Plants in full regalia

Look at this Utricularia longifolia.

Three flowers and more on the way!

Just look at it.

I'm very proud.

I promised U. longifolia in my last post, and here it is. I love this plant!

Seeing this bloom show (which is far from over, by the way!) had me poking around the collection looking for plants are are in a similar state of full display. Most plants don't look their best 100% of the time, but these ones at least are currently looking spectacular.

Pinguicula 'Aphrodite' has a couple of cute blooms on it.

Hey there little guys!

Insanely, I have several friends who claim to not particularly care for this ping cultivar. How can you resist that little plant! It's much too adorable.

This large Drosera prolifera is doing very well, especially considering that I've had to separate out a couple of plants from this pot recently.

I think any pot of D. prolifera will inevitably end up a clump if it's happy.

The plants don't quite have the color they did in the middle of winter when things were quite chilly in the garage, but they're still looking pretty fabulous.

The plant that really caught my eye today, and which inspired this post (besides the U. longifolia) was definitely my beloved Drosera ×Dork's Pink.

Be still my heart.

This is just incredible. Based on a rough estimate, I'd guess there are upwards of 50 active traps on this plant, perfectly arranged in this beautiful pink spiral.

Nearby, my Byblis liniflora seems frozen in time as this unspeakably delicate assembly of dew.

This is still the plant that most people notice when they visit my collection.

I keep trying to find a good similie for it. Sort of like a stand of tiny, sticky trees. Or a city skyline. Such a good plant.

One plant I don't mention much, but of which I am very proud, is this Dionaea muscipula 'Justina Davis'.

Penny for scale. Those are big traps!

This is a nice, mature rhizome, as you can see by the trap size. So far it seems to be doing pretty well under my lights. I hope it gets enough of a dormancy in the garage.

Finally, this pot contains my original Drosera capensis, which is to say, my first ever carnivorous plant. I planted it into a large pot, which was a huge mistake, but really, who can resist a mass of D. capensis?

It's a jungle in there.

Someday soon I'll probably take this out and divide it all up, but for now it's sorta fun seeing it losing its mind. Looking good there, D. capensis!

Pygmy sundew check-in

Another programming note before we get into the post: The Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society is having its Fall Meeting on Saturday the 24th at the Lake Merritt Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave. in Oakland from 12:00 to 4:00. The topic will be...pygmy sundews! We're heading into gemmae season, so we've all gotta be prepared. There will be lots of photos, a guide to building an aspirator for harvesting gemmae, and more. California Carnivores will be there selling plants, and everyone's gonna have a good time. If you're in the area it would be awesome if you could make it through. Okay, on to the post.

I've been checking in on my pygmies more lately so I can see when gemmae start forming. There are several pots I need to re-sow this year to keep the collection looking tidy. Consider Drosera pygmaea and Drosera roseana here.

Looking a bit tired there guys!

The D. roseana on the right were fed recently. I think they just burned a bit too brightly – these were the plants that produced gemmae only 12 weeks after being gemmae. No wonder they look a bit exhausted. As for D. pygmaea, I've always had trouble with this species. A number of people describe it as being one of the easiest pygmies, but I've just never been able to keep them happy. Who knows.

Drosera patens is showing a bit of a stem/skirt of dead leaves.

They're burning out.

The life cycle of pygmies is so short. This picture from my Instagram is was taken back in mid-May (follow me on Instagram for more plant pictures!). They looked so happy then. D. patens is part of a group of closely-related pygmies including Drosera nitidula and Drosera allantostigma, so I really like them when they're growing well.

My supposedly orange-flowered Drosera pulchella has also shrunk back a bit.

It would be cool to see the orange flowers.

I say "supposedly" because I've never had any flowers from these guys. I don't seem to flower pygmies very readily. Not sure why! Plants are weird. Maybe my conditions are too consistent from them. After all, they're native to a much more extreme climate than my garage (southwest Australia).

My good old Drosera scorpioides are glad to have been recently fed.

Ah, memories. My first pygmies.

I definitely need to re-sow this species this year. Not sure how much longer they'll hold out. Also I've heard from multiple people that their D. scorpioides tend to conk out suddenly sometime during year three. Also I think there's a slug or snail in that tray somewhere. I hate slugs.

Moving on to plants that are doing quite well, check out this Drosera occidentalis ssp. microscapa. It...exists!

These are so hilariously tiny.

Back in February they were nowhere to be found. I'd figured that sowing on the sand had been a bit too extreme for the tiny gemmae – being so small they have less stored energy and moisture, so they wouldn't have time to grow roots into the soil. Guess I was wrong! It still took like 6 months before I could tell they were there though. What a silly plant.

I'm very pleased with how Drosera silvicola and Drosera barbigera are doing.

These have really filled out nicely.

Four plants per pot seems perfect.

These both seem to have some affinity with D. scorpioides in terms of growth habit, but I like how the stem is less pronounced, leading to this nice dome-like set of traps. Quite handsome plants!

I've gotta post about Drosera ×Dork's Pink. Just look at it.

I hope I get a lot of gemmae from these.

D. ×Dork's Pink is D. lasiantha × callistos, an absolutely fabulous man-made hybrid that was formally described in the March 2015 issue of the Carnivorous Plant Newsletter (join the ICPS to download it). I just love the density of the traps and the truly wonderful glowing pink color. It's also quite a large pygmy, so it's very striking.

Finally, Drosera sargentii. Drosera Gemmae is actually calling it Drosera parvula ssp. sargentii now. Whatever you call it, I think it's my new favorite pygmy (sorry D. allantostigma).

I could stare at these all day.

Just LOOK at those pygmies. Like perfect little bullseyes. Wonderfully distinct bands of color, almost perfectly circular. I can't even handle how cool this plant is.

If you like sundews you've gotta be growing pygmies. I'm pretty sure they're the coolest.

Sundew hybrids

There just aren't that many sundew hybrids. In part it's because of the genetic diversity in the genus. As much as one might wish to cross Drosera burmannii with Drosera cistiflora it's just not going to happen – Drosera species can only be crossed with relatively close relatives. Sarracenia and Nepenthes species, on the other hand, can all freely hybridize and produce fertile offspring.

Another limiting factor is that sundew hybrids are, broadly speaking, boring. Compare Drosera ×tokaiensis, probably the most well-known sundew hybrid (Drosera spatulata × rotundifolia) with Sarracenia ×catesbaei, one of the most common Sarracenia hybrids (Sarracenia flava × purpurea). To the untrained eye the two parents of D. ×tokaiensis are almost indistinguishable, while the parents of S. ×catesbaei are strikingly distinct. Morphological difference between parent plants is the most basic element in making an interesting hybrid.

Anyway, I started thinking of all this when I took this picture of Drosera ×snyderi to show to my friend Josh.

It took these plants a bit to settle in, but they're looking good now (aside from the aphid spraying).

D. ×snyderi is the unpublished, botanically invalid name for Drosera dielsiana × nidiformis. It's a pretty good-looking plant, really, and actually produces viable seed. It was created by the mad scientist of Drosera hybrids, Ivan Snyder.

Right nearby is this highly desirable hybrid, Drosera ×"Andromeda". Another unpublished name, this one indicates Drosera schizandra × prolifera.

Plantlets! At least two!

This plantlet is the one I started directly on the moss. The cutting I started in water and then transferred to the moss seems to have withered. Another data point against the water float method for me – transfer to media seems to really mess with the plant.

Some sundew hybrids are really fantastic, such as this Drosera ultramafica × spatulata.

This hybrid really snuck up on me to become awesome.

This pot got 3rd in Sundews at the recent BACPS show. It's a beautiful bright red, even with regular feeding. I had thought that this was a sterile hybrid but I was wrong! There are plantlets all over my collection now.

The only rival the above plant has for redness in my collection is this Drosera ×tokaiensis, the "×" symbol signifying a man-made, rather than natural, hybrid of D. spatulata and D. rotundifolia.

This guy has been sadly ignored on the blog heretofore.

This plant is a darker, more maroon red color, and is in fact sterile. In case you're curious, by the way, you can make the × symbol by holding the ALT key and pressing 0-2-1-5 on the numpad in that order.

The natural D. tokaiensis is not quite as red, but it sets seed and has a charm all its own.

The Community Pot is one of my oldest groups of sundews.

I've definitely neglected the Community Pot lately (I lost Drosera allantostigma, alas), but it's just been chugging along. Need to trim those flower stalks though.

I also have some pygmy sundew hybrids! The first, Drosera ×Dork's Pink, indicates Drosera lasiantha × callistos, a man-made hybrid that was published in a recent issue of the CPN.

A pretty plant with a silly name.

For my money this is one of the prettiest pygmies going. The dew isn't as stunning as usual because I recently sprayed for aphids, but the color is wonderful.

There's also Drosera ×carbarup, a naturally occurring D. occidentalis × platystigma.

These are showing a bit of aphid damage unfortunately.

There are several widespread pygmy hybrids, in fact. I tend to shy away from hybrids as a general rule, so I've yet to acquire most of them. This one is very nice though!

One of my favorite hybrids is another Ivan Snyder creation, Drosera anglica CA × HI.

Got extra plantlets to spare too!

This plant mixed the large, robust, but dormancy-requiring California form of D. anglica with the tropical, dormancy-free, but small and fragile Hawai'i form. The result is one of the prettiest plants in my collection. This is one of my absolute favorites.

Finally, if I'm going to include D. anglica CA × HI I have to include Drosera 'Marston Dragon', which is a hybrid of Drosera binata dichotoma "Giant" with D. binata multifida extrema.

That's a lot of plant.

The botanical validity of all those names is in doubt, by the way. But there's no doubt that this is a huge sundew. I need to do something about it.