My Drosera tomentosa is blooming

There's a lovely surprise in the collection right now.

Between the fuzzy stalk and the chubby leaves it's much too cute.

It's Drosera tomentosa! This is an adorable little sundew from South America with fuzzy little flower stalk. The cuteness of this flower stalk was so overwhelming that it spurred me to make a post. So uh, here are some other plants around the collection.

Drosera barbigera looks the best of any of the pygmies right now.

Drosera zigzagia came back even though I didn't give it a proper dry dormancy.

This one is actually Byblis liniflora, for sure.

Pinguicula esseriana is cute, but really slow-growing.

I love the faint venation on this Pinguicula hemiepiphytica.

Finally got some new flowers on my Utricularia sandersonii blue form.

Of course, most of the plants I deal with now are in the greenhouses at work. They're also cool!

Our Utricularia nelumbifolia has bloomed! Funny eyeball flowers.

Nepenthes sumatrana is very cute. Love that stripey peristome.

This Nepenthes (ventricosa × sibuyanensis) × merrilliana has hilarious proportions.

A wonderful pitcher on Nepenthes ×tiveyi "Red Queen". This is probably the best N. ×tiveyi.

This is our select clone of Nepenthes spathulata × jacquelineae. You can probably see why.

And just think, this whole blog post was because of that one little sundew.

Blogging is hard

I was staring at my plants earlier, trying to think up a blog post, and I realized that I was having a hard time thinking of what to post about. I think that's because I've been sort of out of the posting loop, and that the good thing to do was to just post about some plants. So here they are.

At the recent BACPS meeting I was given a chunk of a very cool plant, Utricularia babui.

I love new utrics.

This utric produces blue-to-purple flowers that are shaped similarly to Utricularia gramnifolia. It's pretty uncommon, so I'm excited to have some.

My Drosera graomogolensis have grown in a bit after a recent feeding.

I should have started growing this plant a long time ago.

Great color on these also. Such a pretty plant!

This big Drosera capensis is looking pretty good right now – especially considering that I dropped my light fixture on top of it a couple week ago.

This is a wonderful clone.

You can't even tell! D. capensis is such a trooper.

I've seen some size increase in my Pinguicula cyclosecta and Pinguicula esseriana.

Keep going little pings.

I took a couple leaf pullings, cause you should always be propagating. There's a lot of growing in to do still though.

The Drosera barbigera have totally recovered from gemmae season and are looking awesome.

Little fireworks!

Doesn't look like I'm having any gemmae-related attrition this year either, which is great.

Finally, my long-arm Drosera capillaris are looking amazing right now.

Look how dewy!

These are the ones from Tate's Hell Swamp, FL. Best location data.

Assorted plant stuff

One can't always have a nice themed post. This is one of those times.

My Pinguicula laueana × emarginata is blooming again.

Lovely flower of P. laueana × emarginata.

This has got a really pretty flower. It's interesting, I've only ever flowered this plant, my Pinguicula gigantea, and my Pinguicula emarginata. I don't know what triggers flowering in pings. I've got several that I think are big enough to flower, but they just haven't.

In pygmy news, there are finally gemmae forming on my Drosera scorpioides.

D. scorpioides gemmae is quite the hot item.

I think I'm going to need to start a new pot of these guys or risk losing these to attrition. Should get a good crop though, last year I had a lot.


The Drosera barbigera look funny and squashed with their gemmae.

Funny smooshed plants.

Such nice color this time of year too.

Drosera burmannii (Gunung Keledang) is growing in, and isn't quite as red as it was before.

One can never have enough Drosera burmannii.

I quite like this form, especially if it maintains that green leaf, red tentacle coloration. It's taken well to feeding.

My Byblis liniflora continues to be lovely, and continues to be impossible to photograph.

This plant is very dream-like.

I feel like this would need to be in a black box with bright diffused light to photograph well. Has anyone out there managed to get a good picture of B. liniflora? I'd love tips.

Finally, I haven't posted about Pinguicula rotundiflora lately, but it is way too cute.

Look at those cute little leaf margins!

Now this is a plant that I want to flower. Luckily this one is pretty easy to propagate, as evidenced by all the babies in the pot. Maybe I can have a whole bunch in flower together. That would be adorable.

So I guess that's what's up around here.

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.

Improving the sundew pages on Wikipedia

It's been an occasion project of mine to edit and create pages for various sundew species on Wikipedia. Today, in a fit of industriousness, I started new pages for the following species:

Drosera barbigera

I love the shape of this species.

Drosera paleacea

Tiny gems!

Drosera sargentii

This species has a very particular character that I enjoy.

Drosera silvicola

This one was easier to see when I cropped it for Wikipedia.

We're fortunate that some Germans have put a lot of work into their Australian sundew pages, and have generated distribution maps (such as this one for D. barbigera) for all of the pygmies and many of the tuberous species. Really, the German Wikipedia puts the English Wikipedia to shame when it comes to sundews. While they don't have pages for all the species, they have a lot more than we do (including every pygmy). And while our pages are often little stubs (including those I just made today), theirs are filled out with information. It makes me wish I knew German.

I intend to put more work into these as my pygmies get larger and I'm able to take better photos. Maybe someday I'll get Allan Lowrie's 3-volume Carnivorous Plants of Australia and be able to fill in more information too.

If you've never tried out working with Wikipedia it's not too hard – they've introduced a number of wizards that make it easier to upload files and create pages, which is cool. We've got to catch up to those Germans.

Pygmy progress and random updates

My pygmy garden is really starting to come along.

The Pygmy Garden is still, uh, progressing.

Impressive right? Hah. I'm really just putting this picture on the blog as a growth rate reference for later. It's easier to see the development on the individual pots though.

Drosera silvicola plantlets developing from gemmae.

Drosera omissa plantlets from gemmae.

Drosera barbigera, still more gemmae than plantlet.

They're still blending in pretty well with the sand, but I see nice growth over all. It'll get easier once they're a little bigger. Then I can feed them and they'll put on good size. If I can manage to feed them regularly, at least.

The strikes on my Dionaea muscipula 'B-52' are developing nicely.

It's cool how the strikes are different colors.

It'd be great if I got 2 plantlets out of this.

Nearby I've got that Drosera anglica CA x HI that had been ignored when I'd thought the leaf cutting had failed. It was far from the lights, but now I've moved it in to color up some more.

Starting to show some red.

There are two plants right up next to each other in this pot too. Nice!

And finally, my Drosera prolifera just keeps looking great. It's about time this plant started doing well.

The dew is finally coming in for these guys.