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

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!