Carniflora Magazine

Reviews

BOOK REVIEW (by Barry Rice in the ICPS june 2003)

Hoogenstrijd, Gert, 2002. Carniflora: Vleesetende planten werking, soorten en verzorging/ Carnivorous plants, trapping, species and growing. Approximately 90 color photographs, 50 pages. Paperback (magazine format), 21 x 30 cm (8 x 12 in), cost is 8 Euros (approximately $US8.50) Ordering information is at the end of this review.

Gert Hoogenstrijd is well known to carnivorous plant growers as being one of those fellows who so often explores parts of the world filled with carnivorous plants, while also being a respected carnivorous plant horticulturist. He recently wrote this magazine-style book about carnivorous plants-a very nice production you should consider purchasing for your collection.
Each page is formatted into two columns. One column contains text in Dutch, the other column contains text in English. The information is of the usual format; each genus of carnivorous plant is mentioned, its mode of carnivory is discussed, and cultivation and conservation issues are described. So while this would be an entirely suitable book for a person first learning about carnivorous plants, anyone with more than two or three books in their carnivorous plant library will learn little new.
However, as with most popular books on carnivorous plants, the photographs contribute a large amount to the value of this book, and make it a worthwhile purchase. The illustrations are very well reproduced and of high quality. Many photographers contributed to the production of this book. (Some of my own photographs appear in this book, but I do not benefit financially from sales of the book.) Illustrations by Art Vogel and Bruce Salmon are particularly luminous. A photograph of Catopsis berteroniana plants festooned on a nearly leafless tree on Auyan Tepui (p.23) is the finest I have ever seen of this species.
Referring to this as a magazine is not quite fair, incidentally. The cover is much stronger than usual magazine stock, and the pages have a high clay content- they are similar to the pages of Carnivorous Plant Newsletter in texture. The typography is clean and easy to read. This book can be purchased from a number of carnivorous plants societies, or from the web site http://www.extreme-plants.nl, where purchases via major credit cards are possible. You may also contact the author for purchasing details: carnivora2002@hotmail.com. Buy it-you will not be disappointed.

By Barry Rice, June 2003
 

REVIEW (summary by Stefan P. Wolf)

To say it beforehand: the magazine is a must for every carnivorous plant enthusiast -- no matter whether he is beginner or advanced. The author managed to compile a real nice mag by writing an interesting text and showing a good number of photos (many of these were contributed by well-known specialists of the CP scene like Thomas Carow, Barry Meyers-Rice, Hans Luhrs, Bruce Salmon and Art Vogel, others were done by the Dutch CP nursery Carni Flora). The main target certainly are beginners of the hobby as you find a complete overview of the field. But the nice photos and the rather low price are surely also inviting pros to add this nice piece to their collection.

The decision to work with a professional publisher in the working field "nature" (Palmblad, Dutch publisher of magazines about exotic animals and plants) was a wise one. "Carniflora" was produced in very good quality -- this means both the paper quality and the photo reproduction. The text is fully bilingual. It runs in an English and a Dutch column through each page. Only the photo captions -- if they give anything else than the Latin plant name -- are in Dutch only. But that's no big problem, the Dutch words are easy to guess.

Stefan Wolf (www.angelfire.com/de/cpbooks/carnflor.html)
 

About the author

Gert Hoogenstrijd was born in the Netherlands in 1967. He describes carnivorous plants as both a hobby and passion. At a young age, he developed a passion for animals, plants and nature in general through explorations with his father in search of turtles and salamanders. He has a master’s degree in Energy and Environmental Science with a specialisation in biology. The many different places in which he lived and conducted research include countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In his free time, carnivorous plants often provide the inspiration to explore unbeaten paths in search of new plants, such as the Table Mountains of South America. He is an expert in these plants and has been cultivating them since the age of 16. Gert Hoogenstrijd is also a boardmember of the Dutch group ‘Carnivora’. For him, cultivation of carnivorous plants began on the windowsill, but since the age of 18 has branched out onto his balcony and into greenhouses. Soon he will be travelling to Venezuela to explore the potential existence of a carnivorous orchid.