Gemmae explosion

Happy Christmas Eve everyone! It's wintertime and my pygmies going nuts on their gemmae. Pretty much every mature species in my collection is producing gemmae, and some are really going overboard with it. It's like they've caught the Christmas spirit.

My original Drosera allantostigma is crammed full.

This is definitely too many gemmae to count.

The pot I got from Brie is looking a bit messy since I've been using it to demonstrate what gemmae are to people.

Getting gemmae everywhere.

The Drosera scorpioides I started from gemmae myself are just getting started.

These D. scorpioides are so lovely and dewy.

While the ones I got at the spring BACPS meeting are going bananas.

Packed in like grapeshot.

I believe I see gemmae even on my long-suffering Drosera pygmaea. I need to bring it forward in the tray so I can look at it more easily.

Maybe after this my D. pygmaea will finally settle in.

The Drosera helodes look almost ready to harvest.

These D. helodes look like they're about to explode.

There are a couple forming on the stem-forming Drosera dichrosepala.

That one in the back is just getting started.

While the closely-related Drosera enodes appears to just barely be getting started. Beautiful plants though!

The colors on these plants have been fantastic lately.

And finally, the most festive of them all, Drosera callistos.

Little Christmas wreaths!

Happy growing everyone. I hope your pygmies are doing just as well. And if you don't have any pygmies yet, keep an eye out on the blog – I'm going to have lots of gemmae to get rid of soon.

Pygmy sundew roundup, September 2014

September is essentially the start of pygmy season. Soon pygmy sundews in collections everywhere will start producing gemmae, which will need to be quickly sown, sold, traded, or gifted, since gemmae are modified leaves rather than seeds and only have a brief shelf life. Keep an eye on Drosera Gemmae if you're interested in starting up/expanding your pygmy collection. I know I will!

I learned in my interview with bluemax (and according to things I've read elsewhere) that reducing the photoperiod on my lights should cause my pygmies to form gemmae. I reduced the photoperiod by an hour a couple weeks ago, and I'll be continuing that reduction until they're down to 10 hours or so per day in the deep winter. Hopefully I'll get lots of pygmies that I can start on new pots to share with people. In the mean time, I decided to post another roundup post about my pygmies to see how they're doing before they possibly start making gemmae and get all weird for a couple months.

First up is my first ever Drosera allantostigma, from the community pot.

My old friend D. allantostigma hanging out with his buddies.

My first ever pygmy sundew, acquired quite by accident, and far and away my favorite pygmy species. Also probably my favorite plant in the collection.

Around the time I was watching D. allantostigma shape up I got some Drosera scorpioides gemmae from Drosera Gemmae. It was one of the last sets of gemmae they had for sale, and I'm glad I got them!

D. scorpioides started from gemmae in March. I like the spacing in this pot.

This pot is a little bare since I lost those 3 plantlets.

Of the 15 gemmae I received, 12 made it to maturity. The other three died when I removed a humidity cover too soon. I sowed these gemmae on about a centimeter of pure sand, which has totally prevented moss from developing. I'm not sure I would always sow on sand – I've come to appreciate the way a well-mossed pot can look – but it's nice to see that this technique is so successful.

I also got a pot of D. scorpioides at the spring BACPS meeting from the raffle.

D. scorpioides get quite large, so this is pretty close quarters for them.

These are in a 2-inch circular pot, rather than the 3.5 inch square pot that houses my others. Also they were sown much more densely. At this stage in their growth they have formed a sort of undifferentiated mass which isn't quite to my tastes aesthetically. Great coloration though – hope these form lots of gemmae.

At the 2014 BACPS Show and Sale I picked up 2 species of pygmies from California Carnivores – Drosera callistos Brookton large form, and Drosera enodes (Scotts River).

D. callistos with Utricularia bisquamata flower in the foreground.

Quite dewy D. enodes.

Apparently the D. callistos will have enormous, hilarious orange flowers in the spring. Also, I love the little stem-forming pygmies, and D. enodes seems to be going at it pretty well.

Finally, back during the NASC Benefit Auction over at Terra Forums I won a 4-pack of pygmy sundews from Brie. They were beautifully packed, and included Drosera helodes, Drosera dichrosepala, D. allantostigma, and Drosera pgymaea.

The tentacles on this D. helodes are strikingly pale.

D. dichrosepala reaching for the stars.

Little jewel-like D. allantostigma. Their flowers were super cute too.

Hope you bounce back little guys!

As you can see the D. pygmaea look a little iffy. It's funny, cause I've heard them recommended as one of the easiest pygmy species! Hopefully cooler temperatures and shorter photoperiods will have them springing back to life again.

Pygmies are so cute. I addition to sowing them in pots for propagation purposes, I'm going to make at least one large pot with a bunch of different species growing in it. That will be super fun.

Pygmy sundew roundup, May 2014

I love pygmy sundews. I had known about them since I started growing, but hadn't really given them much thought until I accidentally acquired Drosera allantostigma at the winter BACPS meeting. They've rapidly become one of my favorite groups of sundews, and I was fortunate to win a few in the NASC auction recently.

As an aside, pygmy sundews epitomize what I love about the whole genus Drosera – as I mentioned in my conversation with bluemax, it's amazingly diverse and adaptable. Pygmies live in Western Australia, where they face mild, rainy winters and hot, generally dry summers. To grow in this environment, pygmies have surprisingly long root systems, and retreat into a hairy stipule bud for the summer, to avoid scorching and water loss. Once the days begin to shorten they produce gemmae (leaf buds modified to maximize vegetative propagation), which get packed so tightly that they are like a coiled spring. When the season's first raindrops strike the loaded pygmies these gemmae (singular: gemma) are catapulted as far as a meter+ away, where they sprout new plants. What a fascinating life cycle!

Anyway, pygmies are also really cute and more or less tiny. Some, like D. occidentalis, are hilariously small, millimeters in diameter. Most are between the size of a dime and a nickel.

My tiny forest of D. scorpioides, happy on their layer of sand.

These are the Drosera scorpioides that I started from gemmae some time ago. The last time I mentioned these, I was bemoaning the fact that I had, in my carelessness, killed a few of my gemmae. Luckily, all of the gemmae in the left pot bounced back, and I only lost 3 in the pot on the right, which is much better than I'd though. They've put on some nice size, and are starting to stem up. They're also really cute up close.

There's a very distinct shape to the laminae and tentacles of D. scorpioides that I enjoy a lot.

At the most recent BACPS meeting I also won a pot of more mature D. scorpioides in the raffle. They are taller than mine, and more densely-sown, which makes for a not-unattractive display, though I think I'll repot them into something a bit larger eventually.

This pot is fairly small, but they don't seem to be suffering from it. I'll still likely repot eventually.

As I mentioned earlier, I won some pygmies in the NASC auction. Specifically, I won a 4-pack (thanks Brie!) that contained D. helodes, D. dichrosepala, D. pygmaea, and D. allantostigma. I obviously couldn't pass up the opportunity to expand my collection of these adorable sundews. I received them in the mail a little over a week ago, and they've already started to acclimate and produce dew, which attests to the care with which they were packed, since pygmies can't be bare-rooted (they do not like root damage, and their roots are very delicate).

These are all dime-sized, but I love them as much as my huge D. 'Marston Dragon'.

These Drosera helodes look great, and the middle one, as you can see, is even deciding to flower! How sweet! I understand that pygmy flowers are quite impressive for their size, and I'm excited to see one for the first time.

The laminae on these are shaped kinda like those of many of the petiolaris sundews, which is very compelling.

Drosera pygmaea has something about it that is just so striking – I love the color of the old, expended leaves, and the wonderful round shape. This sundew has so much character for being so small.

I think there's one leaf with dew on it among these D. dichrosepala, but I want to feed them all at once if possible.

The Drosera dichrosepala have taken the longest to settle in, but still look good even though they haven't put out new leaves yet. I hope they do soon, because as soon as they put new leaves I can feed them, which I'm sure they'll appreciate. I want them to grow, because they have great little stems!

Cute little stems!

I was especially impressed with the packing job on these. Brie used damp LFS to fill in between the stems, and then wrapped a damp paper towel loosely but repeatedly around the pot to keep the media in place. None of the stems broke, despite being shipped over a thousand miles. It was well done!

Every single D. allantostigma is happy and producing dew. What troopers.

Unsurprisingly, the pot of Drosera allantostigma already looks fabulous. I'm pretty sure that D. allantostigma is my favorite pygmy, and it certainly vies for position in my heart as favorite sundew overall. It's just so attractive, and so easy to grow.

My own D. allantostigma is looking so good lately that I entered it into the Terra Forums Plant of the Month competition for May. Since it was a gemma (or nearly a gemma) when I received it, I'm very proud of how it's grown.

This is such a lovely sundew.

It's a bit hard to see from above, but it has this shallow dome-like shape that is just breathtaking. My loupe "macro" comes closer, but nothing really compares to seeing it in person. It's just lovely.

My Drosera allantostigma has also yielded my most successful loupe-macro ("lacro") shot. Coincidence? I think not.

Come this winter I'm going to have a whole set of lights dedicated exclusively to pygmies, just you watch.