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Jefforever

A yellow M&M
Hi all,

I am planning to recieve some D. arcturi material in a week or two. The thing I'm most worried about is the dormancy. I've been researching, and here's what I have so far:

D. arcturi

Altitude: 1400m - 1080m to sea level.
Not self pollinating; need to pollinate.
Grow on banks of streams.
Soil:
- Organic: “Deep sphagnum beds”, wet sandy clay soil, “Damp peat”, “sedge peat”, pure LFS
- Inorganic: pure gravel, could put dead sphagnum an inch or two underneath for humidity.
- Plants growing in gravel have their rhizome above ground. Plants in organic mixes have rhizome just below ground level, shallowly buried.

D. arcturi produces a rhizome up to 15cm long. With every year of age, the plant’s rhizome grows 1cm.
Weather: Cloudy, humid, moist winds
Dormancy: Dormant from October to April/May - light frosts?

I have no more clue about dormancy, a phase which is incredibly important for this species. Any more advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!!

- Jeff
 
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Unless you have the "Giant" variety from near the coastal region you have your work cut out for you. The "Giant" is going to be elevated to species status from what Ivan Snyder tells me.

The "typical" D. arcturi has a reputation along with Drosera linearis of being well nigh impossible to cultivate long term. It requires alpine conditions. Light frost for dormancy? Try overwintering under snow. You have to remember the mountain regions in New Zealand these are found are between roughly latitudes 42S through 49S - roughly equivalent to between New York and Quebec (42N to 49N).

Even the "Giant" will get snowed under as they are from the southern end of New Zealand.

Strangely enough the northern latitudes are about the distribution range of Drosera linearis.

http://homepages.woosh.co.nz/brianquinn/NZCPSDroseraarcturi.html
 
Maybe in a small mini fridge set to 28 F ???
 
Good luck. From my meager experience and from what I read, this plant is similar to D. linearis in difficulty....
 
Hi Im a newby so excuse my ignorance
but I have seen arcturii in the wild (lots) in grows in bogs above treeline so gets snow and also goes dormant after flowering and setting seed. New zealand never gets very cold -15 is extremly unusual so comparing latitudes is a mistake as we have ocean on all sides
I have grown it from seed and left it outside where it got light frost (about -6 degrees C) and the seedlings came up again well
I keep it in a cool greenhouse (a lot of glass taken out and the roof painted on half the panes it still gets to 25 degrees C but the seedlings are still alive. Im not sure what to do now as there are hundreds (well lots anyway) of seedlings and I am not good at getting drosera to survive if I prick them out. By the way I mostly use the cool house as an alpine house to grow difficult alpine plants.
I hope that helps slightly
Ross
 
Hi Ross.... and welcome to TF! You and a young lady come from NZ and she also about to receive a D. arcturi. Do you know each other?
 
Welcome to TF Ross. We have NZ CPer who visited Los Angeles a couple years ago and was made an honorary member of the LACPS. He sends us seeds about once a year, including Drosera arcturi.

A slew of questions:

What are the native bogs that D. arcturi grow in like? Mostly Sphagnum, somewhat sandy or very sandy?

What are daily temperature drops like for both the mountainous and coastal sea-level populations?

How extensive are the roots? > 10cm or less?

Do you have close-up photos of the hibernacula these form?

How quickly do they grow? What is the average size at the end of first year of growth?

What is the light quality? Mostly sunny or mostly cloudy/overcast?
 
Lol I dont know a young lady from New Zealand who grows CP's its quite a big place
Not a number good questions I wish I could answer them all.
They grow in spahnum bogs or on peat type soils I would not have though they were very sandy when im next in the mountains I will try and take some photos I will go and take a photo of my arctuarii seedlings they are pretty sow I think mine are two years old and not very big. The light can be very bright but also cloudy the weather in the mountains is extremly chanagable they can experiance frost any day of the year, snow also, it rains evenly through out the year (except in winter when I guess it snows instead of rains) its not like some countries where there is a dry season. They seem to take reasonably hot temps as I have kept seedlings in a glasshouse. I will try and find out more.
 
I am really thinking the fridge with tempreture control is your only winter option.. You need to find out pot size tempetures,rain,frosts and so on then attempt to recreate that in a fridge or peltier cooled fridge for extreame control. You could get live weather update then change your fridge to match the temps and other facters... The advantage of the peltiers is they can heat AND cool if you could wire it up with thermostats for heating and cooling or something digital.. I just thought of something if your crazy enough you could wire the tempreture control to the computer using the usb interface or parrelell port then get streamed temps or last years temps then do that for the fridge I dunno just thinking. You'd need a coder though,soldering and other things. I can't even get arcturi so I will most likely build anything like what I discribed
 
  • #10
The D. arcturi that LACPS members tried growing from seed grew painfully slow. Germination took forever - 6 weeks or so - after which slow growth to about 5mm across before they went dormant and died in the refrigerator.

Attempts with the "Giant" variety were more successful - a more reasonable germination period of 2-3 weeks. Ivan was able to grow his to about 2.5 cm across before they expired during one of the autumn heat waves we experienced in Los Angeles. I've managed to keep alive 5 of the 6 seedling he gave me back in June but they've only grown to about 1 cm across. They appear to have gone dormant in the middle of December and have been in the refrigerator for about 2.5 weeks - perhaps still alive.
 
  • #11
I sowed my seed in the autumn and it came up in the spring I treated it like an alpine plant except i kept it in the glasshouse It does grow slowly but all my alpine plants do so I have a lot of patiance the trouble I have now is what to do with the seedlings I have a high failure rate at pricking out Drosera. I use peat and sieved gravel as a mix moss sought of grows on top of that plus some trichoderma. Im sure its all wrong but i have never used perlite or vermiculite and would not even know where to buy it. Other Cp's I use sphagnum especially the fast growing ones.

below is a pic of my arcturi seedlings (2 years old)
by the way if some one could give me some help on how best to put pics in reply that would be appreciated I dont know how big to make them and also how to link from photo bucket Im kinda clueless when it comes to the latest technology

smalldoseraarcturii1.jpg
 
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  • #12
Heh! Love the American dime. I have a small handful of New Zealand and Cook Island coins. I usually go to the Cook Islands for vacation. I've not made it down to NZ yet.

Linking to Photobucket is a snap with this board. Underneath your the thumbnail in your Photobucket album will be a set of tags. Just click in the tag box marked "IMG code" and paste that into your message.

Here's the few survivors I have. They're in a 6.35cm pot in New Zealand long fibre Sphagnum (LFS) - seemed appropriate. 9-10 months old. They were about half the size that Ivan was able to get his to.

01720018.jpg


I just checked these, the largest one on the left has turned completely brown and had some mold/fungus. It looks like the top most plant is turning brown too.
 
  • #13
Hi Not a number, your seedlings are bigger than mine and are a year younger. Possibly yours are going into dormancy? they die compleatly off in the winter normally and then come back in the spring. I put the dime there because the majority of people here are American.
 
  • #14
These are the "Giant" variety. I think they are from Tasmania actually. Mid December the new leaf didn't open and turned a much darker green than usual and a little bud/bulb formed at the base of the dark green shoot. I assumed this was the hibernacula as such for this species.

The largest plant is about 12mm across.
 
  • #15
I will take some photos in the wild, when Im next in the hills I have not heard of the giant form maybe it is from Australia.
 
  • #16
I will take some photos in the wild, when Im next in the hills I have not heard of the giant form maybe it is from Australia.

I look forward to those pics!

NaN & Ross - Thanks for posting those pics
 
  • #17
NAN, cool, you got them arcturi to germinate. I got the regular form from Ivan, but they turned out to the D. auriculata ! Guess the names are kind of similar and there was a mix up lol
 
  • #18
Larry, Ivan gave me a few of his seedlings. Darren sent some more seeds but none of the "Giant". Maybe they really are D. arcturi this time. I didn't get any and Ivan has given up on them.
 
  • #19
Nice looks like they'll grow up to be some good looking adults :)
 
  • #20
I've long since given up growing this species. Too difficult to keep cool during our summer and too much effort to keep it cold enough in winter. It will germinate easily but keeping the plants going is the problem.

I've seen D. arcturi growing in a few habitats but possibly the best populations have been found in an area closest to where I live. The following photos were taken 4 years ago to the day at a location called Lake Mountain, about an hours drive from my home city, Melbourne. Elevation of the mountain is about 1600 metres.

Droseraarcturihabitat6LakeMountain310104.JPG


Droseraarcturi16LakeMountain310104.JPG


Droseraarcturi20LakeMountain310104.JPG


Droseraarcturi6LakeMountain310104.JPG


DroseraarcturiLakeMountain310104.JPG


Droseraarcturi3LakeMountain310104.JPG


BTW, the giant form that has been introduced into cultivation is from Tasmania- the Hartz Mountains to be exact. I have seen photos of an almost identical form that is apparently quite common in some parts of NZ. "Giant" form is probably a bit over the top too, I would describe it as simply a "larger" form. It doesn't grow to the epic proportions that the current description indicates.

Sean.
 
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