My Darlingtonia got pretty dark this year. Younger plants with pitchers under 20cm will at times get red (or very red) pitchers. Older pitchers will also turn dark red. This year a few of my younger plants turned out very dark. This is a photo of a pitcher that formed this year - just wanted to share with everyone

Wow! That is intense! So, tell me, is it healthy and everything? I never knew they could turn that color.

Hi Chatterer, yes, it is very healthy, and has some new growth for the next season already. They got dark last year, but they REALLY got dark this year!

I think that looks really interesting, more pictures please.Where do you keep your plants,where are you from?

37*38'N 122*29'W

I make that Pacifica, just south west of San Francisco

Fred - You are correct! :-)

Im on the coast so its very mild over here, a great place to grow Darlingtonias! I'll try to take some more photos this weekend, here is a closer shot of the pitcher...
Some of the pitchers are dark, some still have traces of green (the smaller pitcher underneath is an older pitcher from last season, for some reason that one didn't turn so dark, but it is still redish.)

If you type those coordinates into Google Earth, you end up in Kansas!

You're wearing the ruby slippers again aren't you Andy.

( Say hi to Toto for me)


I forgot to say...... rco....... that's great colour

WOAH!! i gotta try that when I get home tonight!

Kansas's location is:
Longitude: 94° 38'W to 102° 1' 34"W
Latitude: 37°N to 40°N

I am at:
122°29'W
37°38'N

If i was at 102°29'W , 37°38'N - then i would be in Kansas, but thats 20° off... :-) Only a few miles!

Fred - Thanks! :-)

Andy, it's not reading the coordinates.

It's reading it as an address 122 W 29th St N, Wichita, KS 67204, USA

If I type that in, I get a better result!

By the way rco911, I like the colour of your Darling, too!!

wow, beatiful, one of the best Darlingtonia I have seen

I would love to see that darling with more light, can you make it happen?

It was taken during the afternoon, I'll snap a photo of it this weekend - by the time I get home from work its already dark out side :-(

Really incredible colouration.
Never seen a plant that was so dark.

I´m excited to see more pictures of your plants.

Best regards,

Dani

I love your Darlingtonia! Thanks for sharing.
Gill.

truly fantastic. OMG! thats just magnificent. WOW! please tell us your coniditons in detail. Any more pics of whole plant would be great. :)

One magnificent plant!! You will have to use it in a breeding program. It is one of a kind but hopefully it will breed true.

Thanks all!

I finally had a chance to go out and take some photos. Sorry for the dealy, spring has sprung here, and I've been busy dividing and re-potting my plants (including this one!) Here are a couple more photos with more light and the whole plant, as requested. A few hoods are dark red, and some are borderline black.

Another friend of mine says that a few of her Darlingtonia's in her nursery also got this dark. Barry Rice did mention to me that he has seen plants very dark in the wild, but those were younger plants, the older plants had less red to them. I guess I will just have to wait and see. For now, I am just enjoying their show of color while it lasts, but will be keeping an eye on it...



And from another angle:



Varev: I grew these outdoors for the past growing seasons. It is only this year that I am changing this. Last year they were in an enclosure surrounded with chickenwire and some plexiglass to keep raccoons out. I have lost some of my plants to raccoons!! They would get indirect bright sun, and a little bit of shade, since the beams of the enclosure would cast shadows throughout the day. The years before I moved to Pacifica, I left them outside on the patio year round while I lived in San Francisco.

THIS YEAR: I moved them into my greenhouse and kept them on the floor for the winter, as it is cooler down there. I moved all my plants up to the tables recently as the outdoor weather is getting warmer. Spring is here! I keep my greenhouse vented, and temps range from 50F at night to 80F during the daytime. (Just a little warmer that outdoors) -- I would keep them outdoors - but I am sick of raccoons, and am tired of looking thru chicken wire.

Thanks for replying. OMG! those plants are incredible. you should seriously register this plant as a cultivar. I mean look at it....its the equivalent of the eden black ceph. FANTASTIC. :) sorry to hear about the raccoons. I know what you mean. Last summer when I was living in a subleted house, the vegetable garden in the backyard was dessimated by racoons. I realise the damage that they are capable of.

But another question. Do you have more cobras?? I mean different plants. Have you seen if the color on them is the same in these exact conditions?

Hi Varev!

I had one other one-- it was greener than these in the same conditions. The hood of that one had some red, but not solid like these. It died due to the racoons or something. It was thrown off my benches, and looked pretty torn up after a day baking in the sun - well, i had fried darlingtonias. I guess the coons were after the bugs inside or something. I tried to rescue that one, but could not... The ones you see the coon's didn't touch. (Thank goodness!)

I do have another smaller one that was given to me from another friend of mine, (kind of like a rescue, it was looking very sick at her place) -- its in another pot. The base of the other plant is green, and the new growth emerging is still looking like a regular cobra. As far as registering -- I don't know. They are still young, and their color may be just because of that. I've seen photos of plants in the wild with solid red pitchers, to very dark red... but as they got older, they lost the strong color. We'll just have to wait and see! It would be nice to see a tall 2 or 3 foot pitcher thats solid black!!

i'm forever disapointed when promising red looking young plants go green with age but i've never seen any darlingtonia that dark, truely stunning thanks for sharing. lets hope that plant becomes more widespread in cultivation (get a big gun for the raccoons!LOL) i'd pay more for one of those than i've ever spent on a plant. is it as vigorous as the average cobra?

could i have some seeds of that plant

Truly a beautiful Darlingtonia! Thanks for sharing.

Rogier - Thanks!

Diva - seems like a regular cobra. I've divided it a few times already. One division last year didn't make it for some weird reason, but the other division is doing fine. There are stolons underneath that sphagnum for both plants, but I'll wait till next season before I do anything with them.

Your Darlingtonia is incredible!! congratulations!

oh my god.... words have no use to describe this.... Darlingtonia 'Back Mamba' perhaps? :)

Alex

Have you think about record that variety?Or you don't feel that's a new variety, only a normal darlingtonia which grows in special conditions and because of that it has that beautifull color?

Not sure how I missed this one.

Very nice plant. Do you have more details regards to location data or where you bought it from ?

I would also be interested to see what happens if you where to self pollinate it. With any luck a few darker plants will pop up

You've got a wonderfull plant
I've never seen that before.....




Darker than this plant?

rco911,

You made your post in January/February. Now that summer is about over, did the plants retain their dark color?

Hi Bob, - Yes - they retained their dark color this year. I STILL think this is a young plant though, and the color would be probably attributed to growing this under greenhouse twin wall polycarbonate -- during the summer months it would receive light all day from sunrise to sunset. There is something about how the light scatters under polycarb, as many of my plants have exhibited wonderful intense coloration. I would really love to see this plant with towering pitchers of this color. The new pitchers started off green and once they begin inflating, the color change slowly starts. I don't have any photos of the plant while it was developing. The pitchers this year were not as black as the previous, but still on the dark end of the spectrum, its more reddish-black this year.

Still looks like an amazing plant !

I'll second that - looks great!

rco911 that is truely one amazingly beautiful cobra plant,

Thank you so much for sharing those photos with us.

It would be interesting to see what Barry Rice thinks of this one as I'm sure he has quite a bit of experience in the field with cobras.

Barry are you out there mate?

Dave.

Very Nice! Love the coloration:) Wish my Darlingtonia had that coloration:(

How is this plant doing at the moment?
Is it still pretty dark?

Magical, Robert! So the coloration through the year is stable, or does it fluctuate in levels of color throughout the year?

so how is this plant doing?

BAD a** CALIFORNICA DUDE!!!!!!!!