U Menziessi

[alexa]

Does anyone grow this plant here in the UK? I have been asking around and people say that it's hard to keep. Is this true? I've seen a few photo's and it looks a cool plant to grow.

Regards

Alex.

[Richard]

I was tempted to give it a try once but the high price of the plant put me off. I have heard that it is exceptionaly difficult to grow and even more difficult to get it to flower. I believe the trick lies in getting its dormancy period just right. I think Travis (Pyro) on the forums has grown this species so he may be better suited to offer cultivation advice.

[JanW]

That would be a great canidate for putting a species in tissue culture. If someone could raise these commercially instead of poaching them in Australia, I would pay much money for it. But now most plants get dug up and die in cultivation...thats really sad.

Thomas Carow told us in the German forums that establishing tuberous drosera would be profitable from 1000 plants on. In smaller amounts professional tc is very expensive.

Anyone doing tc on U. menziesii privately?

[alexa]

I believe you can buy the tubers form Allen Lowrie, but with the recent threads regarding hid methods I am inclined not to buy from him. I don't know precisley what's happening but I am against wild collection.

Regards

Alex.

[JanW]

That topic has been discussed here and everybody now knows that most people think that he digs them up and some people say he does not. You know what I think about him (see last post), but please do not start a new discussion here again.

I wanted to stress the point that these species is

a) rare

b) difficult

c) expensive

so it would be perfect if someone found a method (like tcing it) to propagate it in huge amounts and give it away for some dollars/euros/pounds to everyone instead of taking it from the nature on and on.

[CP2k]

I have also heard that U.menziesii is difficult to grow, but I have never grown it, so I do not know for sure. If you live in a Mediterranean climate, this plant might be much easier to grow.

Another problem, is that seeds of this species is difficult to obtain. It is much easier to establish this in tc from seed, rather than tissue.

[Guest tim.]

I tried it and failed, and have never heard of anyone who has ever had much luck with it. If someone has grown it successfully in cultivation, I would be interested in hearing about it.

I guess if you think that you can succeed where others have failed, then go for it, and propagate it for the rest of us. But don't go wasting perfectly good, rare plants if think it is likely that you will fail.

[Martin]

I "cultivate" one for three seasons now but it doesn't get bigger nor does it flower.

Martin

[Sean Spence]

I grew a few forms of the plant about 10 years ago before I was forced to give up my collection. I actually never found the plant more difficult to grow than the average WA tuberous Drosera. The plants multiplied and flowered almost every year.

When I initially obtained the pl;ants they were as a reasonable sized clump of around 10-15 small tubers. I have heard that it is very difficult to obtain clumps like this nowadays. I think that the size of the clumps I had may have made the plant a little easier to grow.

I'd post some photos but the images aren't digital so I have to scan them. I don't have a scanner to do this.

Sadly, I don't have the species anymore but should be picking some up in the next few weeks so I can finally grow this beautiful little plant again.

Sean.

[Guest tim.]

Could elaborate a bit on your technique/growing conditions?

Living in australia, you have a few advantages over us temperate northern hemisphere people.

I do think that Slack managed to get it to flower - there is the story in one of the books of the slugs eating the flower before he has a chance to photograph it.

I suppose the strategy for aspiring U. menziesii growers is to get some common tuberous drosera species and practice on those.

[JanW]

If you have only one tuber you must wait until you get pack of them. They only flower if there is a pack of tubers. So no wonder Sean got his 10-15 small tubers to flower.

The problem is that the plant needs extreme conditions: a summer dormancy like tuberous drosera with arid surroundings and during the winter very wet soil and high light levels. Growing it in European conditions can be done but the plants seem to be unwilling to divide like the easier tuberous sundews species. With patience they will or with some trick this could be accelerated, I think. Perhaps there is a symbiosis factor?

I know a grower who has some U. menziesii plants with different location data / flower colors and many tuberous drosera. The sundews prosper, but the U. menziesii grow slowly and never flowered so far. It would great if someone could get them in tc, establish it in near to perfect conditions and sell grown up plants. But up to now you can only get them from wild collections.

So enjoy the pictures and dream on...

@CP2K: Sure seeds will be hard to obtain, but if someone would have produced a callus tissue once, he could divide it nearly forever. So one small pack of seeds would be enough.

[Sean Spence]

I grew, and will grow my new plants of U. menziesii very similarly to a typical WA tuberous Drosera, just a little wetter. I used a mix of roughly 2:1 peat and sand. During the growing period the pot stood in around an inch of water which is a much lower level than my other Utric species, which I grow quite wet.

The plants flowered almost every year from the small clumps, never more than 2 flowers per season per clump. When the plants began to go dormant I would slowly dry them out then remove the clump from the pot with some soil and keep them in a ziplock plastic bag barely moist until growth began again.

The plants divided very slowly but never went backwards until I was no longer able to grow them.

I have seen populations of U. menziesii growing around the Esperance area of WA. The plants grow in 2 very different environments.

They are most common in moss patches in seeps on granitic mountains which are moist from Winter to late Spring. These plants grow in very exposed situations where they receive full sun for most of the day throughout the year. In Summer the moss patches dry up and remain bone dry until the rains in Autumn. They were found growing with other CP species such as D. microphylla, D. macrantha ssp. macrantha, D. menziesii ssp. menziesii and occasionally D. pulchella.

The other environment I found them in was amongst low heathlands where there was a constant layer of water throughout Winter until late Spring. In Summer the ground is baked hard. Plants grow in individual clumps in open ground between the small heathland shrubs. This habitat is very common around the Esperance area particularly in the Cape Le Grand National Park. Other CPs that grow with U. menziesii here include- D. pulchella, nitidula ssp. nitidula, neesii ssp. neesii, menziesii ssp. menziesii, occidentalis ssp. australis and Utricularia tenella, westonii, benthamii and violacea.

I'll be getting hold of some more tubers within the next few weeks so hopefully the plants will grow as well for me now as they used to.

Regards,

Sean.

[Pyro]

As Richard indicated, I do indeed grow this plant. I have 2 pots of it and am going into my second year now.

I recieved the tuber clusters via a friend from Lowrie (and I will take no further discussion on that matter because, as has benn mentioned it is a volitile topic.) One of the tuber clusters had come loose and I provided 3 individual tubers to a TC expert at the local botanical gardens. Like Jan I believe this will make for a more economic and stable supply. I have not enquired as to how the process is going but I will try to remember to next time I am there.

When I first got the tubers I placed one in a ziplock with sphag that had just a trace of moisture the other I potted up in a media of 4:1 sand : peat. This media was made with dry peat and the only moisture was what was available from the sand. I had also read, as was mentioned by Sean, that this plant seemed to frequent areas with granite outcroppings. Guessing that there might be some trace mineral association I crushed some granite and mixed the chunks into the media.

Now I started at a slight disadvantage because the plants were on a Southern hemisphere cycle so were coming into growth just as my spring was hitting. I kept both tubers in my livingroom grow area (I was in my old apartment at the time) under my 400W HID/MH bulb. The potted one I placed on a shallow tray (1cm water max and letting it dry between adding more) the other I checked weekly till I saw growth and then potted up just like the first. Once I saw growth I increase the volume in the tray to about 5cm but continued with the drying between adding more cycle.

I saw the most growth between mid-May and mid-July at ahich point I moved to my house and had to leave the plants outside in the blazing Atlanta summer heat and sun. After one week of 40C+ the plants began turning yellow and so I pulled them from the tray and allowed them to slowly dry out in the shade. After about 3 weeks I placed the bags in a ziplock and stuck them in a dark drawer inside the house.

Time passed

In late October nights were dropping to 15C or so so I pulled all my tuberous Drosera and the menzeisii out and dropped them in trays and started them on the shallow water method. By this time I had set up my sunporch with a table and the HID/MH bulb. Growth came up pretty quick but I can't recall exactly when, it was slow for the most part until the temps were consistantly dropping to 5C or lower (as a note, this plant can take freezing conditions as we have had numerous nights below 0C.) The plants are growing strong and fast now even with days hitting 25C.

This spring I will probably repeat the process from before for dormancy though I may uoroot one tuber cluster and bag it alone similar to Seans method.

All in all this plant does not seem to be that big a beast. I do believe that it is not for beginners in any way but if you can competantly grow tuberous Drosera then I would think you should have a fair shot.

[byblis]

Just to give you an impression what happens within 3 years:

I got a cluster of U. menziesii in 2001 and divided it up into 4 independent, rice corn sized tubers. I didnot know that time that you need a larger cluster of tubers to see a flower. The tubers did pretty well without artificial liaght for the last 3 years treated exactly the same way as my tuberous Droseras. Some accidentally seedlings of tuberous Droseras can be seen in the pot,

too.

Stefan

[UtricSeb]

Hey Stefan, you continue to amaze me every time.

Good work.

[Rob-Rah]

Has anyone attempted this from seed?

[Binataboy]

I have grown this plant from seed, well at least germinated them. They have gone dormant for the summer so am waiting to see if they emerge again as they were still very small at the end of the season. I feel I may not have given them enough light to kick them off properly. I had them under shade cloth to stop them getting to much light which I think was a bad idea. They were not hard to germinate, I am sure I soaked them in smoke water for 48 hours before sowing but cannot be sure. I had the pot almost to the brim with water, 1 inch bellow the surface and the pot was misted a couple of times a week from over head. I sowed them in late summer and they germinated mid winter. I ended up with about 8 seedlings. I have kept the pot fairly damp to stop any young tubers drying out as they will be very small I only hope they are not to wet and come back this winter.

George

[Rob-Rah]

To bring this up to the top again. I will be wanting to sow some seeds of U menziesii this year.

Does anyone else have experience of geermination? When to sow? Treatment? Length of time to germinate? Temps? Light? Treatment f seedlings? etc. etc. ect.

Cheers.

[Guest Tamlin Dawnstar]

Rob,

If you have the seed, I think that the earliest sowing may be the best plan. As these are winter growers, it would be advantageous to sow in cool weather, but then you have the issue of the reputed short viability of seed to deal with, so the question is sow now or wait for cooler weather. I can't advise since I have never grown this species from seed. It looks like you might be the pioneer of this method.

Best of luck with your seed.

[AdamH]

Good advice from William. As this is a winter grower like the tuberous Drosera, I would imagine that the best time to sow would be in the late summer / early autumn, which is the same for the tuberous sundews. You could store the seed dry in an envelope within a sealed container (e.g. margarine tub!) within the fridge until sowing, this should help maintain viability - also I would guess that the seed of this species may stay viable longer (like tuberous sundews) than many other Utrics as they have to stay dormant through dry seasons and drought in nature. If I was trying this species I would sow around late July to early August (on an initially moist sandy mix), keeping the pot dry and allow it to "bake" a bit perhaps in the sun until early to mid September before watering, to try to emulate the natural conditions. BUT I have absolutely NO experience with this species (yet - I hope to change that soonish!), so this is all just a best guess! Good luck with them anyway!

[Bob H]

Can I bounce this back to the surface? :-)

How did you get on with your U. menziesii seed Rob?

Where did the seed come from? Was it a commercial grower or from another collector (No names please :-) )?

I would like to give this a go in the not too distant future.

[Rob-Rah]

I planted seed in late summer/early autumn, followed by a quick straw fire lit over the pot, then watered in. Pot stood in water all winter. No germination as of yet. It might take until next year to get germination, once the pot has been properly "summered", but I am not optimistic.

Seed was from a commercial source, and may not have been fresh.

[Bob H]

Thanks for the update Rob