My Darlingtonia Experience (Thus Far)

[CorneliusSchrute]

I have been growing Darlingtonia for several months now, and they seem to be doing well. I have a thread on a different forum updating my experiences. Here is a link to that thread for those interested.

To summarize, our summers here are hot, and I figured Darlingtonia would not thrive. To overcome this, I built a recirculating setup with a cooler, a fountain pump, and some tubing. I do not chill the water, though. I personally subscribe to the idea that it is not the water temperture but the oxygenated water that keeps cobra lilies happy; evidently my setup oxygenates the water enough without cooling.

Anyway, I say all that just for an excuse to post a picture or two. This one is of my setup today. The red plant was my first one and is descended from the Del Norte county population; it came from Mike Wang. The green one is a more recent acquisition from Brie, and it is from the Siskiyou Mountain populations.

I will try to post some updates every so often. Thanks for looking!

 

[Maiden]

I love the red one ! I think its quite hard to find !

 

[CorneliusSchrute]

Fingers crossed that I don't kill it then, for sure! :S

 

[fredg]

It's about time you updated these Corey

 

[CorneliusSchrute]

Agreed, Fred. Per your recent thread discussing the cool roots hypothesis/myth, I quit using my recirculating pump, though I left the setup complete. As ssuch, the pots are still in a cooler tray, but the water level is maintained a certain degree up the sides of the pots. I have only been doing this about a week when a cool weather pattern emboldened me. We have been seeing daytime highs in the high seventies and low eighties Fahrenheit, with night time temperatures getting to around the mid fifties to sixties. Humidity is averaging around sixty or so it seems. As of yet, no sudden, epic death on the Darlingtonia front, even though I cut the pump off cold turkey. Take that, myth!

Some pictures now. The first are of the setup. I had to lower the pots to maintain an adequate water level. Otherwise it is unchanged.

Next are close ups of the plants. Though the bigger, larger traps have died back, both plant continue to put out many new leaves.

 

[fredg]

Looking good there Corey, that young growth is encouraging.