? When I was young "Sean" was not a common name. Oddly everyone here says my name as "Seen" like people did when I was growing up. I correct them, smiling, I hope I keep them from feeling bad. Only Herr Kettner continues to call me "Seen", I don't try to correct him, he's busy running the show this weekend and I can live with the occasional "seen" if I can help keep his mind clear for what he is doing to take care of us.
Breakfast is good strong coffee, granola, yogurt or clotted cream (I'm not sure), milk, bread, cheese, luncheon meat ...., filling fare. This is where the "weak American coffee" discussion comes up again. I'm drinking my coffee "straight up" while my new friends are pouring milk and sugars into their cups. I joke that I'm not sure they could handle American coffee. I'm eating with Stephan, Josef, Roland, and Kai, discussing my "20 year" crypt search list, I'm introduced to Alfred who asks what is on my list. I run through a couple names C. hudoroi, being first on my list. They are amazed at what we cannot get in the US for plants.
This morning we are attending our field trips. We are going to the Madagascar exhibit at the Zurich Zoo. Then I am tagging along to see a fish shop, Herr Schneider's store. I am put in Claus's car (Herr Kettner) riding shotgun. Everyone in the car speaks English to me and German to each other. I catch phrases here and there, "middle of nowhere" is one I remember.
We get to the Zoo and pay to enter, 20 francs, not bad I guess ($16.00). We enter the exhibit, it is a huge greenhouse with a rainforest replica. The topographic relief is incredible, the lowest point is 25 or 30 feet lower than the main level. It sounds like it is raining, even dressed for the Swiss Indian Summer we are over dressed and begin to perspire. We wander up to the point where the guides have to take you though and we line up. They walk you along a narrow dirt path through the undergrowth of their rain forest along a twisting trail to the bottom level of the exhibit. There are bird flitting about, lizards waiting for the "opportune moment", and lemurs howling in the distance at some intruder into their home. The plant growth is spectacular. We discover why it sounds like it is raining, there is a 20 foot waterfall in the building, very impressive.
There are also small streams here and there running through the forest. I joke to someone that we should have brought some crypts to plant in the streams. They laugh, at the silly American, crypts don't come from Madagascar after all. I have a protector for these field trips, actually everyone from the meetings is keeping an eye out so I don't get lost. Roland however has volunteered to keep me out of trouble. He is a large bear of a man with a full beard and smile, his temperament however is just like a teddy bear. I think he'd be my best friend if we lived closer together. I am introduced to Maike, who is getting ready to marry Cord in a few weeks. She seems to like to practice her English so I find her at my left elbow a lot. Their British/German accent is interesting.
I am listening to a conversation later and I try to understand a question someone poses to Herr Bogner about a plant. I don't quite catch the scientific name being used so I ask the speaker to repeat the name. Herr Bogner launches into a lecture about the necessity of using scientific names. I'm confused at this point, I agree with his lecture but don't understand why I'm getting it. I try to tell him that the binomial naming system is important in my field as well. I'm just trying to catch the difference between classical Latin pronunciation and the Americanized Latin pronunciation. I got a nod so I guess I settled the issue. I've been introduced to Niels but I haven't really had a chance to talk to him yet. I have a couple theory type questions that I'd like to discuss with him. I'm looking forward to talking to him.
We convene for lunch in the cafeteria of the exhibit. The dinning room has a huge window looking out into the exhibit house, over the "pond". I get a salad and brownie, and Coke Light, (Diet New Coke), I joke to Roland that the brownie is to help me catch up to him, big smile back. This referred back to an earlier joke, simply I ended up in the front seat of the car because they all found the American to be larger then the rest of the car's occupants and they didn't want to squeeze into the rear seat with him.
After the Zoo, Clause drives us around in Zürich up to a high point so we can see the mountains and the lake. Unfortunately it started as a foggy day and has progressed to hazy so the distant mountains are hard to as see more than an outline. The haze is from the unseasonably warm weather, I can take the trade-off. Claus turns us towards Herr Peter Schneider's shop, I swear it must over on the other side Switzerland from Zurich, it is a long ride. They have been building up this visit. The hype is that the shop has been growing plants in the same aquariums for 30 years, no CO2, fertilization and limited water changes. They use a single 40 watt bulb over every tank. The substrate came from his garden, he keeps these apple snails that he feeds a garden weed to fertilize the substrate. He was the person who "discovered" the C. cordata "Rosanervig". They make it sound like he is very "vocal" about his method, since I am linguistically challenged here I will only be getting something from this if someone translates for me.
The place is in his basement. It is a small Mom and Pop store, when we arrive Mom is catching fish for someone, Dad and Son are greeting us quickly then turn back to helping the current customers get their orders together so they don't have to share the little space available with us Cryptomaniacs.
I wish they had not hyped this up so much to me. The species list is impressive, in that many of them are unknown in the US. Most are easy to grow plants. The oddities are stems and swords that have been recently added to the hobby, and crypts that are usual here but not back home. The snails are interesting, I don't see any juveniles. There is BBA and GSA in the tanks on the back glass. I'm told he doesn't dose, looking at the pin holes and chloritic leaves on the Anubius makes me think he should change that ideal just a little. Many plants look great, others in the same tank are like the Anubius, struggling to compete with the plants that are doing well. OK, let me just say that if all they had told me was that we were visiting the shop of the person who discovered the "Rosanervig" cordata, I would have been very impressed with what I saw as far as a fish shop goes. I really needed to get a little more rest and adjust my attitude, the Schneider's were very nice to our group.
There are many species of fish that are not common in the pet stores back home, several beautiful live bearers, some rainbows, in fact the tanks are packed so full of fish I can see why there is no need for CO2 injection. There is plenty coming from the huge fish biomass. I do not have the permits to bring fish home so I do not pay the fish too much attention, why torture myself over it. I see several interesting crypts, I do not have any Swiss francs though and I cannot seem to get an answer as to if they are accepting Euros. I wait outside with a couple of other people while the others get their "Schneider" fix. Roland is surprised that I am not buying anything. I am too, but in the end it is ok, I do not realize yet just how much plant life I am going to be carting home.
On the way back to the meeting hotel Claus points out a hydroelectric dam on the Rhine, the "Hoover Dam" of Switzerland, he tells me. It's probably about a 10 Megawatt plant from what I can judge from the car but I'd believe it was bigger. I'm sure the Hoover Dam reference was a joke. We drive back through the agricultural part of Switzerland, what I think are large piles of oversize potatoes are actually sugar beets. There are occasional vineyards on the hillsides.
When we arrive back at the hotel, Alfred hands me three bags, two different varieties of my "20 year crypt" C. hudoroi (I manage not to hug him) and a bonus C. wendtii that he collected near his wife's village. Kai finds me a bit later and gives me four bags of plants from his collection and Peter brings over a few plants that he wants to share with me descended from collections he has made. I've got a small pile building up in my room and we have not had the plant exchange yet. I tell Kai that I will be in my room laying down for a moment to recover from the excitement.
Dinner is pot stickers, rice, pommes de frites (french-fries), salad, a nice Riesling x silvaner wine, 17 francs. Dessert is a custard with whipped cream and a raspberry. I get to talk to Niels after dinner before the plant exchange, I was never sure what they meant by fagus leaf mould now I understand that to be the genus Fagus which is a beech tree, the same genus in the US for beech trees. He walks out into the rain and shows me the beech tree and leaf, the next day he hands me the beech tree nut as well. Anyways, I ask him about the leaf litter substrate, the 3rd year decomposed leaves, he starts with. The process he described in the 1992 publication sounded like he was creating a "fluff layer" for the plants. I ask if there is a build up of mineralized soil at the bottom of the containers, it would look like silt. He says yes there is a silt build up, but he's not sure it is mineralized soil. My theory is unproven but I get to try myself at home now. I tell him a bit about my soil set ups and my one emersed setup, the latter makes him cringe a bit.
He tells me that my observations may be correct for temperate species in the US and Europe, but conditions are different in southeast Asia. The plants can often be found rooted and submerged in peaty muck. Often these are low light plants, I ask if they have stepped beyond being tolerant of low light to having evolved an intolerance of high light. I get a "yes", he seems happy I understand something.
The plant exchange starts, Jan tells me I don't have to run to be first, he has already picked out one of each of Niels' plants for my box. The rest of the guys are pressing me to get plants, they don't know about Jan's stash. I pick out four or five bags from the plants that people other than Niels have brought. A few moments later I am requested to "clean off the tables", which means I end up with about a hundred or so plants. Added to the plants from Kai, Alfred, and Peter, I have about 120 odd plants. I'm a bit overwhelmed by their generosity, and the knowledge of the work I'm going to have to do to get these plants ready to go home.
The presentations start next, they are given in both English and German, Kai is right there again to help me. The talks are about people's set ups, tests of different leaf litter moulds (when the Emmen sample is announced as the best Jan beams.) Jan talks about all the species that were either rediscovered or named this year. He's very passionate about taking the old records and tracking down the localities where plants were once found, the Sam Spade of the Crypt world.
There are a couple more talks about people's green houses and trips to collect plants, then Kai decides that I'm next and he grabs my CD and gets my presentation loaded in the computer. I don't have a problem with public speaking, it's part of my job to run public meetings. The only stress here was to make sure I spoke clearly, slowly, loudly, distinctly, and avoid the typical American idioms. From home I brought two publications from 1977, a book "Aquarium Plants" TFH publishing and Aquarium Digest International #17 from Tetra. The reason I brought the book was that when I got it 20 years ago I went through the book slowly and made a list of crypt species that I thought I could grow in an aquarium. Just before my trip I rediscovered the list folded up in the back of the book. It is now known at the ECS as Sean's 20 year list. The Digest gave me my first inkling as to the importance of clay.
I give three talks in one.
Historical: Why and how I became interested in crypts.
Historical: Why and how I devised the soil substrate I use.
Current: How I actually set up the substrate and pictures of the results.
I end up being the only person at the meeting showing a picture of their aquariums, luckily the pictures get a good response. The members here are all growing crypts in a sterile environment of green houses or light box, they forget a little how beautiful these plants can be underwater. Everyone tells me I spoke slow loud and clear enough for them to understand the talk. The only question came later when I had to explain what "potters" clay is, that was a very quick question to answer. I think Jan was please with my talk, he told me five times he was. I feel like I just made a favorite uncle proud. Jan tells me later that one of the older gentlemen also uses a mineralized soil for culturing the plants. Unfortunately he did not give his talk.
Kai goes next, the computer has eaten his pictures but he has his samples to pass around. Kai did an analysis of the Fagus leaf mould soils from several different places in Europe. He measured the pH and conductivity of the samples, when waterlogged, over time. He has a great deal of information to share, I think he should put his talk together in an article on the web someplace for everyone to see.
I'm finishing my bottle of riesling x sylvaner wine while the talks go long into the night. They show a lot of emersed set ups, man these guys can grow crypts, and travel pictures of crypt localities. I'm noticing a change when I am talking to them now. When I got here I was able to ask questions that they'd expect from a "newbie", but now that they've seen my tanks I'm finding I have to change tactics when asking a question. I have to ask more for agreement with an idea. I can't straight out ask "how do you do ____?" that has to be replaced with "do you agree that I can do _____?" Jan says it was the picture of my tank of beautiful crypts. I feel accepted.
Niels closes out the evening talking about his work uncovering the sources of natural hybrids by backcrossing and crossings to discover the genetic parents. This is another talk that shows how much work they are putting into understanding this genus of small plants.
Everyone is tired now, ready to collapse, we all head off to bed.
Thud! Thud! Thud, is the echo in our little Swiss valley.
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