Utricularia, section Orchidioides - info sharing & discussion

[boxofrain]

Very nice Tony!
thanks for the pic's

[gill_za]

Ahh so jealous ( in a good way).

[amphirion]

hi all. i would like to share with you the progress i've made with U. jamesoniana, apparently it's made perhaps a flower stalk or two.

for sure i know this one is:


a possible second flowerstalk:


perimeters for cultivation similar to U. campbelliana. receives direct ultrasonic misting for 15 minutes every two hours.

[RL7836]

Wow!

Interesting shape to it.

Considering how big many of my macro utrics are, I'm doing something wrong. I've got to get the astro-timer hooked up - maybe that will make a difference - provide some real seasonality...

[amphirion]

@ron: you? do something wrong? never.

also in terms of seasonality, i dont know if im consciously or unconsciously trying to make any significant differences. i have a strong inclination to give the smaller leafed species stable perimeters as much as possible, as i believe this is what allows them to grow well, and they tend to regress significantly if exposed to abrupt changes.

[RL7836]

Here's an example of some weirdness regarding flower production. I recently gave a friend one of my U. asplundii - one that was completely filling a 4x4x4 net pot and growing strongly out of all 4 sides & the bottom (leaves & roots). It had escaped into some adjacent live LFS and put up a leaf. I sent my buddy the large netpot plant and cut off the small piece that went feral. Within a month, the small piece had put up a flower stalk but the large, super-robust monster plant had never even tried to flower.... What's up with that?

The plants are definitely large enough to flower but they are choosing not to - at least many of them. So I need to make some changes ..... The astro timer will be first and then I might play with a seasonal dry period ...

Another asplundii that was somewhat smaller than the one above has been putting out stalks & flowering constantly for over 6 months (10 to 15 stalks?).

[Av8tor1]

ohhhh wow, very cool amp....

we have got to know what the trigger is....

[RL7836]

Below are some pics that everyone will look at & say - so what? But they represent a nice 'advancement' for me in my propagation efforts.....

For a while now, I've had a number of robustly-growing macro utrics with lots of roots (aka: rolons or non-photosynthetic stolons or whatever term you'd like to use). However, my attempts to utilize these roots to propagate the plants were either failures, almost-failures or a pain. I was reluctant to disturb the plants as I didn't want to set them back or retard possible flower production (another story --- aaargh). Every few weeks I need to give each pot a haircut to keep it out of it's neighbor's pot. Since my efforts with propagation were failures, I had no issue with allowing the root fragments to fall to the floor of the tank (where there is light-starved LFS, a thin film of water or one of many thriving D. prolifera). At some point I noticed small leaves coming from some of these castoffs. During the next trimming session, I gathered several of these roots & placed them in one location. Sure enough, after a few weeks, there were leaves popping off the roots. From what I could tell, the main differences from what I was trying and the conditions at the bottom of the tank were levels of light & moisture (I previously usually used wet but not sopping-wet live LFS).

I gathered up a bunch of U. quelchii roots & placed them in a small plastic tray with some live LFS & a small film of water & ....


..... & some U. 'Jitka' roots ...


When I have pots that look like this ...


.... or this ...


Now, I have a fairly easy method that actually works (btw - my 1st attempts with sticking roots in test tubes also seemed fairly productive).