New camera!

Yesterday I got a new phone, which is to say I got a new camera. I actually got this phone specifically for the camera, because my old phone really struggled to focus on close-up objects. This one does it beautifully! To celebrate, I've created a post of flowers – just the sort of thing I would really struggle to photograph with my old device. Here's to more closeups in the future!

Drosera callistos with the lovely orange and black.

I love the adorable dots on Drosera helodes.

The focus ended up being on the upcoming bud on this Drosera sessilifolia.

So much for cutting the flower stalk off my Drosera spiralis.

I had to bend this Drosera natalensis stalk away from the lights to get a picture. Lovely!

Utricularia heterosepala is a very nice, creamy pink color.

Utricularia lateriflora is a wonderful species. So glad I got it!

What more can I say about Utricularia longifolia?

Byblis liniflora always looks so unearthly.

I think Pinguicula laueana × emarginata has one of the prettiest flowers in the genus.

Pinguicula gigantea is so cheeky.

Pinguicula 'Aphrodite' and Pinguicula emarginata are just hanging out together.

Whew! That's a lot of flowers!

U. subulata and D. felix flowering

I watched the Superbowl at a friend's house today and ate a truly massive amount of ceviche. I hope your day was similarly fruitful. It's been a week and a half since my last post! I've been all over the place lately. One of the nicest things going on in the collection right now is this Utricularia subulata flower stalk.

Such a yellow flower!

U. subulata is a very frustrating plant. It's got a wonderful flower with a cool zig-zag flower stalk and these weird dew drops at the base of the peduncles. Very cool! Except it mostly produces cleistogamous flowers for me. Cleistogamous flowers form buds, but never bother to actually produce a flower – they just self-fertilize within the bud, then spill seed everywhere. I probably get several hundred cleistogamous flowers for each real flower stalk. Why can't you be better U. subulata? I want to love you!

Another plant that has been looking pretty legit is this Pinguicula moctezumae I received in a trade a bit ago.

I should separate these two out.

I've never really cared for P. moctezumae, but I think that's because it tends to clump (which is not my favorite characteristic in a plant). These are actually really attractive under lights. Also, the flowers of this species are really nice. Someday!

My Pinguicula gigantea is blooming again for the first time in a while. But I'm posting today because it's been doing pretty well on the gnats lately.

It's not good to be a flying insect in my garage.

You can find photos of P. gigantea that are absolutely covered in gnats, which I think is super gross and ugly. Those are mostly grown in pretty humid greenhouses – I just don't have that many bugs in my growing areas. Still, good to know that mine can actually do work once in a while.

My Drosera brevifolia has responded well to feeding and is pretty much full-sized now.

So tiny! Those wedge-shaped leaves are so distinctive.

Gotta feed these again soon. Gonna want to re-seed this colony to get a few more going. Very cute plants! Nice red color too.

I recently took a trip to California Carnivores, where I picked up this sweet Drosera hilaris.

It's just starting to color up under the lights.

This is one of the neater South African species. I've heard conflicting reports of it being a summer dormant plant. It may just be that it is optionally dormant in hot weather. Apparently this one really likes cool temps. We'll see how it does!

Finally, the delight of winter so far has been my blooming Drosera felix. The other day I was lucky enough to catch a flower open.

So. Cute. Oh my god.

This plant is hands-down the cutest thing in my collection right now. Look how fuzzy the flower stalk is! I got another good picture of this flower from a different angle and shared it on my Instagram. I always try to have different pictures up there!

Winter's not so bad.

It's really good to feed your sundews

I've been very good about feeding my sundews lately. I've been able to give a number of them good solid feedings, and am planning on doing more going forward. One of the good things about feeding is that it really increases seed production. When I really got into growing sundews I wanted to get a decent stock of seed available to sell, since finding seed to buy was difficult when I first started collecting. I should be updating my sales page with additional seeds soon.

One of my favorite species to feed is always Drosera burmannii, since they always respond so dramatically to being fed.

You go little guy!

Check out that brand new leaf on D. burmannii (Gunung Keledang). This is the first feeding for these seedlings. Should be able to do even more feeding soon.

These D. burmannii (Hann River) flowered out a bunch, so they were really in need of a feeding.

Nice new growth everywhere.

All the pale leaves are new growth from feeding. That one plant on the left of the picture is what happens if you let D. burmannii flower out without feeding – they sort of melt away by blooming themselves to death. Whoops!

The closely-related Drosera sessilifolia is almost as enthusiastic about feeding as is D. burmannii.

I love me some Drosera Subg. Thelocalyx.

I still need to see if heavy feeding can get these guys to size up. I haven't yet met Fernando's challenge.

Drosera natalensis tan up really well when they're not fed, but it's fun seeing the color contrast after a round of new growth.

So dewy!

This is a very nice, low-maintenance pot of plants. It just sort of does its thing, which is great.

I've also fed my pings, and been pretty good about taking pullings lately. Look at this brand new baby Pinguicula gigantea.

Soon I'll be propagating pings properly, just you watch.

The other plantlets in the pot are only 6 months old, and they're already pretty big. Pings are really fun to propagate.

Finally, the one group of plants I never have to think about are my Utricularia, especially the terrestrial species. Generally you just need to leave them alone, keep them wet, and let them colonize the media. Then eventually you should get some flowers.

One of my favorite species of Utricularia, easy.

Utricularia pubescens! Funny little flowers and weird "leaves" (utrics don't technically have leaves as such). Unfortunately it's really hard to take a picture of the leaves, but there's a great picture on this page of Barry Rice's Carnivorous Plant FAQ. I wish this pot wasn't quite so mossy, but I certainly don't mind the flowers!

Cute little ping pullings

I think Pinguicula are the most fun carnivorous plants to propagate. You don't need to prepare any pots or get all messy, and if the propagation attempt fails it's really not that big of a deal (unlike, say, dividing Sarracenia rhizomes). Also, the plantlets are so cute! Consider this Pinguicula esseriana:

I can't believe how tiny these are.

All of those little tiny leaves fell off when I was mailing off a plant for the NASC auction. Look at all the babies!

Another ping that has done really well at making babies is the Pinguicula rotundiflora that I won at said auction.

One of my favorite pings. Great leaf margins.

These guys have really taken off! That's like 5 or 6 for the price of one.

Let's see how my other recent leaf pulls are doing.

Pinguicula 'Pirouette'. I think the mother plant is thinking about dividing as well.

Pinguicula gigantea. This is one of the most popular plants in my collection. It's a charmer!

Pinguicula agnata looking pretty fine.

Pinguicula laueana, another contender for the "leaf pulling champ" title.

That's quite a successful batch of pullings!

One plant that I've never yet successfully propagated is Pinguicula "Yucca Doo 1717".

I'll have to keep trying with this guy.

The leaves seem to wither very quickly. Maybe I'll just have to wait for the plant to divide itself naturally.

Finally, as I was taking pictures for this post, I decided to yank a leaf from Pinguicula sp. Tehuacán.

Carnivorous leaves ahoy! This is gonna be a cute one.

If you do leaf pullings every few weeks you'll always have backup pings to grow and share. And they're so adorable!

Pinguicula leaf pullings

I just started some new leaf pullings on my Pinguicula. It's always good to be propagating, and pings (especially Mexican pings) are some of the easiest carnivores to propagate. Just take one of the newest leaves, pull gently until it pops out, and set it down somewhere. I usually just set it back down on the media in the pot where the mother plant lives. This apparently works best with succulent leaves, but plenty of people have had success with the carnivorous leaves as well.

Yesterday I started new pulls of Pinguicula 'Pirouette', Pinguicula agnata, and Pinguicula gigantea.

The color on this plant is wonderful.

P. agnata doesn't get enough attention on this blog.

I want to give a P. gigantea to all my friends.

As you can see, I've done successful pullings of P. 'Pirouette' before. My last P. agnata pulling failed to strike, and I've never propagated P. gigantea before (intentionally). I'm looking forward to seeing how these turn out!

Back in March the Pinguicula moranensis I bought from California Carnivores (last July) went through a very brief succulent phase, so I did a pulling. It's coming along!

This plant has come so far in the last 9 months!

The plantlet is down at the bottom, tangling with some invading Drosera capensis red form. I think it's already started to root among the moss and Utricularia biquamata, which shows that it has gumption.

I acquired this Pinguicula laueana back at the BACPS social in February (mentioned in this post). One leaf had fallen off already, and I did another pulling shortly thereafter. The resultant plants are on the right and left of the mother plant, respectively.

The leaves have gotten nicely red under my lights as well.

I also did a new pulling (that big leaf there) just a week or two ago, since it was growing in sort of funny. I hope it strikes too!

In other ping news, my friend Anne (the driving force behind the carnivore section at the Cactus Jungle in Berkeley) recently gave me this sweet little pot of Pinguicula gigantea × moctezumae. Anne and I have a very destructive relationship where we constantly convince each other to buy more carnivorous plants.

The two plants in this cross couldn't be more different. Quite funny!

Apparently she's had the mother plant for more than 10 years. That's pretty rad! I'm looking forward to growing these guys out.

Finally, I've really come to adore Drosera cistiflora. It's popped out a bunch of new growth since its recent feeding, and isn't showing any signs of going dormant for the summer.

Look at all that new growth.

Looking great!

Plant Profile: Pinguicula gigantea

This is part of a series of posts describing my experiences with different species, their culture requirements, and photos of their growth in my collection. The full series can be read here, or by species at the Series page

There's really no reason to not be growing Pinguicula gigantea. It's one of the easiest and most rewarding plants in my collection.

P. gigantea ready to bloom, 1-29-2015.

This was my first ping, and one of my first carnivorous plants. I bought it at the winter 2014 BACPS meeting. As I recall it was a Carnivore Culture acquisition. This post takes me back!

P. gigantea, 2-15-2014.

P. gigantea is a Mexican butterwort, but it's unique in several ways. It lacks a non-carnivorous succulent winter dormancy, and produces mucilage on the bottom of the leaves, unique among Mexican pings. It also gets really big, and has cute purple flowers.

P. gigantea bloom, 4-29-2014.

This plant gets identical conditions to my easy sundews – Drosera capensis etc. – and loves it. It first flowered for me in late April, after it had been in my collection for around 3 months. The flowers hang around for more than a week, which makes them a really wonderful addition to any collection. They also appear to encourage the plant to divide, which is great!

P. gigantea division forming, 5-23-2014.

I've never given this plant a dry period, and it gets very bright under my lights, and that has seemed to work very well. It blooms every other months or so, and after a few rounds of blooms it had developed 4 crowns.

P. gigantea offset, 11-21-2014.

Now, I haven't tried leaf pullings with this plant yet, but fortunately it propagates itself pretty easily. I basically ignored it and it quadrupled itself. Also, dividing pings is uh, not very difficult.

That's my father adding some appreciative grunts to the process. 

I may try some leaf pullings from this plant, and if I do I'll definitely post it on the blog. For this division (which I used in a trade), I just rinsed the moss and media out of the roots. Ping roots just mainly keep the plant anchored in the soil.

P. gigantea offset with roots, 1-29-2015.

This is a wonderful plant. If you're interested, Matt usually has it in stock. I've never ordered from Carnivore Culture online, but I've heard that the plants arrive in very good shape after shipping. Give it a shot!

The Breakdown

• media: Peat, sand, and perlite. People use all sorts of media for Mexican pings, and I don't pretend to be an expert. I tend to use more aggregate for my ping soil (extra perlite or pumice mostly).
• light: As much light as possible is good. Brighter light really improves the carnivorousness of the leaves.
• water: I keep it in the tray wet all year. This species doesn't have a non-carnivorous dry dormancy.
• temperature: My tray ranges in temperature from the low 50s to the mid 90s. Never had a temperature problem.
• feeding: I sprinkle ground up fish food on the leaves periodically. It definitely gets digested, and I think the plant benefits.
• propagation: P. gigantea divides fairly regularly. I believe leaf pullings work, but I don't have any experience.

Pinguicula roundup, November 2014

Besides sundews I have a reasonable collection of Sarracenia and Utricularia. I also have a small collection of Pinguicula – one which I'm hoping to expand in the future. Pings are easily the most adorable of carnivorous plants, with a gooey charm all their own.

Pinguicula gigantea was my first ping, and it has been offsetting quite nicely.

The little plantlet has to really stretch to get light.

That little guy off to the left is the newest growth point. I really need to divide and re-pot this plant. This is one of the few Mexican butterworts that doesn't have a non-carnivorous winter dormancy. It's also one of the only ones with mucilage on the bottom of the leaves as well as the top.

On the opposite side of the size spectrum are my Pinguicula "Yucca Doo 1717", a selection from New Mexico that is really cute.

They're buddies!

Mature plants from this selection are really pretty, with nice scalloped leaf edges. They've grown pretty nicely since I received them several months ago.

Also on the small side are these Pinguicula lusitanica, which are dead.

This is another one of those "liverwort and moss" pots.

These are supposed to be an annual that will sprout, mature, set seed, and die all within a few months. I received 5 plants, 2 of which bloomed and all of which have since died. I keep holding out for seedlings, but so far all I've got is a sundew in the bottom left of the pot. We'll see.

My newest ping is a hybrid, Pinguicula laureana x emarginata.

Lovely colors on this hybid.

This guy has great coloration, and is fairly large. It is in a pretty small pot though, and I don't want to end up drowning it with the water level in the tray. Another re-potting job for when I have the time.

Finally, I think my prettiest ping right now is this Pinguicula moranensis GG from California Carnivores.

So precious! This is one of my favorite plants.

It's a beautiful greenish pink color, and is developing quite a handsome rosette shape. When I got it it only had 2 leaves, so apparently it likes my conditions. This is definitely one I'll want to propagate once it gets a bit bigger.

Pings are great.