Propagation interlude

I'm still planning a follow-up to my BACPS Show/Sale post, but in the mean time I wanted to do a little update from home. Yesterday I finally decided to get one more set of lights to use in a propagation area, but stupidly forgot to buy a 2 dollar set of hooks to hang the lights. I'll have a picture of my setup later, but I did want to share a couple pictures of my current running propagation efforts.

First up, my Drosera 'Marston Dragon' flower stalk cuttings that sprouted in water transferred well to the media. Each chunk had a small root or two, which made it a lot easier. Here they are acclimating to the media in a humidity tent.

I've heard flower stalk cuttings work great, and they did well in water. On the media, not so much.

I'm gonna give them a few weeks in here and then start hardening them off. I also have some D. 'Marston Dragon' leaf cuttings that started on water, and transferred to media back at the end of April. I didn't mention it on the blog I think, but they rapidly declined and looked terrible. However, there are a couple of little strikes that seem to have made it. It was hard to get a picture with the angles and the humidity, but I've begun hardening them off.

The D. 'Marston Dragon' leaf cuttings are much slower going, but a bit more time and maybe they'll become monsters too.

I think I should have let them get a bit bigger in the water before transferring to media. We'll see with my next round of cuttings.

I also started some Drosera ultramafica x spatulata some time ago, and have gotten a few robust strikes. I've also started hardening these guys off.

I love the deep red color on this hybrid.

Finally, I wasn't able to get a decent picture, but in another pot I have at least 2 Drosera anglica CA x HI strikes. Hopefully they'll get easier to photograph in a couple weeks.

My Drosera capensis window box thingy is finally picking up some steam. There are probably 6 or 7 plants that have passed from the seedling stage to the plantlet stage and are starting to get nice and big. Also the moss is going crazy, but whatever!

It's a whole ecosystem in here.

I bet they'll be looking great by Christmas.

As a last note, I fed my whole collection last night, and my prize Drosera burmannii are super excited to be eating again (I avoided feeding them for about a month before the show to get the color right). Eat up guys, you earned it!

The flower stalk on that largest plant is enormous, like 18 inches (45 cm) tall.

Happenings around the collection

Remember those Drosera 'Marston Dragon' flower stalk cuttings? The ones that totally went kaput and did nothing? As I mentioned, I also started some cuttings from the same flower stalk in water, and they've recently totally exploded.

Little plantlets exploding out of the flower stalks.

Look at the cute little leaves! I'm hoping that since they've reached this point they'll be less likely to involute and die when transferred to the media (which is what happened to the D. 'Marston Dragon' leaf cuttings I did earlier). As soon as I get a day off with enough time to mess with my plants that's high on the agenda.

In other vaguely propagation-related news, the Drosera allantostigma that I got from Brie during the NASC auction are starting to bloom. How cute!

Drosera allantostigma is absolutely one of my favorite species. Look how beautiful.

Looks like a couple of the Drosera pygmaea next door aren't doing so hot. Well, several are still going strong at least.

There's also some new action on my Drosera prolifera.

This D. prolifera seems to be...proliferating.

Sorry about the horrifyingly yellow picture, but look right in the middle. A little baby! It looks like this guy is settling in nicely.

Since this is a sort of all-around update, I wanted to take the time to brag about my Drosera spiralis.

My D. spiralis is getting so tall.

I couldn't capture it in its entirety (I need to put together some sort of black background for photographing my carnivores) but it's growing really well. That tallest leaf is almost 8 inches (20 cm) long, and is well-dewed and healthy looking. I've had the plant for six months now, and it seems to tolerate the occasional hot day really well. I love having it in my collection.

I hope it continues to do well! This plant is a special project of mine.

Still pushing out new growth too! It only supports 4 leaves or so at a time, so each new one is a big deal.

Is anything exciting happening in your collection?

Seedlings, plantlets, and failures

You can't win 'em all. One of the things I've learned as I've begun collecting plants is that sometimes they die and that's just that. I've got a Drosera sp. Lantau Island right now that is almost certainly not going to make it. Alas. I took some leaf cuttings from Drosera 'Marston Dragon' some time ago and almost none of them have survived the transfer from water to media. That sucks! And check out these flower stalk cuttings from the same plant:

Withered flower stalks – a grim sight.

I'd heard that flower stalks were the best cuttings you could take. These are brown and shriveled with no sign of life, despite being in soggy wet media with a humidity cover. Well actually there's a bit of life – the pollen from the flower buds has spawned a bit of algae. Hooray! Maybe I should have nicked the cuttings with a razor? Luckily the bits that I started in water are starting to bud. I'm going to get them quite large before transferring them to media. Hopefully something will take.

But you don't lose 'em all either! And unless you're a huge doofus, you'll probably win more than you lose, substantially. For example, remember those laggy Drosera capensis 'Albino' seedlings? The infinitesimal ones?

The first plant to take off often ends up leaps and bounds the biggest.

I've got one very respectable plantlet, and several more trying to catch up. Feeding really does make all the difference in the world when you're sizing up seedlings – I don't worry about over-feeding the tiny plantlets, since the new growth they produce is almost always more robust than the mold that may result from over-feeding.

I've also got a good crop of Drosera natalensis seedlings that I started a few weeks ago with seed I traded with Natch.

Drosera natalensis should be a fairly charming rosetted South African sundew.

I've started hardening these little dudes off (i.e. slowly cutting holes in the humidity tent to acclimate them to lower humidity conditions) so that soon I'll be able to start feeding. Once you start feeding things really take off.

Remember that Drosera prolifera flower stalk that started a plantlet in the tray water? I dealt with it in sort of a funny way.

Some people say lazy fix, I say elegant, resource-conscious solution.

I just bent the stalk back and planted the plantlet in the mother plant's pot. If they start to crowd each other it'll be easy to separate, and now at least it can start developing a root system.

Finally, remember how I observed in my last post that it was lucky that all those Drosera capensis seeds fell in the D. capensis pot rather than any others? Yeah, about that...

That mis-colored patch of media is from where I removed the last D. capensis hitchhiker that lived in this pot.

Look closely – my Drosera capillaris has some company. Well, I'd been planning on separating/repotting it anyway, so I guess this gives me additional incentive.

Glad I have more things living than dying at least.

Drosera 'Marston Dragon' gets a haircut

I caught an open flower on my Drosera 'Marston Dragon' today, and it's a beaut.

A strikingly large Drosera 'Marston Dragon' flower.

Large too – definitely the largest sundew flower I've seen so far. Of course, my D. 'Marston Dragon' isn't small, even now after I've given it something of a haircut:

The D. 'Marston Dragon' is a bit more tidy now.

I've trimmed off all of the old growth, which had gotten quite floppy and was looking pretty ragged. The new growth is nice and upright, and much neater.

Something for the compost pile that I don't currently have but need to establish.

I also took the time, right after the above photos were taken, to harvest the other, somewhat younger flower stalk for cuttings. I think I'm just going to let the one that is blooming bloom. I split the stalk between a pot of media I had already prepared, and a cup of water under the lights. We'll see how the respective cuttings fare long term.

D. 'Marston Dragon' flower stalk cuttings on a pot.

D. 'Marston Dragon' flower stalk cuttings out of focus in a cup of water.

Of course, this means space is beginning to get tighter under my new lights, even though I only bought them a month ago.

The new tray filling up really surprisingly quickly.

Well it's not like I regret having plants. The next set of lights I get will be for a dedicated propagation area – I'd like to get more serious about propagation, now that I have a bit of experience under my belt.

Just as a brief aside, it seems my Drosera spiralis has weathered the heat of the past week fairly well – it's still looking strong, and is putting out a new leaf.

The distinctive curl of an unfurling D. spiralis leaf.

It's nothing definitive, but I'm glad it hasn't croaked on me yet!