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I'm no good at germinating Regia and drosophyllum. They do better if I neglect

  • Thread starter Vidyut
  • Start date
So I had tried to grow drosera regia, drosophyllum and given up when both had sprouted two seedlings each that promptly died. I left the pot with drosophyllum seeds in a corner of a tray and forgot about them. I sowed some spatulata seeds from a spatulata that had flowered in the pot that had the regia seeds. The spatulata seeds germinated a couple of months ago.

Today I got drosophyllum seeds that [MENTION=3500]jeff 2[/MENTION] had generously sent me, so I remembered my sad little pot with the non-starter drosophyllum seeds.... and found two seedlings!!!

A second surprise was when I looked at the pot with the spatulata seedlings and thought one looked rather big for its age and.... I had a drosera regia seedling too. Regia germinating in neglect with the balcony hitting 30 degrees + around noon? Go figure. And here I'd obsessed with how to keep them cool only to have them die.

https://twitter.com/Vidyut/status/963716867939622917

Both the regia and the drosophyllum have grown more than the previous seedlings that died.

Next time I eagerly want any seeds to germinate, I'm going to plant them and FORGET about them.
 
Drosophyllum seeds can definitely take some time depending on how you treat them (scarification will speed them up.) Don't give up if they don't pop up right away.

In your climate, you will have to keep those cool. D. regia definitely doesn't like being hot all the time and I've been told Drosophyllum is difficult to grow in tropical climates as well though I'm not really sure why. At least seeds of both species are easy to come by.

Good luck with your seedlings!
 
You've discovered the secret to growing these things, forgetting about them long enough that they start growing. Good luck with those seedlings. Those drosophyllum should increase in size pretty quickly.
 
In your climate, you will have to keep those cool. D. regia definitely doesn't like being hot all the y time

My first summer with the misting system and I'm banking heavily on it. Doesn't drop the temperature drastically, but certainly tames "insane hot" to "bearable". Only good things have happened to the plants since I installed it. Nice growth, happier plants. Keeping my fingers crossed. I will probably have to take the regia out of direct sun in less than a month though. Right now it was supposed to be spatulata, so gets a full 5 hours of sun in the morning. Maybe more. Or perhaps getting hot in the day will make it perceive the cooling of the mist once the sun passes as cooler than it is :jester: I don't know. Am keeping an eye on that one and will move it to reduced or no sun if it appears distressed.

and I've been told Drosophyllum is difficult to grow in tropical climates as well though I'm not really sure why.

I can confirm this. I've been trying to grow drosophyllum for 4 years now. This year, after the misting system is the first success I had and it is still too small to be called success. For plants that will grow happily here, I get germination in a week or 10 days. Even the ones the internet says will take 3 weeks and such. So I think it isn't so much about the growing conditions (media, light, humidity, etc) as the climate/altitude itself simply being wrong for them.

If the drosophyllum grows a bit, I'll try watering it in the evenings with cool water or something and moving it out of the misted area if it doesn't like the humidity. Frankly, I don't know what these two want and often I find that instructions on the internet don't really fit my conditions. For example, for EVERYTHING, the media here seems to work better being way wetter than the internet recommends. The regia sprouted in sphagnum. The drosophyllum sprouted in cocopeat - no sand/perlite in either for drainage, etc. Even the nepenthes are mostly sphagnum with very little perlite. The ones with more perlite seem eternally thirsty. Best germination for everything is in soggy sphagnum or cocopeat (if well rinsed) - this includes the drosophyllum that sprouted under a mist every few minutes.

Makes it hard to judge how to proceed. Keeping either plant as dry as growing instructions recommend may well kill them :(

There needs to be a guide for how to adapt internet instructions for hot climates ???
 
I think it's a general rule that many CP species seeds and seedlings can be grown much wetter than mature plants. I always start Drosophyllum in a water tray along with sundews and the like, and I've done the same with D. regia. Once the seedlings are a couple inches tall you can transplant them (avoiding root disturbance, of course) into their final pot and cut back on watering.
 
I germinate D. Regia In a pot of 50/50 perlite/LFS, with about an inch of peat moss on top to give the seedlings a flat wet surface to germinate. I just keep them wet and give them lots of sun/light. I don't think they're damaged by too much sun. Sometimes I make a humidity tent with a plastic baggie but pitch it with a single steak in a way that one side is still exposed to fresh air.
 
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