BACPS 2015 Annual Show and Sale

This past Saturday was the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society's Annual Show and Sale at the Lake Merritt Garden Center in Oakland, CA. It was a fun day! Unfortunately I got very little sleep the night before – one of those nights where you just stare at the ceiling in despair – so by the end of the show I was exhausted.

It was a tough weekend for a show. We were competing with the San Francisco Cactus and Succulent Society show, as well as the San Jose Orchid Exposition. In spite of that we had a very nice turnout from members of the public. However the show itself was a bit less packed with entries than we'd have liked. Sundews and pings were well-represented, as were Sarracenia. The Nepenthes entries were a bit more sparse than usual, but still contained some excellent plants. However there were zero entries in the "Other Pitcher" category, only 1 for the aquatics, 2 for Art, and just 3 in "Terrarium/Dish Garden."

We're not sure why so few plants were submitted as compared to last year, but increasing show participation is going to be a major goal for the coming year in the BACPS. Now, without further ado, the entries.

Art

First: Heliamphora nutans, pontillist drawing, Sam Stafford.

Second: Venus flytrap, metal sculpture, Benjamin Bailey.

Terrarium/Dish Garden

First: Pygmy Garden, Devon Peterson. Also Third in Show.

Second: Dish Garden featuring Pinguicula sp. Huahuapan, Stephen Davis.

Check out that amazing flower! That's a new ping to add to my want list.

Third: D. adelae, D. scorpioides, D. burmannii, Ben Raymond.

Butterwort (Pinguicula)

First: Pinguicula 'Pirouette', Doris Quick.

Second: Pinguicula 'Weser', Stephen Davis.

Third: Pinguicula gigantea, Brian Lipinski.

Sundew (Drosera, Byblis, Roridula)

First: Drosera falconeri, Apache Rose. Also First in Show.

Second: Drosera ordensis, Apache Rose.

Third: Drosera ultramafica × spatulata, Devon Peterson.

American Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia)

First: Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora, Doris Quick.

Second: Sarracenia alata "black" × flava "red", Stephen Davis.

Third: Sarracenia hybrid, Larry Logoteta.

Tropical Pitcher Plant (Nepenthes)

First: Nepenthes spectabilis, Apache Rose. Also Second in Show and winner of the Geoff Wong Award for Horticultural Excellence.

This was really a flawlessly-grown and wonderfully-presented plant. Apache really knows how to grow 'em.

Second: Nepenthes talangensis × robcantleyi, Josh Brown.

Third: Nepenthes bongso, Elizabeth Sampson.

Aquatic

First: Utricularia graminifolia, Devon Peterson.

I was sort of bummed there weren't more aquatic entries, since I think this guy would have shown well against some competition. Oh well.


Venus Flytrap

First: Dionaea 'B-52', Benjamin Bailey.

 
Second: Dionaea 'B-52' × 'Ginormous', Larry Logoteta.

Third: Dionaea 'Red Dragon', Anne Smith.

Best in Show

I've gotta say, the real hero of the show was Apache Rose. Anyone who's active in carnivorous plant groups on Facebook knows Apache, and she really brought some killers. She also credited me with helping her get that D. falconeri so strikingly red – she raised her plant right up near the lights in the last two weeks to color it up, as I had done with my Drosera burmannii last year. It was well done!

First in Show was Drosera falconeri by Apache Rose, Second in Show was Nepenthes spectabilis by Apache Rose, and Third in Show was my own humble pygmy garden.

It was a fun show. Still, there were 5 ribbons not awarded due to lack of entries. Any SF Bay Area growers reading this post: start preparing your plants for next year.

Some great-looking sundews

The BACPS Annual Show and Sale was yesterday, and it was lots of fun. I'm gonna make a big post about the juried show, but that's going to take a lot of work editing pictures and whatnot. In the meantime here's a few plants that you might appreciate.

This Drosera binata was discovered while I was helping repot some plants over at Predatory Plants in advance of the show.

Sproing!

That spring-looking thing at the bottom is the root ball. The plant had actually pushed itself out of its 1-inch plug, which is how Josh noticed it. Apparently this is descended from a D. binata he received for free at the first BACPS meeting he attended after coming back to the Bay after college. That plant apparently grew a huge root ball over the next couple years and then when he went into business selling plants he unpotted it and made a whole bunch of cuttings. That one little freebie has spawned thousands of D. binata plants for him to sell. What a great clone!

Speaking of spawning new plants, my Drosera capillaris "Albino" is flowering for the first time in a long time.

I've been waiting for another flower on this guy.

You'll noticed I used the descriptor "Albino" instead of the location "Alabama." There's a story there, but I'm not quite ready to tell it yet. Still doing more research. Definitely looking forward to getting some more seed from this guy though.

My Drosera prolifera is doing as well as I've ever seen it doing lately.

Lots of plants!

It's going through another bout of flowering, so there are lots of new plantlets. I'll have to either pot this up into a larger size or divide the pot pretty soon – I'm running out of spots to stick the plantlets into the moss.

On the pygmy front, this new pot of Drosera helodes is looking fantastic.

Perfect little sundews.

The thing I really like about this species is the contrast between the white tentacles and the red laminae, which turn into neat little circles. Great distribution in the pot too.

Finally, just to whet the appetite for the upcoming show post.

It was lots of fun, but I was tired by the end.

It was a good day!

Utricularia graminifolia flower and other cool stuff

Back at the beginning of March – 3 months ago – I first noticed a flower stalk forming on my Utricularia graminifolia. Yesterday it finally popped its first flower.

Neat little flower. Foliage is looking pretty good too.

So cute! U. graminifolia is considered one of the more fiddly terrestrial/semi-aquatic utrics. I grow mine in an undrained glass container about 18 inches from my lights. I let the water pretty much evaporate all the way before refilling almost to the top of the container (covering the plant entirely). I've heard of several people using this method to successfully grow U. graminifolia to flower. There are several more flower stalks coming up, which is exciting. One thing to note when using this method – when you first plant your plug of U. graminifolia there's nothing holding the peat together, so watering really stirs it all up. The peat settles after a day or so. Once the plant fills in the container watering isn't so much of an issue anymore.

 I've also got a flower coming up on my Drosera collinsiae (Fairyland, RSA).

Very nice rosette of leaves on this plant.

This is a really handsome plant that hasn't gotten much attention on the blog. It started to flower once before, but I clipped the stalk when I noticed aphids on it. Now we're flowering again and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one won't be similarly afflicted.

These next two photos I recently posted on my Instagram, but I decided to share them here too because not everyone has Instagram. First up, look at this wild picture of my Drosera burmannii (Hann River, Kimberley, Western Australia).

Dig that weird splotchy coloring.

I had let them go a while without being fed, which gave them a lovely, luminescent red color. Then, a couple days after a heavy feeding, I noticed that there was this mix of pale pink and deep red leaves as the new growth grew in. Super cool!

I also shared this photo of Drosera enodes, which I took as part of my project to improve the pygmy sundew pages on Wikipedia.

One of the loveliest pygmies, imo.

D. enodes forms this little dome composed almost entirely of dew, and it's really, really cute. I love my little pygmies.

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.

Field Trip Part 1: Nepenthes at Predatory Plants

Today I had the pleasure (along with my friend Anne from the Cactus Jungle) of visiting the San Francisco greenhouse of Josh Brown, BACPS President and owner of Predatory Plants. Josh is one of the rare growers that is able to turn an interest in carnivorous plants into a livelihood. He specializes in Nepenthes and Drosera, but he has a decent selection of Sarracenia as well, and is slowly building up his stock of Pinguicula.

Josh and I routinely have good-natured arguments about whether or not Nepenthes suck and are stupid. While I'm not about to rush out and build a highland greenhouse, this visit was a big step in convincing me that maybe they're not as lame as I've always felt (sorry Nep lovers). First though, he wanted to show off some ant plants.

Myrmecodia sp., looking rad as hell.

Those weird white bumps are flowers. Funky.

Hydnophytum sp. Josh likes the bulbous ones.

These funny-looking epiphytes grow internal chambers in those big swollen stems, which are then colonized by mutualistic ants. These are pretty uncommon in cultivation in the US, but are apparently pretty quick-growing and often self-fertile. Josh is working with one of his greenhouse-mates to figure out good ways to cultivate/sell these. Pretty exciting for anyone with a decent greenhouse!

Nearby were the first of the day's neps: Nepenthes ×briggsiana (which is lowii × ventricosa), and a variegated Nepenthes alata.

Dig that color gradient!

I think I like this plant, even though Josh doesn't.

The N. alata was very striking, but apparently Josh sort of hates it – like most variegated plants it's finicky and not particularly vigorous. Still, people always clamor for variegated neps – which are pretty uncommon – so he keeps on propagating them. He loved the hybrid though, which I can totally understand.

Down at the other side of the greenhouse space was his work area – announced by this profusion of Nepenthes "Lady Luck" (i.e. ampullaria × ventricosa).

That's a lot of plants!

Josh is growing these guys to use with Borneo Exotics' new Bio-Dome system. The thing looks gimmicky at first, but based on what I've heard from several different growers I actually think I'm going to buy one once they're in circulation. Good-looking plants too!

Next up are three big flowering-size plants: a Nepenthes truncata with a 4-foot flower stalk, "Papa ventricosa," and "Mama maxima."

The light made getting this shot really hard.

Great color on this N. ventricosa.

Love those speckles.

Josh really likes F1 Nepenthes hybrids, and he's used all of these plants for some nice-looking crosses. Again, seeing his collection started to bring me around to the idea that simple crosses are pretty cool. We agree though that complex hybrids are usually muddy and boring-looking.

Josh has a few great Nepenthes ventricosa hybrids (see the N. ×briggsiana above), and he also has several really nice Nepenthes hamata hybrids, such as this wicked Nepenthes singalana × hamata.

Hairy and shiny.

Great teeth!

Finally, let's leave with some species, since at the end of the day species are what fascinate me.

Nepenthes aristolochioides always makes me want to crack my back.

Totally eye-popping Nepenthes sanguinea.

Look at that cute little Nepenthes argentii.

That N. sanguinea is huge, and it's one of the prettiest clones I've ever seen. The N. argentii is the smallest nep in the world. Josh has a hilarious story about how he first imported a couple dozen of them when he was just getting started and sold like 5 of them for $20 since he had no idea what they were worth on the market. He uh, doesn't sell them for $20 any more.

Check out the Predatory Plants Facebook page for more sweet carnivores, and I think Josh is on Instagram too, but I don't know for sure. And check back soon for part 2, when I get to look at plants that I actually want to grow!