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The great thing about growing plants in Sphagnum (cuttings, orchids without roots, other carnivores) is that you usually will get unknown seedlings growing happily inbetween the Sphagnum. Sometimes these seedlings manage to survive outside the terrarium conditions in the 8l plastic bottles I use to pamper young or damaged orchids. As happened with this Drosera. Outside the bottle, it has made three new leaves, which seem to be hirsute. A week stem, and roundish to kidney shaped leaves. The picture isn't the best, and the unknown Drosera is small. Obviously a seedling, transported in a dutch Sphagnum bag. Any clues what it could be?

Hi there, Was wonsering about using just sphagnum moss with no other ingredient in the soil (no sand or perlite etc etc) to grow the sarracenia. Have seen people posting previously about how their sand or perlite has has made their soil anoxic so was hoping to avoid that with a pure sphagnum moss soil. Thankyou.

Hello everyone, last spring I had my first sporophytes on Sphagnum. They appeared on Sphagnum fimbriatum, a monoicous species. This means a single plant can produce both male and female reproductive cells (Both eggs and sperm cells). In order to have sporophytes on the dioicous Sphagnum species, you will need both a female and a male clone, but not for this S. fimbriatum. I decided to do a little experiment and grow Sphagnum from spores. While looking in the literature I read this article: 'Habitat requirements for establishment of Sphagnum from spores' (Sundberg et al., 2002). The authors found out that Sphagnum spore germination is limited by nutrients (phosphate). This means that Sphagnum spores germinate on places where there are more nutrients then where adult Sphagnum plants occur (usually nutrient-poor soils). I decided to do the experiment in three different setups. 3 small containers with blonde peat that has been cooked to kill all spores present. In one I added fertilzer but no spores, in the other I added spores of S. fimbriatum but no fertiliser and in the last one, both spores and fertilser (really low amount) was added. The experiment started somewhere halfway june 2017. Now we are 5 months further. Cooking the peat seemed effective as no growth is observed in the container without sown spores. Also the outcome of this little experiment is perfectly in line with Sundberg et al.: not a single spore germinated on bare peat without any nutrients available. This is how the containers looked like 5 months ago: How they look like today (the container on the bottom contains nutrients and spores, in both others not a single plant appeared) They are still not looking like adult Sphagnum, but last week I could watch them under a microscope and they show the typical characteristic hyaline cell structure like any other Sphagnum, so now I'm finally sure it's not a random moss. Now I'll show some pictures from the development of the little plants. Sporophytes are almost ripe, 7th of June First germination a month after sowing: these are really small thallose protonemata from Sphagnum fimbriatum, 17th of July Growth of the protonemata 2 months after sowing, 14th of August Development of the gametophyte on a protonema, 28th of August Young gametophytes, 11th of October Young gametophytes of S. fimbriatum 5 months after sowing, 4 months after germination, 14th of November. I consider this experiment as over now, but I might add a picture once the plants shows adult characteristics of S. fimbriatum. Enjoy the pictures, I had a lot of fun following up these little creatures!

Is there a particular type of sphagnum that would be good for Sarracenia seeds? For example, would fresh sphagnum be preferable to dried? Does it need to be treated in some way?

Hi all, I've been wondering for a while about the grass-like growth from the dried Chilean sphag. I used as a topdressing. I'm new to using LFS and I can't seem to find details anywhere (sorry if I've missed anything obvious.) Is it just normal long fibre growth? It looks a bit odd, so thought I best check. Cheers and happy new year, Ed