Matucana madisoniorum double flower

Matucana madisoniorum flowers all summer for me. It doesn't need full-all day sun to flower and grow well like most other species either. Everyone who likes cacti should have one in their collection.

Parodia mammulosa on a rainy day

Coming up next: Matucana madisoniorum, double flower

Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora blooming

Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora "Red Tube," another Sarr that should do well year round outdoors in Florida. This coloration is one of the rarer S. flava's in nature, found only in the Florida Panhandle according to Barry Rice's FAQ. I got this one with a small start to the bud already coming out of dormancy, so I won't claim credit, but here's the flower.

Two pitchers are beginning to grow, in about a month these will be looking good.

For size comparison, the whole window box. That's one tall flowerstalk. The venus flytrap is blooming already too (2nd pot in from the left.)

Anoles. Anoles, geckos, and frogs everywhere! I keep taking pictures of them because they keep showing up when I'm trying to take pictures. So prepare yourselves, there will be more.

Hello!

Nepenthes ventricosa from seed: Update #2

Now you can really see that these are indeed Nepenthes. These started germinating around December 1st, 2012 so they are about 4 months old now.

The ones that were growing in the Sphagnum moss had a pretty bad germination rate and I was wasting a lot of space that I needed on that container so I moved the smaller ones into the peat/perlite container and repotted the 4 largest into a 2" pot. The ventricosa growing in sphagnum moss were almost all as large as the largest in the peat container though, (which is interesting though not necessarily telling as to which one ended up best for germination.) I wanted to leave them in sphag as they were doing well. All repotted seedlings are back to growing already so no worries if you run into a situation and need to repot sooner than you'd like with these guys. I always said Nepenthes are not as sensitive and difficult as people are led to believe.

I'll update these again around the 1 year mark unless otherwise requested. So what did I need that room so much for that I risked repotting seedlings too early? More Nepenthes seeds! There was a situation that caused a delay as far as the time between harvesting and the seeds actually getting to me, so they aren't fresh, (about a month or two old.) We'll see what comes of those, but I doubt I'll get good germination. May not get any at all, but I need to try.

Links to the last 2 posts on the Nepenthes ventricosa seeds if you want to see the progression:

Nepenthes ventricosa seedlings: Update #1
The beginning: Growing Nepenthes from Seed: This Year's Winter Project