Friday, July 6, 2012

Drosera spatulata 'Tamlin'

This was a difficult one to get a picture of the bloom. It's not very spectacular, but I felt the plant on a whole deserved a post. The regular form of Drosera spatulata is a small growing carnivorous plant, however the 'Tamlin' cultivar is about 3-4 times larger.

I grew these from seed about 2 years ago and they've really done well. This is the second flowering for them, (the 2 littler ones are putting out stalks too.) Seed to maturity took about a year. Drosera in general are fast growers. I had 25-50 seeds but only 3 germinated. They may have been older, any fresh seed I get has an almost 100% germination rate, so maybe that's why. I'm kind of glad about that though, because I'd be giving one to everyone I know to get rid of them if I had 25-50 of this size!

They're growing in a 10 gallon fishtank, 1/2 open glass top, and an 8,000 K aquarium fluorescent bulb for "sun." I was going to bump it up to a 10,000 K as they're a little green still, but they seem happy so I'll wait until the bulb needs replacing again to bother. I didn't even need to add a fan to this tank as it's in a well traveled area, the air exchange is surprisingly fine. It looks a little crazy in there as it is primarily a seedling tank.

D. spatulata 'Tamlin' putting out a flower stalk
Missed the first two flowers
Close-up

4 comments:

  1. This is something I am getting interested in. Thanks for posting and nudging me more! Oh were is my budget going to go! LOL! LT

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    1. Lol! Yup, too many cool things to spend money on. The good news is that you can grow these from seed easily and it's much cheaper that way!

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  2. That's a great set up, and your plants look obviously happy in there. Thanks for sharing this, and they are attractive plants too.

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    1. You're welcome! Thanks for the compliments, they are quite pretty, even out of bloom.

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