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I got this at Lowe's today. It's just labeled "Drosera," but it looks to be adelae to my newb eye.

All their CPs were on a bottom shelf in the indoor room of the garden center, getting NO light at all, let alone sunlight. They had a few "red pitcher" plants and smaller Drosera. They all looked rotten or dead except the one I got. There was one that just said "Butterwort" that looked like nothing more than a pot of rotten, damp moss. Maybe some or all were dormant - I don't know. But they looked terrible, had no water in their boxes except drops on the sides, and some were moldy inside. This does not surprise me, because these boxes are airtight and are taped shut.

This is my first CP, but I've been reading up and preparing for a few weeks. The local university's botanical gardens have lots of CPs, including several outdoor bogs. They tell me just about every CP can live outside here (Charlotte, NC) year-round if planted in a bog, and outside in pots as long they're brought in on the very rare sub-15F night. So, I decided I had enough knowledge and lucky climate to attempt a rescue on what's supposed to be a pretty hardy Drosera, and this one actually looks pretty healthy to me, all things considered.

Please chime in with suggestions, advice, bossing, questions, ridicule, or whatever.

Ok, pics:


The execution chamber. Most of the leaves are plastered to the sides. The only water is the condensation you see:

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The grower is Botanical Wonders. Here are the instructions:

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Just got home. I set up an Intensive care unit of an open top, vaporizer and the shade near an open window for about an hour while I did other things:

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I used needlenose pliers to take the pot out. The pot is 3 inches tall and 3.5 inches across the opening. The inside of the box is completely coated with mucilage. No water, just some damp dregs of moss:

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This plastic sleeve covers the bedding and lines two sides of the box. It is also coated thickly with mucilage. This sprout was stuck to it. Not wanting to kill my first CP the same day I got one, I placed it back onto the bedding with the (many) other sprouts:

1e16ba.jpg




This root is about 4 inches long. It was curled up around the bottom of the deathbox. It looks like it's about to drop off, and another healthy-looking root has started to poke out of the hole with it. I'm guessing this is a desperation tap root, growing frantically in a plastic desert in search of precious water:

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I put the plant into the sun for a minute to get some decent light for close shots. You can see two flower stalks - maybe half-inch tall - and some of the babies sprouting up. Are these all offshoots? I thought they might be capensis as well, but I don't know:

fldd38.jpg




The stem is surrounded all the way to the bottom leaves with a very thick wad of dead/dying leaves, sphagnum (which seems to be the only bedding - that is sphagnum, isn't it?), and baby plants. There is really no separation between this clump and the rest of the bedding:

212s9rt.jpg




I suspended the pot in some distilled water, just covering the bottom. I didn't want to damage the long root until I knew more. I also misted the plant lightly with distilled water after I took these pics:

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There is almost no dew on the leaves, but they seemed to want to perk up nicely. This sunlight is, again, just for pics. It's still sitting in bright shade under a window just out of the sunbeam's wrath. This is about 20 minutes after leaving the box:

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Handy cheapo thermometer/hygrometer. I've got this clipped to the plant's water dish now. I'd slip a CO2 tube up its nose if it had a nose:

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I've got it stable in an open room at about 77F and 40-45% humidity, but I have lots of things I can put it inside if it should have a more of an enclosure. At the very least I can put a plastic bottle or jug over it (with room to spare) temporarily. I'm keeping the deathbox, too - with some ventilation I think it would be a very nice mini-terrarium for a smaller plant (or all these babies?).

I'd like to keep it outside as much as possible. My back yard borders a creek and stays very warm and muggy and buggy, with lots of afternoon sun. I think the plant will be able to live there once it stabilizes. In the meantime, I have some strong fluorescents I can rig up over it to nurse it along. My thought was to start slowly mixing some rainwater I just collected the last two days (I told you I've been planning...) into the mix with the distilled water as it gets soaked up, to help the plant get ready to try the great outdoors - and to give it a little more sunlight over a few days until it gets used to coming out of the cave it was in.

As I finish this post, the plant has been out of the box about 7 hours. We have about one more hour of sunlight for it to sit near, then I'll put it under some lights or whatever needs to be done.

Now the's time for advice! Is there anything pressing I should do? Not do? What about the long root? What about the baby plants? The flower stalks? The substrate? Clue me in, people. I appreciate all thoughts and pointers. A life hangs in the balance. Don't leave it in just my hands! :-D
 
Yes, Drosera adelae for sure. The substrate doesn't seem to be that important but people seem to report best results in long fiber sphagnum (live or dead).

This species puts out long roots no matter what. Mine was infested with mealy bugs so I soaked it in water for 3 days and took the opportunity to repot it. It was potted in almost pure sphagnum peat moss. I repotted it into a larger pot with a thick layer of dried long fiber sphagnum and the rest with live stuff. The roots were twisted around the inside of the pot like a Darlingtonia californica. It is kept in standing water constantly.

I took some root cuttings and just planted those in my tub of live Sphagnum. These will propagate readily from root cuttings.

Growing these well is mainly a matter of finding the right light levels to make it happy. They tend not to like much full sun.
 
That's a good-sized plant and it looks like you're giving it a good start. Coincidentally, I recently put 4 plants in a tray of live LFS, where the roots can spread out.
 
I's say you could just cut off that long root and put it just under the "soil" line for more pups. I would try putting a plastic bottle over the top of it just to harden it off if it seems to have gone dry/limp. Gradually take off the bottle (leave it off for an hour a day, 2 hours, etc) until it is fine to stay out in the open. As for the flower stalks, that's up to you. If it were me I'd cut them if you're sure they're flowers just so the plant can recover. If you want to keep them though there are a ton of little plantlets there that will be fine should flowering be too taxing. As for light I'd keep it in bright shade. From there it's just normal sundew stuff: pure water, keep it moist not soaked, acidic substrate (peat/sand, sphagnum etc as NaN said) etc.

Good luck with these little guys!
-J.P.
 
If you want to be especially advantageous, you could just hack the whole thing off at the base and start afresh. Those old leaves will not create dew, as is my experience, and so you could end up with a much nicer plant just by cutting off the top and starting all over again. This plant is extremely resilient, and you will have a hard time killing it. I placed 4-5 small plantlets in a 6 inch pot, and then cut off the tops. In about a month new sprouts were coming up, and I have a 6 inch pot full of the buggers.
 
Your plant will transition to looking like this:

AF001001.jpg


and then this:

Strausplants0211.jpg
 
Great replies, everyone. Thanks to all.

I read some more about this species, and considered all your advice and decided that I'd repot it.

I liked the idea of giving it a bath all the way down to bare healthy root to get rid of the smelly old peat you'll see below, purge the dead root ends, and make sure I wasn't bringing a population of unknown pests into the house.

Here's what I saw when I freed it from the original pot. It was extremely compacted. I cracked it open for the pic and it smelled funky. It looked exactly like a square muffin of peat and LFS.

A Sphagnumuffin:

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Bathed it down to the roots and snipped the dead ends, which had grown into a square at the bottom of the stinking peat:


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Since I now know this plant grows like a weed and is nearly impossible to kill, I decided to use the chance to experiment and learn, so I cut it back to about 2 inches tall with four good leaves and put it into fresh LFS in a 6-inch pot. If those old leaves aren't going to make dew anymore, I might actually go ahead and cut it all the way down to a nub and see what happens.

For the heck of it, I also took one of the dozen or so plantlets that were springing up from the base and pushed its little root down into a 4-inch pot of LFS. After I cut a few air holes, this should make a nice home for quite a while:


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I'm still working out what to use as a dome for the 6-inch pot, but sitting in a pan under a cake cover is working for now. :-D

Thanks again for the tips. Now I'm just leaving them covered in a little standing water, giving them about 18 hours of light, including 2-4 hours of pretty good sunlight, and waiting to see what's what.
 
You will want to have it totally opened and the light that shines from a southern exposure window, eventually.
 
You will want to have it totally opened and the light that shines from a southern exposure window, eventually.


Ok, I'm working them toward that now. I have them sitting under a small southern window where they'll get direct early morning sun, and I'm gradually reducing their humidity.

I think they'll be able to spend some quality time outside soon. I'll ease them into it slowly. Our temp range is about 65-95 in summer ("summer" here is from about mid-May to mid-October), and it's very humid here - especially in my back yard which is on a creek and at the bottom of a big basin.

I look forward to seeing them glistening with red dew and coated with mosquitos and gnats before summer is over. :-D

Also, it already looks like the "good" leaves remaining would rather die and turn into plantlets than continue to catch sunlight. One of the leaf tips has wilted, fallen into contact with the LFS, and has *already* put out two wispy little filaments - from the wilted tip into the LFS - that look just like the tiny hair roots all the plantlets had. The suggestion to cut it all the way back is looking better all the time.

This really is a weed. Is there any way this plant doesn't propagate? LOL...
 
  • #10
Your plant will transition to looking like this:

AF001001.jpg


and then this:

Strausplants0211.jpg



Heh... I can definitely see Hobby Creep setting in already. One plant has become two (and could have been ten if I'd saved all the sprouts), and plans are being laid for more plants of different species. I doubt it will be more than a year before I have bins of these things all over the place just like you guys.

I think I'm a long way from the awesome specimens and manicured live sphagnum you veterans have, but it's already enjoyable even in the deli-tub-over-a-sprout phase. :-D
 
  • #11
Very nice pictures! I've killed 2 of these Lowes Deathcube Adelaes, but the latest one came from a reputable online nursery and seems to be surviving. Of course, it wasn't happy at all until I got the new grow lights -- so now I'm worried it's getting too much light! :)

It's in standard peat+perlite right now, I repotted it into a bigger pot by just sliding out the old media directly into the new pot and filling around it... Might try pure LFS though.
 
  • #12
D. adelae can also be enigmatic. They can grow real well and spread like a bad rumor and then dieback without any discernible provocation.
 
  • #13
Funny you mention being enigmatic, and spreading. I already have a stowaway. :0o:

I looked into the sprout's pot today and saw a new, miniscule speck of... green. Now, I just put this sprout, by itself, into a fresh pot of just-soaked LFS. Being a newb, I don't know if this little speck is from a D. adelae root or seed or something that got in there, or if it's the sphagnum growing. I *think* it's a Drosera sprout, though.

It's incredibly tiny, whatever it is. Life finds a way...


o5rpuf.png
 
  • #14
In no time you could have a tray like mine! This was started with just 3 babies, in less than a year it's like this:

TrayofAdelae-1.jpg
 
  • #15
That's the right plant. Ironically, the plantlets have a circular shape that gradually become lance-leafed.
 
  • #16
In no time you could have a tray like mine! This was started with just 3 babies, in less than a year it's like this:

TrayofAdelae-1.jpg


Hahaha... that's insane. Does any other CP match or outpace D. adelae's ability to spam-propagate itself like that?
 
  • #17
Hahaha... that's insane. Does any other CP match or outpace D. adelae's ability to spam-propagate itself like that?

Bladderworts spread just as fast if not faster than that.
 
  • #18
D. aliciae, capillaris and spatulata and many others can clump like that.

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  • #19
EGAD Tommy!!

Time to get the lawnmower out! ;)

<BRRRRRRRRR..............>
 
  • #20
EGAD Tommy!!

Time to get the lawnmower out! ;)

<BRRRRRRRRR..............>


LOL! I transplanted a few today but have to do more later. 1/4 of them are now throwing flower spikes but I cut them all off to conserve their energy for now.
 
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