Outdoor plants indoors

My outdoor growing areas are a real mess. I haven't had the heart to document it all yet (although that's coming soon), but I lost a lot of Sarracenia and other things last year to bad weather and poor planning. I'm working on making my outdoor growing space nicer, but in the mean time indoor growing seems to be just the thing. I've got a few outdoor plants growing indoors under lights for the time being, until I can get my stuff arranged better.

This Drosophyllum lusitanicum from my friend Anne is still small enough that it fits in the tray.

I love when these get big. Fingers crossed!

D. lusitanicum smells of honey! It's really lovely. I hope to have a nice big bush eventually. I'll need to pot it up before then though.

Pinguicula lusitanica seems to be doing fine.

Not sure pure LFS is the best mix for these guys.

Those little babies look very funny. This is a very annual species. I collected some seed last time – I should sow those on another pot. This would be a great component of an outdoor mixed bog.

It's about time to pot up the antho-free Sarracenia leucophylla seedlings that Anne and I went in on together last year.

I wonder if I'll get mature pitchers this year with a fresh pot-up.

It's a bit hard to tell, but these have put on some size in the last year. I bet if we were to give them room they could get some serious growth on. That would be great!


My Dionaea 'B-52' leaf pulls are looking really fantastic.

I'm not much of a flytrap guy, but this is a show-stopper.

I lost the mother plant, so I'm really glad I have these. Once my outdoor growing area gets settled in I'll take these out there and give them individual pots. This is a truly superior clone. Look at the contrast in color in the foremost trap! Total swoon over here.

Finally, it's not an outdoor plant, but I have to show off my Utricularia longifolia again.

I have a crush on U. longifolia.

It's currently got 7 open flowers, and another due to open tomorrow or the day after. The oldest flower has been open for 3 weeks! It's survived me carrying the plant through a sort of windy rainy day to show off to some friends. This is definitely an orchid-like bloom cycle right here. I'm so stoked on it!

D. ramellosa is back (and other surprises)!

Aw yeah check this action out:

Drosera ramellosa (finally) emerging from dormancy.

I was sure I had lost all of my winter-growing sundews. I started hydrating them back in late October, and after almost 3 months of nothing I had pretty much given up hope. But here we are! Now I need to feed this guy aggressively to try and get some good tuber development. Nothing yet from Drosera rupicola or Drosera cistiflora, but I'm still holding out hope.

In terms of other surprises, my Pinguicula 'Aphrodite' is blooming for the first time.

That color is absolutely unreal.

It's also looking like, fantastic right now. This is one of my favorite pings, easy. I'm excited to see the flower!

The Pinguicula lusitanica that started blooming back in November ripened, spilled a bunch of seed (I managed to collect some), and has already germinated.

And so it begins.

Look at all the little babies! You can see the dead mother plant there to the right of the large plant. Barry Rice said that this species could be an "entertaining little weed" and I think I agree with him! I'm considering making an outdoor mixed bog at some point, and this would be a great species to just toss thither and yon.

Finally, my Pinguicula rotundiflora × hemiepiphytica. I didn't feature this plant in my recent year-to-year comparison post, (because I didn't have it last January) but I should have. Look at this!

P. rotundiflora × hemiepiphytica, March 2015.

P. rotundiflora × hemipiphytica, January 2016.

 That's like, 10 months of growth. Incredible little hybrid! This is why you shouldn't be afraid of getting pings as very small starts – they grow in just fine.

Exciting day over all I think.

What's blooming in winter?

It's not officially winter yet, but we've gotten the first real chill in California this last week. Let's see what's blooming in spite of the – relative – cold (it's still California, after all).

Pinguicula emarginata and Pinguicula lusitanica are both putting up blooms.

The venation in this flower is even visible before it opens.

There you go little guy!

P. emarginata is extremely floriferous, and it's got wonderful flowers. I like having it in my collection! The P. lusitanica is a very healthy specimen I got from Josh, and I'm hoping it'll set seed with this bloom, rather than just dying like my last one did.

The alien and adorable Utricularia pubescens has a solitary bloom right now.

Funny little flower.

Unfortunately the sporangia outnumber the flower stalks in this pot. Fortunately, the U. pubescens flowers are cool as heck.

My Byblis liniflora keeps making new blooms, but I've yet to collect any seed from it.

B. liniflora is so delicate-looking.

For whatever reason these guys just aren't making any fruit/seeds. It's still a great plant, but I need to get seed before it dies off. Oh well, I can enjoy it for now at least!

There are a couple other plants blooming right now that I've yet to get seed from: Drosera venusta and Drosera madagascariensis.

This flower stalk is much too long.

Good luck little guy.

That D. venusta stalk is super long and dangly. As you can see, it's insinuated itself among the Drosera spiralis. There might be some seed setting in the spent buds, but I can't tell. The D. madagascariensis might have a better shot this time around, since it's in full scramble, and will be able to support itself on the media once the stalk gets too long. We'll see.

One plant that I'm betting on heavily for seed is this Drosera capensis red form. It's gotten several significant feedings, and it's rewarding me with a fat crop of buds.

A lot more to come here.

Josh has said that this form of D. capensis is the only one that occasionally fails to set seed for him, but I think that this flower stalk at least is chugging away – I'm pretty sure there's some seed swelling in the oldest buds. The tough thing will be to avoid bumping it while it finishes blooming out.

Drosera aliciae and Drosera anglica CA × HI are both blooming for the first time in a while, and I'm excited to get some seed from them.

Haven't seen this one in a while!

I need to do something about this corner.

The D. aliciae that live in the community pot always seem to struggle with humic acid buildup, which makes their growth stall, but I'm not sure what to do about it. Eventually it clears up and growth starts again. I should feed this guy to get a nice crop of seed. The D. anglica is sitting over in the former quarantine tray, and is bending towards the light (the bulbs should be replaced soon).

Finally, there's a flower open on some Drosera omissa.

If you're not growing pygmies yet you should start this season.

As you can see, this species is a very enthusiastic bloomer. It's funny, I've only gotten a few species of pygmies to flower. D. omissa flowers the most readily, and I've also gotten blooms on D. leucostigma, D. allantostigma, and D. helodes. However, I've never flowered D. scorpioides, or D. pulchella, or any of the other species that are otherwise doing so well. It's curious.

The gemmae are ripening though :-D

Field Trip Part 2: Dews and Pings at Predatory Plants

A couple days ago we checked out the Nepenthes at the San Francisco greenhouse of Josh Brown, owner of Predatory Plants. Today we're gonna look some of his other plants, particularly Drosera and Pinguicula. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the work area of the greenhouse, though, were these Sarracenia benches. I laughed when I saw them, because Josh is vocal in his dislike of Sarracenia (he claims he can't grow them well).

Babies on the left, monsters on the right!

Those look pretty decent to me! Josh does a lot of sarrs from seed (which you can see on the left), including some in-house crosses. On the right there are specimen-sized plants that he grows for flowers, or for large divisions which can be sold on eBay or what have you.

In his heart though, Josh is a Nepenthes and Drosera man. This is his "sundew ark" – the parent stock of (almost) all of the sundews he has in production, and what is pretty much his personal collection.

It was cute seeing these parent plants all hanging out together.

He apologized that these plants weren't all looking great, since a number of them had flowered and shrunk back a bit. Still, some of them look great, especially (to my mind) the Drosera sp. Floating (which is a form of Drosera admirabilis) on the bottom left.

Next up is the production area, where he grows out all the dews he sells online and in-person.

In this tray, from top: Drosera aliciae, Drosera coccicaulis (now usually considered synonymous with Drosera venusta), Drosera natalensis, Drosera "Chimanimani Mountains",

Albino-colored Drosera venusta. Super cool!

Big old tangle of Drosera tracyi.

Josh has an interesting shipping method. He calls it "bare root," but it's significantly less disruptive than typical barerooting. He pops the plant – including the plug of media – out of its tray, wraps the plug up to keep it in place, and then ships it along with an appropriately-sized pot. The purchaser can then just pop it in the pot and Bob's your uncle. Pretty cool!

I thought this tray of Pinguicula lusitanica was cool, and Josh was pretty casually like, "Yeah, I don't know why I have those really, I never sell any."

Look at all those plugs so neat and full of pings.

I fully intend to lighten him of some of these plants. He meant to give me a pot, but I forgot. My own plants bloomed, failed to set seed, and died.

One of the interesting things about the plant trade is which plants get maintained in production, and which do not. These next two are a perfect example. First up is the absolutely unstoppable pygmy sundew hybrid, Drosera omissa × pulchella.

What a hilarious mound of plants.

Josh actually lost a bunch of his pygmies this year because he never got around to harvesting and re-sowing gemmae, so when the eventual round of die-offs happened there were no contingencies. I didn't get a picture of it, but he had several trays of pygmy skeletons. It was sad. Except for these guys, which will probably never die. Look at those crazy clumps. Hybrids often have extra vigor, and D. omissa × pulchella is crazy. There's a reason that any place that sells pygmies always has loads of this hybrid.

The counter to this fecundity is the rather lovely Pinguicula planifolia.

It's a shape these are so hard to propagate, I think they look awesome.

Most of the more familiar pings propagate very easily though leaf pulls (all the Mexican species, like Pinguicula gigantea or Pinguicula moranensis) or by buds at the leaf tips (Pinguicula primuliflora) or in rare cases, by self-pollination (P. lusitanica). This species – according to Josh – can only be propagated by crossing two different clones and sowing seed. He got this one batch of ~100 plants by crossing two plants a couple years ago, which eventually died. He's been growing these out ever since, and they've never bloomed. So while they're really lovely, don't expect to see many for sale any time soon. Alas.

It was great fun checking out the greenhouse. Always cool to see how someone else solves the problems of growing our favorite weirdo plants!

P.S. Maria let me know in the comments of Wednesday's post that there is in fact a Predatory Plants Instagram. Good to know.

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.

Weeds

Every plant person deals with weeds. Usually the weeds are very different from the desirable plants – ask any cactus/agave person what they think about Oxalis, or anyone with acreage in the country about mustard. In the CP hobby there are plenty of mosses which give people more or less trouble, depending on the pot they're invading. There are also carnivorous weeds – plants that are either deliberately included in a collection, or which arrive unexpectedly in a trade, and then begin to travel around into other pots. Weeds make great plants for beginning growers, since by definition weeds hard hard to kill and adaptable to lots of different conditions.

Perhaps the classic CP weed is Drosera capensis (although a couple of terrestrial Utricularia give it a run for its money). D. capensis flowers extensively on long scapes, self-fertilizes, and produces thousands of seeds. Heretofore my D. capensis has produced seed and offsets, but I hadn't caught seedlings popping up unexpectedly. Until a week ago or so.

Lots of little tiny D. capensis (I think – they could be D. aliciae).

Luckily, this is all in the D. capensis pot. I think the seeds fell out when the stalk got knocked by the lights. I don't plan on feeding these seedlings, so we'll see how quickly they'll grow.

Terrestrial Utricularia make for great weeds, which is why I confine them to their own trays for the most part. While U. bisquamata and U. subulata are probably the most famous Utric weeds (check any Sarracenia pot at a nursery and there's a good chance you'll find some), U. livida is the most vigorous terrestrial Utric I currently grow. In the 2 or 3 months I've been growing it (check out this post from March) it has filled its pot and started blooming like crazy.

Look at this beautiful profusion of Utricularia. Such a neat-looking pot.

There are even more stalks coming up. Keeps on blooming!

If I put together a mixed bog you better bet I'll throw a couple U. livida chunks in there, but most of the plants in my collection are in single-species pots, so I like to keep things separate for the time being.

I recently acquired a weedy Ping – Pinguicula lusitanica is a small, self-fertile, freely blooming Pinguicula that apparently likes to travel around a greenhouse. I just got a flower stalk on my biggest plant!

I now have two Pings, on totally different size scales.

That's always how it starts. These are supposed to be short-lived annuals, going from seed to bloom in a matter of months. Sounds fun!

Drosera brevifolia is a not-dissimilar sundew weed – it's tiny, bloomy, potentially annual (although I've gotten the impression they can last a few seasons with consistently favorable conditions), and cute.

The frontmost 'dew already has a 3rd stalk coming up. Good job, little plant.

I'm gonna try harvesting some of this seed soon, so I can re-sow and get a big colony going. Sundews look great in colonies.

Are there any weeds in your collection that you're particularly fond of? Do any give you problems?