Donate to assess carnivorous plants, get free gemmae

Happy holidays everyone! I hope everything is going well with you, your family, and especially your plants. I've got a chance for you to add something new to your collection, and do a good deed for the season at the same time!

Look at that fly man. Makes me want to donate some money.

The IUCN Red List is trying to assess the vulnerability of all carnivorous plant species. Naturally this is a huge effort, and the first step is this fundraiser – $25,000 to hold an initial 5-day workshop to create a baseline assessment for many species, and then subsequent goals to do field assessments across the world. This fundraiser has been active for a couple months and is only at 41%. HOWEVER, very often these fundraisers get a huge portion of their funding right at the end. So let's make it happen!

Earlier today I donated $25 to the effort. This is after having seen the appeals over and over. I now want to offer an additional incentive to you all to donate. If you donate $10 or more to this fund drive, I'll send you a free pack of pygmy sundew gemmae! Just email me a screenshot of your thank you screen (or message Sundews Etc. on Facebook) and I'll let you know what I have available! U.S. shipping only, alas.

These Drosera sargentii have recently gone absolutely nuts with gemmae.

There are lots of threats to carnivorous plants around the world. Pygmy sundews often have a very small native range, and many species could potentially be wiped out by development projects. Which ones are at highest risk? We don't know! Hopefully this assessment will help us find out.

Dionaea muscipula 'Justina Davis' is a rare cultivar, but that's another issue entirely.

The iconic Venus flytrap is one of the most mass-produced carnivorous plants in the world, and yet is under extreme pressure from poaching. North Carolina has recently cracked down on the wild collection of flytraps, but they're still under threat. Are there other places where better enforcement or more robust laws could help protect plants? Probably! Maybe this list can help us identify them.

These plants need your help! And a repotting.

Did you know that Drosera madagascariensis is extensively wild-collected in Madagascar for export? Most of the collection is done by local people to supply the natural medicine and cosmetics trade. Could there be ways to work with local people to build sustainable industries around their carnivorous plants? Sure! But we need to identify the problems before we can start working on the solutions.

I love pygmy sundews. I want everyone to grow them. I also want to be able to visit some of my favorite carnivorous plant species in the wild, to appreciate them in their unique habitats, and to gain insight by seeing their place in the broader ecological picture. Please donate in the next week so that we can take the first step to protecting these astonishing plants. If all you can spare is a couple bucks it will make a difference. And I've got all these gemmae sitting around after all!

Merry Christmas everyone.

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.

Pgymy sundew update

Back in December I started a whole bunch of pygmy sundews from gemmae. Most of them have done pretty well! Let's check in.

Drosera barbigera type form on left, Drosera pulchella orange flower on right.

Drosera sargentii on left, Drosera patens on right.

Drosera ×Dork's Pink on the left, Drosera occidentalis (or lack thereof) on the right.

Drosera roseana on the left, Drosera pygmaea on the right.

Drosera paleacea giant form on the left and Drosera leucoblasta (Brookton) on the right.

Drosera ×Carbarup on the left and Drosera grievei on the right.

Drosera omissa pink flower up top and Drosera silvicola down below.

A few observations about the pygmies:

• D. occidentalis pretty much failed across the board. I think that the gemmae, being so small, dessicated on the sand before they could reach the media. It's too bad, because D. occidentalis is exactly the pygmy to most benefit by keeping the moss down. Maybe I'll do one final order.
• D. omissa is a total beast. Easily the most successful and vigorous of the batch.
•  I like the color on D. patens and D. palacea a lot.
• The gemmae that were more expensive (D. silvicola and D. sargentii, for example) haven't been as vigorous. I guess that's part of rarity.

Here's how the Pygmy Garden is shaping up.

The Pygmy Garden is looking pretty good!

There are a couple bare patches. Maybe I'll fill them in with some Drosera scorpioides and Drosera callistos.

As a bit of an aside, look at this visitor I had to the collection while I was photographing my collection.

Hi there cutie!

A cute little jumping spider on my Drosera burmannii! I plucked the little dude off because I really like them and my D. burmannii have enough to eat already.