Sunday, April 27, 2014

Update: Drosera 'Marston Dragon' leaf cuttings

About a month ago I started some leaf cuttings of Drosera capensis and Drosera 'Marston Dragon' using the water-float method. Well, a week ago I noticed strikes on the D. 'Marston Dragon' cuttings, and yesterday I transferred the contents of one of the cups onto a pot to start rooting. The D. capensis has failed to strike, and I don't know if it'll do anything. Oh well.

Drosera binata 'Marston Dragon' leaf cuttings.
Drosera 'Marston Dragon' cuttings. I cut the cuttings further so they could lie mostly flat on the media.
I read some stuff online that suggested that one typically experiences some losses in the transfer process from the water to the peat, which isn't super surprising. I've got a Ziploc bag humidity tent going to hopefully minimize those losses.

In the meantime, my parent plant is doing pretty dang well.

Drosera binata 'Marston Dragon' respond well to high light conditions.
Drosera 'Marston Dragon' – upright, dewy, and nicely-colored.
The new growth is satisfyingly upright, and more compact/dense than the leaves it had when I brought it home from the Cactus Jungle. It's also dewy as heck. This supports some observations I've made about how high light levels effect Drosera growth, which is something I still plan to post about. Two of the growth points have also decided to flower, and the flower stalks are thick and meaty, perfect for cuttings.

Drosera binata 'Marston Dragon' flower stalk.
Flower stalk uncurling on D. 'Marston Dragon', along with a new leaf on the right.
The other one is even more developed. I'm going out of town for a couple days, so I hope it doesn't bloom before I get back, or at least not too much.

The D. 'Marston Dragon', interestingly enough, is the only one of my sundews to have caught any houseflies in the last couple months. It's certainly one of the dewiest plants I have, and easily the biggest, which is probably why. I bet that dense tangle of laminae is what Doom looks like to the genus Musca.

Drosera binata 'Marston Dragon' with housefly.
Caught fly. It's good it catches flies, since I don't feed it too often.
My girlfriend confirms that we definitely have fewer flies in the house since I've started growing this plants. Excellent side benefit!

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