New Plants! Dionaea muscipula 'Akai Ryu' and Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok'.
These were shipped quickly, and packaged well. Everything was in order when I opened the box. A relief after last week. They both look like they were recently, or are, dormant and I'm basically just photographing rhizomes at this point. Big things worth photographing coming soon once they get adjusted.
All potted up:
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| VFT 'Akai Ryu' |
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| Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' |
In other carnivore news, here's the singlular flower on the strange split flower stem on Drosera sp. 'South Africa' that I had mentioned last month. They only open in full sun, making the flower hard to capture the color appropriately, (for my digital camera at least.) It's a slightly darker pink than the photo shows.
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| Drosera sp. 'South Africa' flower |
We're waiting on flowers from Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa to open. I previously said my husband counted 4, now it's clear there will be 6. This plant's best showing yet. Occasionally online, (as recently as yesterday on reddit's r/savagegarden,) I will see people tell new growers to
only spend their money at specialty carnivorous plant nurseries, and not waste it on garden center/big box store/hardware store plants. Anyone who tells new growers this is an elitist plant snob. This was a big box store rescue, and one of the best plants I've ever had. Five stars, would grow again. I didn't have to pay to ship it, cost under $10, and came out of a square plastic box, *
GASP*, how plebeian.
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| Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa |
Lovely new plants Melody!! :) I've been wanting to get a Venus fly trap for a while now, & I think you've finally convinced me. What potting mix do you use above? The Drosera flower is so pretty! That Sarracenia purpurea is a wonderful looking plant; looking forward to seeing it bloom! :) Hope the new weather is treating your family very well! Best wishes!! :o)
ReplyDeleteYes, these should both be quite nice once they're doing something! I use a 50/50 mix of Canadian Sphagnum Peat and Perlite for all my North American carnivores. Peat to keep the soil staying wet and a pH on the acidic side. Perlite to keep some aeration at the roots and to keep the peat from compacting. Both can be substituted for something similar to get the same results though. This warm weather great! By the way how is your Nepenthes doing these days? Hope your family is well too.
DeleteUma carnívora pequenina e já florindo. Gostei muito.
ReplyDeleteabraços
Thank you!
DeleteThese plants are beautiful Melody. It is nice when he started with a small rhizome and then eventually it ends up being a pretty plant in flower. Congratulations
ReplyDeleteThank you, yes, the next pictures I take will show an entirely different plant!
DeleteOOOOH, very cool..... Now the hunger/need for more carnivores has struck again. To be honest I think that the thing about buying plants from specialty stores is a bit or a .... oh I dunno, perhaps a snob kind of thing, but to me I try to when I can, not because then I can boast about it, or because the plants will neccesarily be better, but because over here a lot of the smaller nurseries are struggling to survive, so by supporting the small, or specialty places then it stops the big massive chains from suffocating them out of existance.... plus its always good to have a planty chat with the owners :)
ReplyDeleteThey're some really cool plants Mel, over here they don't go into a hardcore dormancy like they seem to over here, mine just seem to produce these kinds of leaves that don't produce the traps... they have a special name but I can't for the life of me remember what it is, LOL. And another weird thing about growing at my house is that they seem to stop growing in spring and summer, and really put on the growth during Autumn and winter... Well, I'd best get back to school work.
Happy Gardening,
Michael
Hey Michael, are the winter leaves you're talking about the phyllodia? Maybe the summer is hotter than they can adapt to over there. They're very much temperate plants. I'm trying to be careful to only get one's that can take more heat and a warmer dormancy; those naturally from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, etc., the southern states, so I don't have to worry about the dormancy period not being good enough for them. I don't want to have to fill my fridge up with plants for 3 months of the year because I want certain plants.
DeleteI was not saying buying plants from specialty stores to be snobby, at all, I think you misunderstood. I was commenting on the fact that the majority of CP growers, in this country at least, get their 1st carnivorous plant from a Wallmart, Home Depot, etc., then turn around when they're a little more "big time," and tell new growers not to go that route. Carnivorous plants aren't difficult to grow but they can come with quite a steep learning curve for new growers. So to tell them not to buy the cheap mass produced VFT at the hardware store to initially try growing them, simply because it's not a "quality" plant from a famous nursery is kind of bad advice sometimes. Let people try to grow something by experimenting on a cheap plant before encouraging them to spend more than double the price just to get something from a more name-brand store. Granted, if there's a specialty carnivorous plant store right down the street from you, it would be more worth it, but there are very few of those in America, most people live closer to the $5 Wallmart VFTs, so that winds up being their introduction into carnivorous plant growing. The two types of stores that carry CP's are not at all in competition with one another, they cater to an entirely different customer base, so I don't worry about that either. If a new grower sticks with the hobby they will quickly start supporting the wallets of the specialty store owners in no time.
Hear hear. I started out with plants rescued from a local Lowe's, and the advantage that many of those have is that they're already tough varieties. I'll warn people about the temperament of flytraps, but I had a Nepenthes hybrid I originally grew from one of those little cubes of death that threatened to take over the planet, and it only died because the Texas drought of 2011 was particularly brutal. (When I'm running both a mister line AND a humidifier in my greenhouse and I can't get the humidity inside above 15 percent for most of the day, you know it's bad.)
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