SOS!!

[Ami]

hi, i'm new here, and a new fan of the carnivorous plants in general... i browsed throu many of the posts here and digged up some great tips, but i have a HUGE problem now and i could use all the help i can get, asap.... :-(

this saturday i bought a Butterwort (dont exactly know which kind), and treated it like any of my other carnivours- deep h2o, morning sun, occasional ant, you know. but this monday morning i spotted big browm spots on its leaves, like it was drying out, so i relocationed it in a place with more shadow. the next day i look, and it seems like it's also rottening! drying AND rittening, is this possible

anyway, im pretty lost, i love my plants like my kids and it hurts me so much to see it this way... any tips??

 

[Clint]

SOS please someone help me it's not healthy for me to.... sorry I love that song.

You gave it too much water so it probably got a fungus that was instigated by a rotting ant. Then you moved it to shade which is great for fungi, and that killed it. It's also probably a P. primuliflora, which rots a lot anyway. It's drying because it's roots are shot and rotting/rotten.

Throw it away and get another one.

 

[Jefforever]

JLAP pretty much summed it up. Maybe you could salvage it by propagating what's left of it. P. Primuliflora is extremely easy to propagate, even with dying parts. I made some with a dying flower stalk the other day. It's just a matter of if it's worth the effort or not.

 

[jimscott]

SOS please someone help me it's not healthy for me to.... sorry I love that song.

Mama Mia! sorry... couldn't resist! I only have ABBA Gold and More ABBA Gold.

Ami - Welcome to TF! I would recommend leaving the plant in the ocnditions you have and allow the water to dry up, before re-filling. It wouldn't hurt to get another plant. I have had good success with this species by just keeping at a window sill and watering only when the water in the "tray" was low. The other thing is to find the best consitions / location you have and alllow the plant to acclimate.

We're all assuming you got a "Lowes Cube of death", which means that it was likely neglected and weak. Does the plant look like this?

 

[Ami]

thanks for answering guys... mine doesnt look like this, it has bigger, brighter leaves.
it wasant neglected, i treat all my plants with a lot of love, but im new at this, so i was bound to fail at some point..... right now almost every leaf has a dry spot. i gave it an ant yesterday abut i dont see it, so i guess it escaped (one also escaped from my Drossera, only the Dionaea is currently eating).
about the conditions, i live in israel, and we're currently going throu a heat wave, so they get morning sun, but its still warm. it's also moist and they all have mini-greenhouses (these tiny plastic shields) and they get water regularly.

again, thank you all for answering...

 

[Zero]

Ami, those mini plastic shields are NOT good for the plants. You may have simply cooked the
plant. It's best to slowly take off the clear tops of the pots a little bit more every day and not place the plant in direct sunlight while the plant is covered.

 

[jimscott]

Israel?! I was assuming you got the plant from one of the local hardware chains that sell these plants, and haven't a clue what to do with them when they arrive. I wasn't at all implying that you've neglected them. Exccuse me while I pull my foot out of my mouth!

The one pictured is what is commonly sold in our hardware stores. You may have something more like these:

Do you know some of our other Israeli forum members, like Arie Cohen or the one called YTK?

 

[Ami]

i know Arie Cohen, he's been helping me a lot in the israeli gardening forum.. dont know the other one thou, and i never saw these plants being sold in hardware stores! that's so odd.....

i'll take them all out of the plastic covers, now that you've mentioned it, in this heat i might as well boiled the poor things... i also wonder on where to put my Drosera, it's ok for now but i wanna keep her that way...

 

[jm82792]

I have grown my primuliflora really wet no rot and really dry.
BUT when it was really wet it was in the full hawaiin sun all day
long.........

 

[jimscott]

What kind of Drosera do you have? Take a look at this link (photo album). Maybe you'll recognize it by a picture.

Give your plants several days to weeks to acclimate. Find a decent spot for them, with adequate lighting, and let them recover.http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m271/straus_2006/?start=all

 

[Ami]

it's most similar to this one

what i did was holding out in water but keeping it moist, and cut off the dry leaves, and ther's a new leaf coming out and it looks healthy, but i dont wanna jinks it.... my Ping and Drosera are together in front of a wondow, so they have light, but not direct sun. the drosera eats a lot and they get a lot of light since im lighting them in the evening. im still a little depressed but im hoping for the best.

 

[jimscott]

Aside from most cp's within a genera looking way too much alike, especially to newer hobbyists (like myself), this particular plant is a cross between P. launea & P. emarginata. A lot of them have that paddle shaped leaf. You may actually have a P. moranensis or a "false" weser. Not that it is crucial to cultivation, but it would be nice to know. Any chance you can take a picture of your plants and get them posted?

I'm sure you ping will be fine. I also remove dead leaves and plunk them back in the media. They don't react. Any time you see new growth, the plant is fine. Don't change its conditions!

Does your sundew look anything like these?

D. adelae

D. spatulata

D. capensis

These sundews are very common and very easy to cultivate.

 

[Ami]

now that you've mentioned it, the ticket that came with my ping did say "weser"! what did you mean by "false weser"? is that good or bad??
2 new leaves so far, i think it's slowly healing
my sundew has smaller leaves. i'd take a picture, but my brother took my camera to Thailand, so it might take a while...

but it kinda looks like this one
http://site.voila.fr/plantes-carnivores/aliciae.jpg

 

[jimscott]

Ya know, I just don't remember the details about what the "false weser" really is, but somehow the tissue cultured plants are differentiated from the "true" weser. Lol! And since many Mexican pings look way too similar to one another, I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference to the average hobbyist out there. Now if you are specifically collecting Mexican pings and want "one of everything", then it makes a difference.


Now this one is the true weser. It came from a real ping expert (Pinguiculaman) a/k/a Joseph Clemens:

Does this look significantly different from yours?

Cameras: I've got two at home and no computer to upload it to. So I borrow from willing friends and use a USB with a library computer.

Any of those sundews look like anything you have?

 

[Ami]

i dont have sundews like yours... al my plants are smaller and dont have these long leaves. if i see that i can provide for my 3 plants good conditions also over the winter, i'll probably get some more, but i'm not going crazy over this right now. im just a beginer.

 

[jimscott]

You MUST check this topic within a topic out!

http://www.cpukforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22512&hl=

Some folks are way too advanced for me!

BTW, I felt as you, 4 years ago. All I wanted to do is keep a VFT alive for more than 3 months and figure out what the local DIY's were selling - genus and species name. And that led me to stumble upon this discusssion forum. Never even knew discussion forums even existed, much less one for this hobby.

You may actually have this species, which looks similar to D. aliciae - a D. spatulata. This was my vdry first sundew and it kept on spreading through the roots.

 

[Ami]

yeah, that looks pretty much like what i have. maybe only with the exception that mine looks a bit redder (is "redder" even a word?), and i have 3 "heads" in the pot.

by the way, i have a Dionaea that grows another bult and it growna lot of tiny leaves, and i dont think it's digesting insects properly... i dunno if i should worry or not, what do you think?

 

[jimscott]

That picture is an old one, before I got decent lighting on it. You should see that species right now! And as soon as I can borrow a computer, I'll post a very red specimen (more red).

VFT's basically digest the nutrients they need and leave and exoskeleton. So it's probable that things are just normal. As long as it's producing new leaves and ones that exceed the size of the previous ones, all is well.

Have you always lived in Israel or did you move there from another country?

 

[Ami]

i've akways lived, here, second generation...

i saw that my sundew ate a wasp! and then one of the leaves eating it became grey. could it be poisoned??

 

[jimscott]

Sometimes CP leaves and traps get eaten through by the prey or basically cause "indigestion". VFT's get that from slugs, caterpillars, different kinds of beettles,... If a leaf turns brown you can snip it.

I can't imagine living in Israel, what with it being in perpetual war readiness, suicide bombers, etc... Would you or your parents be considered a "sabra"?