Rob-Rah

It is sharing the tank with U. stygia. However, I have also been growing some of it in other tanks with other aqautic utrics without the sedge litter and just with peat, some in the edges of water trays filled with hortag, and some of it in an upturned dustbin lid in sunshine under a ceanothus bush in the garden. It looks to be tough. But the dedicated tank of it is doing by far the best.

I got home from work and went inspecting and watering and I saw something to make my soul soar. Can you see what I saw today? How about now? And a (poor) closeup of an open flower: I am absolutley over the moon! (To cap it all, those nodules behind the flower bud on the second pic seem to be on U. stygia - I will keep you posted if they turn out to be the elusive flower buds) PS Sorry the pics are a little large....

I am going to start gradually adding moisture to mine in the UK this week....

It's growing in the kind of light conditions that would turn intermedia red, and the petioles don't look right to me...

I have a sundew that I don't know what it is - it popped up in my u. asplundii (goodness knows!) and I have grown it on for around a year. Would people more experienced than I say that this was D. collinsiae? I have no idea...... Thanks.

I thought that the order of the parents when written as parent a x parent b was to do with which was the pollen parent and which the seed parent?

If there's plenty of sand in the soil (3:1 sand:peat may work) then the peat won't turn into a biscuit and refuse to soak up water again.

I am making a bog garden in a half-barrel for CPs and some orchids. It has been filled up with the mix I am using, and I thought that there would be enough water escaping between the slats to acheieve a good moisture balance. However, what I didn't count for was that wood expands when wet. The slats are all now firmly packed together and I have a soggy mess in the barrel - more of a thick slurry than anything I can plant into. Anyway, I am going to drill a small drainage hole or two into the barrel (possibly the size that can be blocked up with a test-tube rubber bung if needed). Specifically I am wondering how far beneath the surface people think it would be prudent to place them. The barrel is about 18" deep I guess. The lower down they are, the less stangant the pot can get, but the higher they are the better the barrel at retaining moisture. Do potted bog gardens suffer from stagnation? (The compromise would be to place drainage holes right at the bottom and block the holes with bungs, and then release the bungs when the bog is in danger of flooding excessivley, replacing them again when the rain stops, but this may require more careful monitoring than is really desirable) Cheers.

Thanks for the reports. And, hey, don't knock the UK. It's beautiful here too. A walk over the Downs in fields full of wild orchids, a ramble in Snowdonia, wandering around the Lakes in Cumbria, the fields and villages of the Cotswolds, the moors, the coastlines, the dales of the Pennines, the finest medieval cathedrals in the world, little cobbled-street villages on the south coast, stately homes, castles, and unrivalled greenery and that's just a few ideas off the top of my head. Home is just other peoples' tourist destination.

Is he a vixen?

Yes, this is one of the most valuable resources for CP growers anywhere on the web, collated at an expense of time by a someone who's also a member on here. The links are not hotlinks, as they are not displayed inline. A proper hotlink displays the image (or whatever) directly as an aparrent part of a parasite page. The full URL is given to click on, and this informs people where the image (or whatever) is coming from. The site is doing little more than google's own image search feature. You can add codes to a website that prevent viewing of any components outside of the host website's own domain URL. Given the enormous practical use of the site in question that this ought to be counted a blessing and not a problem. I'm sure if you were to have approached the owner and asked that there would have been no problem in removing the link. Just my tuppence...

Scorcher! Mine has to make do with a 10C winter minimum....

Thanks for that report from me too. Can you just clarify - you say that the temperatures are not very different all year. What would those temperatures approximately be? Here in the UK we have to battle with substntially less light and heat in winter, so any kind of wet-dry cycle would have to somehow accomodate that. Thanks!

Is this a daft time of year to be considering repotting Darlingtonia? Mine looks very crowded and is starting a new flush of pitchers... Cheers.

Congratulations! And thanks for sharing.

Do you suggest using D. cistiflora plants as a guide to when to sow? My cistifloras started dying back for summer only about a week or two ago (hence why I would be tempted scatter the seed of alba now). Although I expect them to want to grow again by the end of September. Does seed usually sprout at the same time as new growth, or earlier/later?

Hi, Can anyone offer any advice on this? Does it need fire or anything odd, or just the usual peat and sand and patience? This is a summer-dormant species, so I guess planting seeds now would be just about simialr to what happens in the wild? Do I keep them dry or just moist until the water trays come back in a couple of months? (NB. I mean the true D. alba, not the white form of D. capensis!) Thanks. Rob.

Grrrrrr. All but one are looking fine. The adnata is not a bit happy though. All floppy from dehydration- and in a terrarium so I can't do much better for it... It seemed to have it's roots more exposed when repotting them so I suspect they are not now taking up moisture. I might give it a terrarium in a terrarium to try to keep moisture in for a while. Hope it pulls through - adnata is a cute species.

I grow khasiana and find it to be quite vigorous. Mine has gone from one rosette with 2" pitchers to five or six rosettes with 4" pitchers in a year. Last year it was in a 4" pot, now it's in a round 8" waterlilly basket. The compost it's in is not really ideal, and if it's been in it for 4 years then it's definitely time to change it. I would suggest, if your circumstances allow, repotting it into fresh compost. I suggest a mix of live sphagnum moss and branded orchid compost (check it has no fertiliser or lime added to it) - both can be got from Homebase. Remove some of the old soil, but don't damage the roots in doing so. Neps don't want to stand in water in a tray - it will rot the roots. What you are looking for is a free-draining but moisture retentive soil that you can water regularly without it getting soggy and that allows execss water to drain rapidly (think of a sponge). Water overhead with rainwater (and don't fertilise) every day or two.

Might be root damage. What is the compost? What is its watering regime?

A number of people who had some of this off me have asked for growing tips. Mine's doing exceedingly well and has filled its container, which it shares with Aldrovanda - also doing stupendously well for me under these conditions. My method is almost the same as for other aquatic utrics except the depth of water and the substrate. It's in a household, opaque, plastic storage box, 18" long, 12" wide and 8" deep. On the base is 2" of peat overlaid with a thin layer of sharp sand. Then on top of this is a 2" layer of sedge litter, which was boiled in two changes of water before use. The water depth is therefore clear for only 4". The water is rainwater in which peat was boiled and then strained out. The plant gets bright light and air temps up to 32C. Planted in the same container in 5" square mesh pots standing on the peat are typha minima and carex panicea, and a small water hyacinth floats on the top. A number of small water snails graze in the tub, and it gets a bag of fresh daphnia every month or so (the Aldrovanda and utric gobble most of them up quickly!) to assist against algae. Once the tank stabilised against algae (which occurs as the utrics and aldrovanda start out-competing it), then it ceases to be a problem. As many people who have had some from me will have found out, the plant is terribly interesting in that it forms two different types of stolons. One is leafy and surface-dwelling. Then it also produces trap stolons which only have traps. These plunge downwards into the sedge litter and peat. My plant is virtually an affixed aquatic with the multitude of trap stolons anchoring it to the bottom. It really is not free-floating at all. I started with five turions last year. They were placed into an icecream tub of water, with no substrate, to overwinter in the greenhouse (min 2C - though the turions can take it down to below freezing under the ice in the wild). In spring all but one died. This one experimented with bottom-dwelling, trying to anchor itself to something, before floating to the top and being generally weedy. Since I placed it into this new tank setup it has exploded in growth. In view of this I think it terribly important to provide this thick layer of substrate at the bottom. My U. vulgaris has already flowered, and my U. radiata is sending up spikes now (pics soon!), and these sit in similar tanks, without the sedge litter and 4" deeper, next to this in the greenhouse. I have hope that I can get U. stygia to flower as it's doing so well, but so far there is no sign of spikes. Oh well. I will try to get some pics of it to post, although it's not terribly thrilling to look at a surface covered with greeness.... I can't remove it to photograph in a jar due to its aforementioned bottom-anchoredness. Thanks for the generous distribution of these turions last year!

At last, been waiting for these for quite some time. Arrived this morning: N. adnata N. clipeata (clone 2) N. clipeata (clone U) N. pervillei Any suggestions about them? I have potted them up: N. adnata - mix of pumice-type and live sphagnum moss N. pervillei - half a pot of pumice-type topped with live sphagnum moss (I gather is grows on thin substrates over granite) N. clipeata - my "normal" lowland nep mix of half branded orchid compost and live sphagnum moss They are all in my lowland tanks (20-35C) to settle into the new compost for the moment. Any brilliant tips about any of these that I should be aware of? Thanks!

Lovely looking plants there Vic!

I don't use leafmould, but I do use ground semi-composted bark as a big proportion of my ceph compost. Ialso grow it in a 8" clay pot. The plant does fine. Though maybe not noticeably any more fine than those of other growers... :-)

I am resurrecting this thread! A few people would have recieved the turions generously distributed last winter. How are everyone's doing? And in what conditions are you keeping them? Cheers!