Aphid busting

Last week I posted about a couple plants that are having some problems and I learned that my Drosera anglica CA x HI had aphids. I had a lot of things going on that week and just didn't have time to address it. Yesterday though, I noticed some of the little buggies on my Drosera collinsiae Faryland and I knew I couldn't wait any longer.

A heavily afflicted plant.

The aphids just recently appeared on this one.

"Computer, zoom and enhance."

Barry Rice says aphids are cute.

Let's get real up-close with the little freeloaders.

Whatever you say Barry.

Little sapsuckers.

Luckily aphid treatment doesn't (usually) require gnarly pesticides. The first line of defense is just isopropyl alcohol, applied with a cotton swab.

A great reckoning is upon us.

Judged and found wanting.

Welcome to your doom.

After some consideration, I decided to trim the flower stalk from the D. collinisae, since that's the only place I saw the aphids, and also to extract the gnarled mutant stalk from the D. anglica, since I suspected there were probably aphids hiding in the cracks.

Desperate times, desperate measures, etc.

I'll be checking in on these plants over the next couple weeks, since apparently aphids are prolific egg-layers and you need to treat repeatedly to make sure they actually get wiped out. Luckily, I do have backup D. anglica plants in case the worst happens.

This is from the cuttings that I thought had died!

This is the Summer Batch.

No backups of the D. collinsiae, but luckily I caught that one pretty early.

For now they're in quarantine. More updates as events warrant.

Fingers crossed.

BACPS Fall 2014 meeting

This last Saturday was the Fall meeting of the BACPS, held at the UC Botanical Garden. It was held as usual in the Conference Center, near the Tropical House.

The UCBG Conference Center.

Unlike usual, the smaller room in the Conference Center was occupied by a pretty cool display about food crops in the Americas.

I think this was a fall harvest sort of display, and a very good one.

Also unusual, but less cool, was that due to various miscommunications the meeting was scheduled on a Cal home game day, which caused problems with traffic and road closures and definitely reduced the total meeting turnout. However, it was still a lot of fun. People were milling around and chatting before the meeting actually got started.

Chatting is half the fun.

The featured presenter of the meeting was Drew Martinez, a fantastic grower who had a number of winning plants at the 2014 BACPS Show (including a Drosera regia that I think was my favorite plant there). He also has an MS in optical engineering, and was there to talk to us about artificial lighting.

Drew holding forth.

The talk was jam-packed with information! In fact, a little too jam-packed – apparently this is supposed to be more like a 2 hour presentation, and he managed to squeeze it into about 45 minutes. He discussed which wavelengths of light are photosynthetically useful to plants, how much of that light is produced by various sources of artificial lighting, and efficiency per watt and also in terms of cost.

One of many extremely useful slides. I wish I could consult them regularly!

This was all extremely useful information, but as I said, it was definitely an abbreviated presentation. Apparently his data will be published by the Associazione Italiana Piante Carnivore (in English) in their next quarterly journal. Anyone who is interested in artificial lighting for carnivorous plants should check it out. To spoil the surprise a bit, cool white T8 bulbs seem to be overall the most efficient in terms of photosynthetically-useful light per watt. LEDs are currently best used for specific purposes, such as smaller spaces, or to encourage certain characteristics (deeper color, for example). This is a gross simplification, so just make sure to hunt down that article when it's published! I'll share it if I find it first.

The other main part of the meeting was an informal "late bloomers" show. This was a chance for members to show off plants that are looking better now, in early fall, than they were back in June at the annual show. Unfortunately there were only 4 plants entered, probably partly due to some people skipping the meeting because of the football game. There was an anthocyanin-free Sarracenia psittacina from Larry Logoteta, a Sarracenia hybrid from Doris Quick, my own Drosera spiralis, and a Drosophyllum lusitanicum by a fellow named Richard from San Jose.

AF S. psittacina, Larry Logoteta.

Sarracenia hybrid, Doris Quick.

Drosera spiralis, Devon Peterson (that's me!).

Drosophyllum lusitanicum, Richard (I'll add a last name later if I can). This was my favorite.

My D. spiralis was kind enough to bloom for the meeting, and it impressed enough people for me to win a $15 gift certificate to California Carnivores. Fernando Rivadavia commented that the flower had been open for a long time, and it really was. It was fully open at 11 am or so when I started getting ready to go to the meeting, and it only started closing around 3 pm. That's a long time for a sundew flower!

The meeting was pretty fun, even though it was a bit stressful with the football game and all. I mentioned to Stephen and Doris, two of the board members, that I'd be interested in getting a bit more involved with the BACPS, so we'll see what I end up doing. I'd really like to have more regular, casual meetups with local growers. That'd be a fun way to swap plants and information.

I'll leave you with two pictures of plants from the vendors. First are some enormous Sarracenia minor var. okefenokeensis and Sarracenia alata var. rubricorpora that were amazing (though a bit out of my budget) from California Carnivores, followed by an incredibly darling tray of Utricularia sandersonii from Predatory Plants.

These are mature divisions from their outdoor bogs. Really amazing plants!

A whole field of angry bunnies!

Good times.

Drosera spiralis in full bloom

I know I've been talking about flowers lately, but I'm so proud of my Drosera spiralis.

Recently caught a nice fly too!

Caught it fully open and in lovely bloom. I fiddled around a bit with a toothpick among the sex parts to help it possibly self-pollinate, but I need to get a small paintbrush to do it right. I hope another flower opens up tomorrow so I can take it to the BACPS meeting.

Some other plants are looking pretty nice lately. The Sphagnum in this Drosera prolifera pot is swallowing the plantlets.

The always-changing D. prolifera pot.

Maybe that's what the long petioles are for?

This presumed Drosera spatulata is also being eaten by Sphagnum.

Love this moss!

I think I'm going to take this pot to show off as well, since the moss is just such a nice color.

Right next door my Drosera natalensis seedlings are chugging along.

Feeding makes a huge difference with sundew seedlings.

The feeding has made a big difference.

Finally, my Pinguicula moranensis has gotten a good deal larger since I bought it a couple months ago.

Such a cutie.

I think I'm going to not force it to go dormant. If it starts forming succulent leaves then I'll move it to a different tray and scale back the water, but for now it looks really good.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll have any plants available to bring to the raffle/auction for this BACPS meeting. I have a few selections from the Summer Batch that are coming along, but they're not potted up or anything. Next time!

Plants having weird problems

I've got a few plants right now that aren't looking so hot.

Get well soon little guy.

I recently featured this Drosera aliciae plant enjoying being fed, but now all the most recent leaves are black and not developing. I have no idea what this means! The other D. aliciae in the pot is looking great.

I've also got some weirdness going on with my Drosera anglica CA x HI.

It looks weirdly smooshed right now.

The nice, big, well-developed leaves are all moving outward and down, as usual, but the younger leaves inside are more sparse and smaller. Also, there's something weird going on right in the center.

I'm pretty sure that's a flower stalk!

It looks like a malformed flower stalk maybe? It might even be mechanically blocking new leaf growth. How weird. I may do some surgery on it soon to get it out of there.

It's not a huge mystery what's happened with this Drosera brevifolia.

This is a neat little "habitat" vignette.

It has bloomed itself to death. I knew it was coming. I've got some collected seed, so I hope to start a new round of these guys soon. I think the little dew in the foreground is a D. brevifolia rather than some other weed, but we'll have to wait and see.

And finally, since it's not all bad news, check out how well that flower stalk on my Drosera spiralis is doing.

Reaching for the stars.

Nice!

Drosera capensis red really knows how to flower

Every other day or so lately I get a real treat over in one of my trays.

These flowers are a bit longer-lived than the typical form as well.

Look at the size of that flower! That's the Drosera capensis red form I picked up from California Carnivores back in July. The flower is half again as large as the flower on a typical D. capensis.

This is almost as big as my Drosera 'Marston Dragon' flowers.

I've mentioned it before, but the red form of D. capensis is very morphologically distinct from the typical form. While D. capensis 'Albino' pretty much looks like the typical form except for the color, the red has a larger flower, longer petioles, and less hairiness, among other characteristics. Some people think it looks "stringy," but lately I've come to really like it.

This is one of my favorite plants lately.

It's not nearly as red as it could be right now, since I've been feeding it lately in order to get a nice seed set. The new growth takes a couple weeks to get that deep red color, and if you feed it regularly it'll replace the leaves too quickly to get properly red. But that flower is just so cheery in the tray.

It's nice having a big flower show now that my Pinguicula gigantea has stopped blooming.

I can see it from across the room.

In other exciting bloom news, my Drosera spiralis flower stalk is developing nicely.

A very neat and upright flower stalk. Exactly what I would expect from such a dignified species.

I think the plant really appreciated being fed. I'm gonna give it another heavy feeding once that new leaf unfurls.

Also, it's a bit hard to see, but my Drosera madagascariensis is blooming happily, and the extra straws have provided enough support to keep it upright.

It's a bit chaotic in here, but the D. madagascariensis pot keeps on trucking.

It's peeking up above the lights!

I like when the blooms reach above the lights. It's cute.

I'm glad I've learned how to deal with a bloom on a really leggy D. magagascariensis. Maybe after this bloom I'll do a stem cutting and get it down to size. I have an idea for a D. madagascariensis forest for next year's BACPS show, but I've still got some time to prepare for that.

Drosera burmannii gets a haircut

My Drosera burmannii from Humpty Doo, NT, Australia have been blooming like crazy since late May, and I've only harvested a couple stalks. Things were looking overwhelming in there.

Those flower stalks are just asking for trouble.

Look how far over it's reaching!

The worst part is that as the seed ripened and the stalks went horizontal I kept bumping them and doubtless spread D. burmannii seed into all sorts of fun places. We'll see in the next couple months.

I started my trim up high, so I could remove the seedpods gently and hopefully not spill everywhere.

I really like this section of my collection.

They're missing the tops!

While that took care of the weed danger, I also wanted to make the plants look nice, so I cut down a lot closer.

Such cuties!

They're bouncing back! That one in the center was looking iffy for a while.

As you can see, my one-time competition pot is looking pretty tired after a season of heavy blooming. Still though, they've started bouncing back. Since I'm going to be trimming new flower stalks and feeding well they should get healthy again pretty shortly. Also I might go in there and trim those flower stalks even closer to the plant so the leaves can lay more flat and look nicer.

Now what am I going to do with all of this?

Way too much seed.

Gotta keep propagating.

A few post-feeding shots

A note: I am still working on changing up my photo hosting, but I didn't want to put off updating the blog too much. I'll just migrate the new images over.

I fed most of my collection a few day ago.

Drosera alicae eating heartily.

I've described how I feed my sundews in detail in an earlier post, but in brief I use beta fish food, grind it up in a little mortar and pestle, and apply it in a couple of different ways:

• For rosetted species (like Drosera aliciae and Drosera burmannii) I usually just pinch some up with my fingers and sprinkle it onto the plants.
• For plantlets, seedlings, and certain species (like Drosera spiralis and Drosera filiformis) I dip a toothpick in some water, wipe off the excess moisture, and then use the damp toothpick to pick up and apply the ground fish food.
• For larger species that have longer petioles (like Drosera anglica or Drosera capensis) I will mix the ground fish food with a tiny amount of water, just enough to form a dense paste. I then apply chunks to the laminae with a toothpick. Sometimes the damp toothpick method above will end up with a bit of this sort of paste on the tip, which I can then use.

Little Drosera prolifera plantlet emerging from the moss.

I try to feed my plants every 2 weeks at least, but lately it's been more like once a month. That's still not too shabby, but regular feeding really speeds up growth and keeps the sundews healthy.

Exceptionally hungry Drosera filiformis.

I love seeing the plants respond to feeding. Some are very dramatic, like the D. filiformis above. I didn't even know that the whole leaf could roll up like that! It's certainly not very common. Of course, sometimes the feeding process just makes the plants look straggly, like on this Drosera spiralis leaf.

Silly, string looking leaf on D. spiralis.

However, it's always nice knowing they will be stronger and healthier once new growth comes in. Plus, feeding helps out in flowering, and I want to see a show from this guy!

Feed your sundews! They love it.

Lots of Drosera allantostigma munching away.