Matthew at Another World Terraria was kind enough to show me his collection when I was in Seattle this winter. He specializes in plants that stay under six inches tall, and, amazingly, has filled up an entire house with these tiny plants. I took some photos but, Matthews are better, so I will mostly be using photos he took 🙂 He features many of these images on his popular youtube channel.
I’ll let these images speak for themselves,
A vase that seems perfectly made for this purpose, although I doubt the makers at Fred Meyer had this in mind when they designed it,
A biotope inspired Bucephalandra terrarium,
And more Bucephalandra,
I remember seeing this tank years ago on dendroboard (maybe ten years ago, can it be that long?) as it was one of those famous ongoing threads that everyone was always asking for updates about. It houses a newt, which Matthew has had since he was a kid and still has.
This Aqueon 15 gallon column is filled with filmy ferns and mosses. It’s freshly setup, but already the plants have started growing.
And the ferns! Below are Asplenium (left), Oleandra (right). These species have been a challenge for me to grow, but after seeing how Matthew grows them, primarily that the sphagnum isn’t nearly as wet as I’ve been keeping mine, I’m hoping to get better growth from my own plants.
One thing that I’m grateful to have learned from Matthew, not on this trip, but through talking online, is the benefit of slow-release fertilizer like osmocote or nutricote. My Cochlidium was struggling for years, hardly growing at all, and after placing two granules of osmocote by its root base, it started growing for the first time in years. It’s still not nearly as large as the one below, but I don’t dread opening up that bin to look at it anymore. Cochlidium serrulatum is one of those plants that is really impressive in large numbers (usually you only see this in situ, as here) but has somewhat the opposite effect when it’s just a single plant. This is by far the nicest specimen I’ve seen of this species in cultivation. Notice the bronzed fronds, full of spores.
Thanks for the tour, Matthew!
