Drosera pulchella flower colours

[Dieter]

Hi all,

I tried to get hold of the different flower colours during the last gemmae season. Now the plants start to flower and I am mostly disappointed so far. Ok, there are some minor variations in colouration, but essentially I so far I saw flowers of either pink or salmon colour. All "orange" flowered plants turned out to be very similar to the salmon flower and one can only see differences if they are next to each other.

However, I did see a much broader variation of flower colours on different web sites, so they must be there. As I trust my sources, I do not think I just got fooled onpurpose (mistakes may always happen as it want be easy to spot a D. pulchella which invaded from a pot nearby).

Now, what are your experiences? May the flower colour also depend on the conditions like soil temperature, light levels and so on? I also obtained a "white" flowered D. ericksoniae in winter which first had some light pink flowers. Both of todays flowers are really white. As I it is just 4 plants which threw up most of the flowers so far, it may be variation between different plants. I consider this to be somewhat unlikely as they came from one batch of gemmae. So I would expect that the conditions may have some effect on the flower colour.

There are still some D. pulchella which did not flower for me yet, at least in my presence (that is the downside of having a job), so there is still hope. But at least a "clean white, red center" turned out to be a pink form.

Again, what are your experiences with these plants?

Cheers,

Dieter

[Steve Stewart]

Dieter & all,

The Drosera pulchella I grow was labled as an orange flower variety and was a gift, so there was no reason to intentionally misslable it. It has salmon colored flowers. I have the one variety so I can only compare it, and it's offspring with photographs that show orange flowers. It is possible that light levels or soil pH have something to do with the flower color of this species. I don't think the film type or photoshop (...) manipulation had anything to do with color differences, but anything is possible .

Steve Stewart

[Dieter]

Hi Steve,

I observed a variation in the colour intensity in the white flowered D. ericksoniae as I mentioned above. It's flowers now really have just a hint of pink whereas the first flowers had pink in them. As I did not repot them, other factors like lights levels or temperature may play a role in this case.

There is no doubt that I grow different clones of for instance Salmon flowered D. pulchella. The flowers have different shades of colouration, different sizes and styles and other flower parts may have different colours. The plants grow in seperate pots with the same substrate directly next to each other, so the conditions should be comparable for those. I just would have expected to see more differences.

Cheers,

Dieter