Obviously plants needing better drainage and more soil oxygen get the perlite, those needing wetter soil get the vermiculite. Part of our collections include large specimens, and many course plants are grown in standard plastic flats. Pesticide Use Pesticide use is kept to a minimum. Severe cases of mealy bug and white fly are dealt with by discarding plants, and in rare cases of irreplaceable plants with Orthene. Malathion is used perhaps every two months on certain plants.
Sunspray oil leaves our plants too slimy for common use.
Safer soap is used for minor infestations. We are moving to biological controls and will be importing beneficials in summer 1996 on an experimental basis. This spring we released the remaining Anolis lizards from the animal behavior class into the greenhouse. Projects These greenhouses are primarily for teaching and secondarily for research and outreach. The teaching collection is growing and includes an increasingly wide range of plants from algae, to bryophytes, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms.