Some Pygmy Drosera Weirdness!

[TheFury]

Hey everyone! Long time no see!

Anyways, I've sort of left my plants alone for a while now. Recently, I took the time to feed, prune, and repot a number of my plants.... they were in desperate need of some TLC. When feeding my D. nitidula x pulchella, I noticed something very strange indeed:

Yep, it looks as though a single gemma got caught in the flower stalk of one of the plants, germinated, and grew! I have no idea how long it's been like this or how long I can sustain it for, but I went ahead and fed the little plant anyway

 

[CreatureTom]

Aha that is awesome!

 

[Not a Number]

Cool! If I get lazy and don't remove all the gemmae I'll sometimes get plants growing on the crowns of the parent. This is most likely to happen with large gemmae such as D. scorpioides. The plants eventually die from lack of rooting.

 

[mass]

haha.. I had a spatulata that did that once.

 

[Physalaemus]

King of the mountain!!!

 

[pappydew]

LOL that's sweet

 

[JB_OrchidGuy]

So tell me the secret to growing these things.

 

[TheFury]

LOL, I wish I knew it. It's completely backwards, but I've had less trouble growing these guys than D. capensis, no joke. They have outlived every cape sundew I've ever owned. I guess they're more tolerant of the heat considering their natural habitat. My temps are between 80-90 during the day (hitting the mid-90s on the hottest of summer days) and 70-80 at night; humidity is roughly 60%. As for lighting, I've got them 5" or so below two pairs of 32W T8 bulbs. I water them using the tray method, filling up about 1" of water and then letting it evaporate completely before refilling. And somehow they survive my blunders!

 

[pappydew]

I wish I knew too! For me I can only get a few species going good and the rest just go dead or dormant without coming back...