Very nice !
I have a question,can I keep mexican butterworts under a summer photoperiode perminately,will that keep them from going dormant ?
I could do a 10 gallon landscape setup with mexican pings since I am doing pullings.
Mexican
Pinguicula don't go "dormant", they just have a varying leaf form, they are always growing and many bloom from both Winter and Summer leaf forms. In nature they produce more and smaller leaves in their Winter, dry season, and fewer and larger leaves in Summer, wet season.
For many years now I have been growing all of my Mexican
Pinguicula with no change of photoperiod. I grow many of each clone, species, seedlings, and hybrids -- those that have varying leaf forms seem to switch between leaf forms despite photoperiod. Apparently there are various environmental signals used by these plants to cause these seasonal changes in their physical appearance. I had some, especially
Pinguicula laueana (various clones), that would grow quite well, and regularly switched leaf forms, but wouldn't bloom until I began subjecting them to 40-50F nighttime temperatures in Winter. Most often, at any time of the year, despite unchanging photoperiod, I have
Pinguicula gypsicola that are in Summer or Winter leaf form, or somewhere in-between.
The photos below show groups of plantlets formed by leaf pullings - the parent leaves are, at this point, completely dead (some are even moldy), their substance completely used up creating and supporting the small plantlets visible in this photo. I have left these plantlets alone for many months, hopefully I will have space to plant them into community pots before they give up. Nearly every time I repot one or a group of these plants I pull some of their older leaves, drop them into a plastic cup, write the name on the cup rim and stack them in a corner of my plant room. I have hundreds, maybe even thousands of little plants waiting for homes. They keep well this way, no water, indirect light -- a care-free bank of little starter plants.