What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

What's with pulchella & roseanna?

jimscott

Tropical Fish Enthusiast
I thought all pygmy sundew gemmae were easy to sprout - nitidulas, palacaeas, scorpioides,... and then I tried sprouting pulchella & roseanna and I get very low rates of sprouting. What is your experience with them?
 
If you try a warm, humid and bright environment then you will have no problem in getting a very high germination rate. By bright i mean under fluorescent lights.
 
i sprouted my gemmae in ultrahighland, so that warm crap is BS imoe.
 
Do one pot in cold and one in warm and see the difference.....he's trying to improve results not just germinate them. Enyone can get a 50% rate, the question is can you get a 100%? I germinate both in terrarium and in my cooler greenhouse and the results are not even close! They grow faster if they are warm
 
I've got some roseana germinating now, at what I think is 100%...temps in low-mid 70's, what I assume is relatively high humidity (they are on the opposite side of the 75 gallon from the humidity gauge, so...), and under bright power compact fluorescents. Not sure if that helps, but that's what's working on my end.
 
yes, humidity is definitely a large factor. I've saw a few people wrap the top of their pots in saran and then place their gemmae under bright fluorescent lights. I tried this approach with great results. If either of these is not possible (aka lighting may be too low) then I think you may be able to increase your results a bit by providing warmer temps.
 
Humidity helps. Cover or mist them daily until they get established with at least four well developed trap leaves. Drosera pulchella and Drosera roseana like wetter conditions to begin with.
 
i had nearly 100% with my roseana gemmae, only one or two didnt sprout...and that was my own stupidity on those ones....i lost em then squished em when i found em....i have near perfect results with the gemmae i get....
some of the pulchella babies i have, only a month and a half old if that
CPs1-4-09008.jpg


And some roseana
CPs1-3-09019.jpg
 
Roseana were very successful for me. I just put them on a peat/sand mix, stuck them out in the sun, and they grew. I took some pics today, but until I can find my camera cable, you wont be seeing them.
 
  • #10
Jim, i remember seeing your pics a few days ago and i think your problem isn't the temps but the insufficient light. Do you have them under lights or are just on your windowsill?
 
  • #11
ive always just thrown them outside in the mini bog with the sarracenias and a ton of them start sprouting, my experience is with the nitidula x pulchella and scorpioides. to me it seems like all of them sprout though some that ive gotten through the mail actually sprout in transit...

~billy
 
  • #12
I've treated all gemmae from this fall in the same manner. I put them in 2" pots of mostly sand to peat, 3" under the Grolite, right in front of the south facing sliding glass doors. They are all room temp, open tray, with the fluorescent light on for ~15 hours per day. They all get a transluscent plastic cup over them for about a week. Then the results diverge and pulchellas & roseanna gets relatively poor sprouting compared th everything else. Here are examples of what is at the other end of the spectrum, in exactly the same conditions:

Picture154.jpg


Picture155.jpg


Picture141.jpg


Picture171.jpg


Picture173.jpg


Picture168.jpg


Picture167.jpg


Picture091.jpg


Picture097.jpg


Picture087.jpg


Picture102.jpg


I haven't mastered capturing them on the new camera yet. Anyhoo, those two particular species just don't sprout as well as all the others, when treated identically.
 
  • #13
Just a casual observation I've made is that the smaller the gemmae (by species) the longer it takes for them to sprout. D. pulchella has rather small gemmae relative to some of the other species. The Drosera pygmaea gemmae, again tiny relative to the others in my batch, are only now starting to sprout. The other species sprouted weeks ago. The D. roseana gemmae in the same batch took longer to sprout as well.

An exception to this may be Drosera scorpioides which sometimes takes 3 or 4+ weeks to get going.

As long as the gemmae are still green or turning red they should still be viable.

I just scrapped out the last few gemmae in my D. pulchella "Salmon Flower". They're kind of old but I picked out most of the black ones. I'll send 'em to you tomorrow with some anthers from my Drosera ordensis.
 
  • #14
....that and also you might consider how well grown the gemmae are, how much they matured on the plant before being collected.
@NaN ...if you think pygmaea is bad then you should try microscapa! For the first time ever i had a 0% germination in one of the pots in my propagation tank...out of tens of other pots.
 
  • #15
Age and maturity is certainly a factor in growth rates. With my own plants I'll only collect the gemmae that freely launches or comes loose with just a touch. All bets are off with gemmae it get from other sources.

With the D. roseana the gemmae had formed root filiments when I got them. They still took longer then other species in the same batch.

I hear you about D. microscapa. I got a few gemmae but put them aside for a day as I had more pressing matters to attend to. The next day a few had started to turn black (they were fine the day before). I sowed them but only half started to grow, the rest turned black. A couple sets of trap leaves later they started disappearing one by one. So it goes.

Flytraplady's (Lois) signature says it all:

"Every seed that you plant ,doesn't sprout.
Every seed that sprouts, doesn't make it to maturity.
Every cutting that you stick doesn't grow roots.
Every cutting that roots doesn't grow to a small plant.
Every small plant doesn't reach maturity."
 
  • #16
Sorry about the bad microscapa luck guys. I noticed that I didn't get very good germination either in my pot, and I know I put a rather large amount in. Out of probably 40-60 gemmae, I've only got maybe 10-12 plantlets.
 
  • #17
Good observations on the gemmae issue. I found misting the more stubborn gemmae helped. I kept my gemmae about ONE inch from the tubes, and this really led to good action. Smaller gemmae are the most difficult for sure, and unless they are all black hope remains.
 
  • #18
I rank D. microscapa just above pulchella and roseanna in difficulty:

Picture024.jpg
 
  • #19
I'm finding educational as to see how various species and cultivars of gemmae respond to the same cultivation conditions. I recently received 5 types of gemmae. They are all in 2" pots, with mostly sand to peat, covered with translucent lids, right under a Grolite. The echinoblastus and stelliflora were the first to sprout - almost immediately, while the two pulchellas were next in line. The omissa has been the slowest and least responsive. Oddly enough, the larger the gemmae the quicker to respond.
 
Back
Top