TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk
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Hello!
Looking good MDpotter.I posted this over at Cpuk but Donald Schnell lives in my home town.I went by a local Flowershop looking for cp's and he advised me to call Donald.Once I got him on the phone didn't really know what to say.I really wanted to say can I come and look at your CP's but didn't.Needless to say he didn't invite me to his home.Although it's pretty cool living in the same town.Eventhough it does me as much good as someone living 5,000 miles away.
Keep the pictures coming MD.I have some recent purchases but my camera isn't that good sooo
nce my vehicle gets fixed I will be able to get more.
Keep the pictures coming MD.I have some recent purchases but my camera isn't that good sooo
nce my vehicle gets fixed I will be able to get more.
And now, random CP thoughts and observations:
Firstly, I am very impressed with how rapidly the VFTs and dews grow, I have developed a habit of going out in the morning and inspecting the plants, checking to see what new traps or dew tentacles have appeared overnight, how far along the developing traps are, etc.
I have probably about 15 VFT typicals, 8 reds and 8 dentate, however some of all types look to be two together, and some have clusters of little baby plants growing by them, so all told in three pots Id guess about 40-50 plants.
And Ive noticed a few cool things. While some traps have the standard 3 triggers per lobe I have traps with 5, 7, and even 9 per lobe (the 7 and 9 are on typicals btw).
On the smaller plants with fewer leaves (or on my lowes batch the plants that had severely elongated leaves) Ive noticed that often the plants seems to send up the initial leaf or two with the focus on the leaf and not the trap, resulting in a small or non-functioning or even incompletely developed trap, but with a nice big broad leaf, then the later leaves have larger and functioning traps.
I have watched flies being caught (without any assistance from me), houseflies mainly, seems the flies are attracted to beer
and have even seen a trap catch two flies at once (yeah, pretty amazing, pretty lucky).
Also, the dentate (which are on average much smaller than the reds and typs at the moment) have much more articulated trap than the others, more severe curve on the spine, and I wonder if this helps them to capture considering the lack of 'bars' for their leafy cage, allowing the trap to close more completely on initial snap than would be necessary for a standard trap. Regardless, a few nights ago I was impressed to see one of the dentate had captured a damsel fly much larger than the trap itself, with the legs, wings and half the abdomen poking out the teeth of the trap. I tried to grab a pic but I couldnt get good focus with my crappy old digital.
One concern I have is that since my plants are currently in my screened patio that the dead bugs dont get washed out and some are getting moldy, but I do plan on moving them outside as soon as I get my hands on a table or cart for them, give them more sun but keep them up and out of the way of critters and my dogs.
Not much to say about my dews at the moment, my adelae are doing okay in my house on a sill and now theyre repotted but they are slow growers, watching the ones I accidentally scorched by putting them outside slowly recover is, well, slow.
The binata collection looks great however, those suckers grow like mad, Im just looking forward to the multifadas getting going a bit more as the binata and dichotoma are throwing up new growth all over the place, I have little horns and big horns in increasing abundance, now I want staghorns. And all of these dew up very nicely, a glistening haze of tiny bug death, looke very cool in the am as the morning sun shines through them
Finally, my nepenthes, seems to be liking its home, when I got it al the pitchers were dry so I put a little distilled in each. Dont know if it helped or not but initially many of the smaller upper pitchers browned up as well as a few of the large lower pitchers, but new pitchers are growing and one thing I thought was really cool is that the new pitchers have liquid in them before they open. I did not know that. And now new upper and lower pitchers are forming and again, the plant does seem to grow fairly rapidy, but the only other plant Ive spent much time watching was a pineapple, and for anyone who hasnt grown a pineapple let me just say it takes about 2 years to get one friggin fruit from a pineaple plant. It was good too, monstrous big and juicy as juicy could be, picked it a bit late and almost could have drank it.
Anyways, thanks for sloggin thru that, slow morning at work
Comments welcome as always.
Firstly, I am very impressed with how rapidly the VFTs and dews grow, I have developed a habit of going out in the morning and inspecting the plants, checking to see what new traps or dew tentacles have appeared overnight, how far along the developing traps are, etc.
I have probably about 15 VFT typicals, 8 reds and 8 dentate, however some of all types look to be two together, and some have clusters of little baby plants growing by them, so all told in three pots Id guess about 40-50 plants.
And Ive noticed a few cool things. While some traps have the standard 3 triggers per lobe I have traps with 5, 7, and even 9 per lobe (the 7 and 9 are on typicals btw).
On the smaller plants with fewer leaves (or on my lowes batch the plants that had severely elongated leaves) Ive noticed that often the plants seems to send up the initial leaf or two with the focus on the leaf and not the trap, resulting in a small or non-functioning or even incompletely developed trap, but with a nice big broad leaf, then the later leaves have larger and functioning traps.
I have watched flies being caught (without any assistance from me), houseflies mainly, seems the flies are attracted to beer
Also, the dentate (which are on average much smaller than the reds and typs at the moment) have much more articulated trap than the others, more severe curve on the spine, and I wonder if this helps them to capture considering the lack of 'bars' for their leafy cage, allowing the trap to close more completely on initial snap than would be necessary for a standard trap. Regardless, a few nights ago I was impressed to see one of the dentate had captured a damsel fly much larger than the trap itself, with the legs, wings and half the abdomen poking out the teeth of the trap. I tried to grab a pic but I couldnt get good focus with my crappy old digital.
One concern I have is that since my plants are currently in my screened patio that the dead bugs dont get washed out and some are getting moldy, but I do plan on moving them outside as soon as I get my hands on a table or cart for them, give them more sun but keep them up and out of the way of critters and my dogs.
Not much to say about my dews at the moment, my adelae are doing okay in my house on a sill and now theyre repotted but they are slow growers, watching the ones I accidentally scorched by putting them outside slowly recover is, well, slow.
The binata collection looks great however, those suckers grow like mad, Im just looking forward to the multifadas getting going a bit more as the binata and dichotoma are throwing up new growth all over the place, I have little horns and big horns in increasing abundance, now I want staghorns. And all of these dew up very nicely, a glistening haze of tiny bug death, looke very cool in the am as the morning sun shines through them
Finally, my nepenthes, seems to be liking its home, when I got it al the pitchers were dry so I put a little distilled in each. Dont know if it helped or not but initially many of the smaller upper pitchers browned up as well as a few of the large lower pitchers, but new pitchers are growing and one thing I thought was really cool is that the new pitchers have liquid in them before they open. I did not know that. And now new upper and lower pitchers are forming and again, the plant does seem to grow fairly rapidy, but the only other plant Ive spent much time watching was a pineapple, and for anyone who hasnt grown a pineapple let me just say it takes about 2 years to get one friggin fruit from a pineaple plant. It was good too, monstrous big and juicy as juicy could be, picked it a bit late and almost could have drank it.
Anyways, thanks for sloggin thru that, slow morning at work
Comments welcome as always.
yeah I want to get some Neps myself.Did you get that from the fella that we talked about?Thankfully all of my vft's and Drosera are doing well.Although I did kill my first Buttorwort that was bought from Lowes.Oh well out of all the plants 1-2 dying isn't bad.I'm up to 40 vft's and around 20 some drosera and about 5 Buttorworts.
Keep up the good work MD.
Keep up the good work MD.
No I didnt get the Nep from him, I got it at lowes for about $12, however I did speak with him about them and he said he'd give me some good deals on Neps as they are his specialty, grows them himself, has thousands, etc etc, and to call him direct. I am interested in an N Rafflesiana among others but I wont be making any more purchases until my roof gets done *shakes fist at sky* .
So Ive put all my vfts and sars in full sun, spent their first week getting heavy rain more than sun, the vfts got a bit flattened, and this morning I had to cut one of my rubras cause a small catapillar had taken up residence inside and was eating its way out, and found some small holes bored thru a few vfts, have to keep an eye on that. Im hoping my smaller weaker reds respond to the full sun as about 4 of them arent growing very well, one cant seem to produce a trap that doesnt start to wither almost immediately, but none of the otheres seem quite that bad. Five of them are growing well afaik. Oh well, see how theyre doing in a few weeks.
And then more pics.
And then more pics.
The nep is doing well considering I forgot to water it a few dry hot days and managed to brown all the original pitchers. However tons of rain here in florida for the past few weeks has spurred lots of new growth, healthy pitchers coming up all over.
the S purpura seems to going great, 2 new pitchers so far.
Plus my hanging pot of dews is running riot.
Ill post pics soon
the S purpura seems to going great, 2 new pitchers so far.
Plus my hanging pot of dews is running riot.
Ill post pics soon
So I thought Id put a few pics of my plants, then i decided to spare the forums the loading time/burden and just provide a link to my photobucket album:
http://s79.photobucket.com/albums/j150/Mattdp/
password: sundew
All the outdor pics are the most recent, some as recent as yesterday.
Here's my overview:
after moving all the cps outside into direct sun full time the sarrs had no obvious adverse affects. The vfts varied however, some grew very well, others seemed to almost completely die off -- mainly among the reds. All went through a complete cycle of trap death/growth as if the traps that had started on the patio couldnt take the heat; some plants threw up larger traps than ever before, some tightened into rosettes, the dentaes all went very vertical, and now the vft reds that I thought were dying are sending up new healthy traps (many traps would start to grow and only the leaf would fully develop, the trap would blacken and die before the leaf had fully formed).
Some birds ripped the tops of most of my sar rubras but new ones are growing in, the purpuras are doing great, and my binata/multifada dews are still doing okay, though the initial burst of growth hasnt repeated, many of the early larger leaves have blackened and the renewal growth has been sparser than I would have liked.
Anyway, thats it, cps in full south florida sun.
Oh, all my adelaes are ex-sundews, deceased, kicked the bucket, shuffled off their mortal coil, run
down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile...
http://s79.photobucket.com/albums/j150/Mattdp/
password: sundew
All the outdor pics are the most recent, some as recent as yesterday.
Here's my overview:
after moving all the cps outside into direct sun full time the sarrs had no obvious adverse affects. The vfts varied however, some grew very well, others seemed to almost completely die off -- mainly among the reds. All went through a complete cycle of trap death/growth as if the traps that had started on the patio couldnt take the heat; some plants threw up larger traps than ever before, some tightened into rosettes, the dentaes all went very vertical, and now the vft reds that I thought were dying are sending up new healthy traps (many traps would start to grow and only the leaf would fully develop, the trap would blacken and die before the leaf had fully formed).
Some birds ripped the tops of most of my sar rubras but new ones are growing in, the purpuras are doing great, and my binata/multifada dews are still doing okay, though the initial burst of growth hasnt repeated, many of the early larger leaves have blackened and the renewal growth has been sparser than I would have liked.
Anyway, thats it, cps in full south florida sun.
Oh, all my adelaes are ex-sundews, deceased, kicked the bucket, shuffled off their mortal coil, run
down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile...
