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Joseph Clemens

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I remember the first time I saw a Drosera falconeri; it was in the pages of the ICPS Newsletter, I'm not exactly sure when, but it sent a thrill through my body. Back then, I never expected I would ever have the opportunity to try to learn to grow this species.

Well, it is more than a decade later and I was able to purchase one and have the opportunity to learn to grow this amazing sundew.

At first I treated it like most of my other sundews and kept it together with them, but it was not performing well, it was growing smaller and weaker leaves, hardly had any dew or even properly formed "tentacles". So I contacted other people who have had some success growing it and other Petiolaris complex sundews. They said, "Give it heat, lots of heat". This sounded dangerous and I sure didn't want anything to cause the destruction of this marvelous plant, but I believed that if I didn't do something I would lose it.

So, I experimented. I placed the pot inside a quart size zip-loc bag, sealed the bag, and set it fairly near to a 100-watt incandescent light bulb; right away the temperature inside the zip-loc was well over 100F, more like 120F. I watched and waited and the plant did not die. Wow, that sure was a relief. I kept watching, closely, not only did the plant not die it began to grow, and quite vigorously, it grew much larger than it had ever been before and the entire plant assumed a dark reddish hue and it had grown larger trap leaves (dime-sized), than it had ever produced before, it started to initiate a flower stalk, afterward the crown split.

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Okay, so now I could grow it well enough to have one good-looking plant. I wanted more than that, I wanted to propagate it so I could share it with others. I asked, and the one technique that was brought to my attention was to divide the plant by splitting the crown. Sure sounded dangerous. What if both pieces of the traumatized crown just rotted away? Well, I steeled my nerves and since the crown was already splitting naturally I figured I might not have a better opportunity to get more of my favorite sundew. I did it. I pulled the plant into two pieces, separating the two crowns. There were many basal leaf segments that were knocked loose in this process and I placed the smaller crown and the loose pieces into wet, long-fiber NZ Sphagnum Moss in a small translucent plastic box with a lid of the same material. I kept the plastic box within 2 inches of a 100-watt incandescent light. Disaster, this time I had the light too close and when I checked the "propagation ward" everything inside looked mushy, brown, and dead. I almost cried. But I moved the container farther from the light and tried to convince myself that something in there might survive. I waited a week before I looked inside the box again, I saw nothing, I used my magnifying loupe, and I still saw only dead rotten mush that once was Drosera falconeri flesh. I waited several more days, and when I had finally decided to either prepare the box for reuse or throw out the contents a little red sparkle caught my eye and I quickly grabbed my eye loupe. Now my heart was pounding, there was a miniature Drosera falconeri plant in a corner of the box. With the loupe I could see that it had grown out of the basal portion of a detached leaf stalk, very similar to how VFT can be propagated.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is the story of how I was able to vegetatively propagate Drosera falconeri. I am presently trying to duplicate the experience; I have carefully detached several basal leaf portions and placed them into the box with the little Drosera falconeri plant, which has already grown to nearly 3/8 inch (1cm) in diameter.

Perhaps some other brave soul will try this too and share the joy.
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Thanks PinguiculaMan
for sharing the story of your life
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AND I'M going right away to give it a try
Hope it would work for me too as it one of my beloved ones
and I sure if it work out I would be more then happy to share it with others.
Arie
BTW as it your B-Day what a great present you are giving us with sharing the knowhow!
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Very interesting story indeed. As soon as my plants are hardened off I might try an adaption of your method as well.
 
This is historic! I have never before heard of a method to reproduce this species. Congratulations, and thanks for the advice!
 
Hey PingMan,

What media do you use for your falconeri?
 
100% pure sphagnum peat moss. But I rinse my peat until the rinse water is 10ppm or less TDS. I also like to lightly mist the leaves with a 60ppm fertilizer solution.
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Very well done Joseph,

I saved this story aalong with others that caught my eye in my "Dew Archive". Thanks for sharing-Zach
 
wow! cool plant! I thought it was really really hard to propogate. glad you could do it
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keep us informed on how they are doing! like every ten days or so.
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thats nice of you to want to share the plant
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Wow, very cool, and those Photoes are awsome. Where is this thing native to? 120 F is crazy!
 
  • #10
I believe Drosera falconeri is from the Darwin region of Northern Australia.
 
  • #11
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It is repeatable/replicable. I had placed 3 other manually detached Drosera falconeri basal leaf segments into the same conditions which produced the first little leaf budded plantlet. This was about 5 days ago. I have been observing them every other day. This morning Tuesday, 15Oct02 I noticed that one of the segments had a small Drosera falconeri plantlet formed and growing. I am excited; these plantlets were produced from leaves that no longer had living leaf blades or even much of a petiole remaining. 
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  • #12
Hoooorah! Joseph, you are the cutting edge! Maybe soon we can look forward to seeing an end to 35.00 Tc'd clones of this fantastic species. How close to the incandescent bulbs did you keep the minigreenhouse this time?
 
  • #13
Not as close as the first time, that is for sure. This time I put the little greenhouse adjacent to the light and not directly in the path of the light. The adult plants are about ten inches from the front of the lamp and I placed the little greenhouse where the light would fall on it just from the outside edge of the light, that which escaped the aluminum reflector (it is one of those clip-on lamps with the aluminum bell-shapped reflector). The little box gets pretty warm, about 110F, but at least they are not cooking like the first time I tried this.
 
  • #14
Today I have begun the experiment. I am trying Drosera falconeri, darwinensis x falconer1 and dilatato-petiolaris. Stay tuned for breaking news!
 
  • #15
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UPDATE: 18OCT02
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Recent image:
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  • #16
ping.man, i have just been following your post and reading on your great project you have there and your success with getting the falconeri to reproduce. good job keep it up
 
  • #17
wow, nice pics! how did you get such a closeup with a digital?
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  • #18
I use a Canon PowerShot G2 with Macro lens, set f stop at 8.0, set to macro mode, and with a tripod and the timer feature, so I am not touching anywhere near the camera when the shutter trips. The photo is actually cropped and reduced quite a bit in order that it is small enough file to load quickly on web.
 
  • #19
wow! your already an expert on these plants! hope you'll have enough to trade soon
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just cut up every plant and you'll have a ton!(prob25-30) then a coulple months later, do the same thing again! think of it, you can have up to 100 very rare plants in 3 months or less! you could get alot of other rare plants that way.
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  • #20
You have to take into account the fact that not every leaf will produce a plantlet and that D.falconeri does not have 30 leaves at one time.
 
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