Carnivorous plant blogs you should be reading

Pinguicula moranensis developing some nice scalloped leaf margins.

The carnivorous plant community is bigger now than ever, but it's still pretty niche. That means there aren't that many blogs – especially compared to, say, gardening blogs, which are legion. Luckily a lot of new blogs have come online in the last year, and just recently several that appeared to have gone dormant have woken up. This post covers all the active blogs I know about – let me know if you know of any more!

By the way, all the pictures in this post are of my collection – I'm including them to make the post more fun to look at.

Very pretty color on this Drosera spatulata 'Kanto' flower.

Natch Greyes Carnivorous Plants

Between updates on his collection, field trips to carnivorous plant habitat, and growing guides this is a great all-around blog for the carnivore enthusiast. Natch has also expanded his little shop into an online nursery that has a particularly nice selection of terrestrial Utriculatria.  A bit of a Nepenthes focus, but Natch grows everything.

The Carnivore Girl

Maria has a lot of Venus Fly-Traps, and takes very cute pictures. She also hunts around for old drawings and engravings of carnivorous plants, as well as contemporary stuff. A fun read, and the only place I know of online where you can buy a Cephalotus throw pillow.

Sarracenia x 'Abandoned Hope', displaying its classic "wailing of the damned" posture.

The Pitcher Plant Project

 

A blog for the Sarracenia obsessed. Rob has a large hoop house and grows lots of anthocyanin-free clones, as well as some real weirdos. Updates usually once or twice a month, but the posts are loaded with pictures that make up for the waiting. Also has cool videos!

The Pitcher Plantation

 

An Australian Sarracenia blog that had been dormant for months and recently woke up. John is an enthusiast of Sarracenia flava, and he put together a great series recently on building artificial container bogs. As a bonus, his pitcher plants are awake while mine are dormant.

Utricularia calycifida blooming away.

Zone 6b

 

Carnivorous plants are not fragile, finicky plants that can't handle real-world conditions. Carl proves that by growing Sarracenia, Dionaea, Drosera, and Pinguicula outdoors year-round in Ontario, Canada. Quite impressive, and the plants all look great.

Hooray Plants

 

Another blog that has recently awoken from a long dormancy. Melody grows succulents, orchids, and other weird plants in addition to her Nepenthes, Sarracenia, and assorted carnivores. Lots of activity lately, and I hope she keeps updating!

Lots of action on Drosera x Carbarup (along with other pygmies).

ExB

 

Loads of phenomenal carnivore photography, especially crystal-clear macro shots of Drosera, Pinguicula, and Utricularia. I don't really understand how Tumblr works, but I love seeing the new photos. Highly recommended.

These are all the active, established carnivorous plant blogs I know of right now. Let me know if you know of any more worth watching. If you're interested in blogging about your plants but don't know how to get started feel free to shoot me an email at sundews.etc@gmail.com. I'd love to see more blog action (especially if you grow pings or utrics, but really the more the merrier)!

Challenges growing Sarracenia outdoors

I don't post about my Sarracenia very often. In large part that's because they're really difficult to photograph with my phone camera, which loves to focus on the wood grain of the fence in the background rather than the pitcher in the foreground. Whatever.

In any case, here's how they looked today.

The outdoor growing area is still pretty haphazard.

First of all, they are definitely pitchering pretty nicely, especially that Sarracenia leucophylla in the background, and the Sarracenia flava  var. maxima on the left. I've seen some good rhizome expansion too, especially on the S. leucophylla.

The clones I have are pretty attractive. The S. flava maxima has wonderful lid shape, and the Sarracenia minor is really nicely colored. However, there are definitely problems. First of all, I think this area is much too windy. Check out these broken pitchers.

Broken S. flava pitcher.

Broken S. alata pitcher.

Broken S. minor pitcher.

It can get powerfully windy in my neighborhood and I think it's just too much for these pitchers. The breaks are too clean to be chewing, and the pitchers are often younger, so I don't think it's just too many bugs.

I also have a problem with pigeons. I've seen them perch on my plants and peck out the bugs. Pretty sure that's what happened to Sarracenia 'Abandoned Hope'.

I still haven't Abandoned Hope yet!

And my Sarracenia purpurea has been totally shredded.

Someday my S. purpurea will be back in shape.

However, there's new growth on both of these, so it's not like they can't bounce back. I guess I'll just have to be okay with somewhat ratty looking Sarracenia until I put together a nicer growing area. Oh well! Growing carnivores is always a learning process.

One big plus I've noticed lately is that the S. leucophylla "Hurricane Creek" that I won at the Spring BACPS meeting auction has finally started sending up a pitcher. I couldn't get a decent picture, but that's exciting! I had given up on it almost.

BACPS Spring 2014 meeting

The Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society meeting was held Saturday at the UC Botanical Garden. I'm a UCBG member, and try to visit whenever possible.

Yucca rostrata at the UCBG entrance.

On this day the guy working the entrance saw the Drosera burmanii I had brought for the bring and brag and pointed me towards the BACPS meeting. Because I was headed to the meeting, I avoided my typical first stop, the spectacular Arid House.

The UCBG Arid House, home of insane, spectacular plants.

If you live in or occasionally visit the Bay Area you must make time to visit the UCBG. It's a truly astonishing garden.

In any case, I got to the meeting a bit early, and sat around chatting with a few folks before the things got started. I also traded a smallish D. filiformis Florida All-Red leaf cutting for a few stems of Utricularia gemniscapa with Howard, who I met on TerraForums and who blogs about carnivorous plants (in Japanese) at tanukimo.blogspot.com. Use Google Translate – it's interesting to read if you like Utrics (like I do).

A bit before 11 the folks from California Carnivores arrived and set up shop. The BACPS members swarmed their tables before they even got the plants out of the box for display. I think I overheard Damon make a joke about setting up barricades to hold back the zombies, and that's pretty much what I felt like.

Shamelessly swarming around the vendor table. I was right there with everybody.

Most of the plants for sale were temperate and pygmy sundews, VFTs, and some truly beautiful Sarracenia. I allowed myself one plant, a very fine Sarracenia x 'Abandoned Hope'.

The presentations for the meeting were a talk by Damon Collingsworth of California Carnivores and Barry Rice of (among other things) Sarracenia.com about preparing one's plants to enter into the show in June, and a slideshow by Damon about Venus Flytraps in the wild. The presentations were lots of fun!

Barry Rice and Damon Collingsworth talking about preparing plants for the annual show.

Slide of a Venus flytrap that ate a frog. Nice catch!

After the talks we had the Bring and Brag. I showed off my D. burmanii Humpty Doo, and received compliments from a number of people (including Fernando Rivadavia, which was cool). We also saw this funny pair of Pinguicula cyclosecta, one of which has dormant winter leaves, while the other is already in full carnivorous summer foliage.

I loved the color on these P. cyclosecta. And it's cool to see the different leaves side by side.

Also they were planted in this funny pot. How cute!

The auction came next, and then the raffle. Several large Heliamphora heterodoxa x minor divisions brought in a pretty penny. At the raffle I got a Sarracenia leucophylla (Hurricane Creek, AL) and a small pot of D. scorpioides.

This division went for like $30. I'd like to grow Heliamphora someday, but right now it's a bit much for me.

After this I hung around a bit more, convinced myself not to buy another Sarracenia, and then headed home. It was a lot of fun, and I came away with a few new plants and the desire to grow more to share at the next auction. Here's the final count at home.

Clockwise from back left, Sarracenia leucophylla (Hurricane Creek, AL), Sarracenia x 'Abandoned Hope', Drosera scorpioides, Utricularia gemniscapa, mixed Utricularia.

 And because that's not a particularly lovely photo, I'll leave you with this Dudleya pulverulenta, which was so large and so glaucous that it stopped me in my tracks, arms full of plants, to take a picture. That's what the UCBG is all about.

This Dudleya is like 18 inches in diameter. What a wonderful plant.