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Can't keep d. adalae alive!

Hi
A few years ago I rescued a D. adalae from a local garden centre. After checking with Adrian Slacks book I repotted it into LFS and put it in a water tray within my Highland Neps house. After adjusting it did really well for about 14 months. Them after flowering and also an aphid attack it died right back
I managed to salvage about 5 new sprouting bits which I potted up. But despite trying a whole range of conditions from back in my Neps house, lowland tank, windowsill not one of these plantlets are doing well at all. A mix of no growth, black growing tips and now mould!! Some say these Drosera are easy, others that they are tricky. Where am I going wrong??

cheers

bill
 
um, maybe it the lighting, Adalae is very light sensitive along with D. Prolifera and D. Shizandra.
Also, Adalae, along with the other 2 i mentioned dislike any kind of fertilizer. no matter what kind, it will burn them.
hope that helps,
Hellz
 
lol i have 2 adelae that until last night were in identical conditions for 6 monthes, one is doing absolutly BEAUTIFULLY the other is slowly dieing. and i repeat they were in IDENTICAL conditions sitting side by side. some plants are just strange.

Rattler
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (HellzDungeon @ May 05 2004,1:12)]um, maybe it the lighting, Adalae is very light sensitive along with D. Prolifera and D. Shizandra.
Also, Adalae, along with the other 2 i mentioned dislike any kind of fertilizer. no matter what kind, it will burn them.
hope that helps,
Hellz
Light sensitive to full natural sunlight... but give it a few hundred watts of florecent and you get a nice, small, blood red adelae
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ya, ur right spec, but fertilizer is tha achilles heel of adalae (darn, i hate The Odyssey but i need to read it in my english class
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)
did u ever fertilize it fly cather?
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It is possible that they are too warm - that was my problem here in Florida.
 
In my experience the plants prefer cool temperatures. They are adaptable to all levels of light, but they have to adjust slowly over time. I have grown them outdoors in full sun where they get tougher, thicker leaves almost purple, with red glands. I also have grown them in very low light, but in this case they are much softer, and tend to grow for awhile, flower and die as individual rosettes, returning from the roots to repeat this cycle.

I am reassessing the need for the Queensland species to have consistently high humidity (as in a sealed terrarium), and currently am growing both D. adelae and D. schizandra under lights on my rack, the same as any other of my Drosera, between 40-80% humidity, in the same conditions as Dionaea. I did this over time, opening the terrarium more often until I did away with the cover, eventually putting the plant outside the tank for longer periods. If it looked stressed, I returned it to the terrarium. After a few weeks , the older leaves withered, but the new growth was more compact, dewey and just looked stronger. The glass of the terrarium was no longer cutting off desired light spectrum, circulating air made the leaves tougher, and heat build up was largely done away with. I think they need to get a little tough in order for the leaves to persist, otherwise they quickly rot away, like wet tissue paper. I try to strike a happy medium between the dim, humid conditions of the tank, and the harsh, full sun outdoor conditions that produce tough, small plants. Toughened plants as above enjoy morning and late afternoon full sun when possible, but are protected from the intense noonday sun. Still, even these stronger individual rosettes often died back after flowering. It may be this is just their nature.

The Queensland plants may in fact respond to very dilute fertilizers. We had a good discussion on this awhile back. If you consider that these are woodland species often growing beneath trees, you can see that there would be rain washing bird droppings onto the plants in the rainy season, and some experiments done by Pinguiculaman so far seem to support this. These plants would be covered with litter in habitat. Fertilizing plants should probably be avoided by new growers with few spare plants and care must be taken when fertilizing any CP species, of course, but experiments like this should be encouraged (once you have spares, that is!). For those who do wish to experiment, PM me for details of how to proceed. It would be good if some other growers could confirm Joseph's positive reports.

Maybe some of our Australian members could describe the Queensland climate a little? Is there a noted change between the wet and dry season? A period of restricted rain fall? I have always noticed how all the Queensland Drosera seem to prosper and wane in a cyclic (and frustrating) way, and wonder if this might not be due to them not having the proper conditions during any "rest" that they might experience. I wonder if they might not need a drier medium when they are not in rapid growth, to toughen the roots and possibly even "prune" them. This species will make so many plantletts, it may be that individuals just exhaust themselves (especially when grown without nutrition, in low light in a sealed terrarium).
 
The north Queensland climate generally is tropical with a wet and dry season. Once you get up into the mountains where D. adelae, schizandra and prolifera grow, things change markedly.

While there is still a wet and dry season, the areas in which these species grow high up on the mountains are almost constantly covered by clouds and mist. When I was up in the Daintree Rainforest (which is the habitat of D. prolifera) during the dry season, the forest at sea level was very sunny, dry and steamy without a cloud to be seen. The top of Thornton Peak (a mountain on which D. prolifera is common) not far from the coast was completely invisible for my entire visit due to low cloud cover.

The day temps up on the mountains are considerably lower than the constant 30-35 deg C (F?) at sea level. I would say that the temperature would never get much above 25-27 deg C during the day. At night the temp would probably drop to under 20 deg C (probably down to 10 deg C on occasions) compared to about 27 at sea level. Humidity is high throughout the year on the mountains, even during the dry season.

So, even though the plants grow in a tropical area, the fact that they grow high up on mountains mean that their requirements are much less than tropical.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (HellzDungeon @ May 04 2004,6:34)]ya, ur right spec, but fertilizer is tha achilles heel of adalae (darn, i hate The Odyssey but i need to read it in my english class  
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)
did u ever fertilize it fly cather?
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Hi
I have never fertilized my plants- just allowed them to catch their own meals!
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They have had a variety of lighting conditions. One in a lowland tank with tube lighting. Another in my neps house where I kept them in the shadier part with my rajah. And I have tried others on a E. facing windowsill. All plants remain small & unhappy
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cheers

bill
 
  • #10
Bill,

Maybe you have a crappy clone? Most people who grow these end up with 100s of plants within a couple of years, without doing anything. I don't know what kind of pots you are using, but I think they do better in more wide, shallow pots, so their roots can spread out and bud. Sphagnum seems to work great for them, but funny enough, I seem to remeber them growing in sandy clay in Nature(or is that schizandra?)
I have seen your name for a long time and know you are a superior grower, so maybe this is your achilles heel plant..

Cheers,

Joe
 
  • #11
Maybe the plants are diseased.

Mine are responding well to cooler temps in autumn. They are sensitive to humidity, but you can quickly gauge if the temp or humidity is right by the amount of dew on the leafs.
 
  • #12
[b said:
Quote[/b] (The Griffin @ May 05 2004,2:28)]Bill,

 Maybe you have a crappy clone? Most people who grow these end up with 100s of plants within a couple of years, without doing anything. I don't know what kind of pots you are using, but I think they do better in more wide, shallow pots, so their roots can spread out and bud. Sphagnum seems to work great for them, but funny enough, I seem to remeber them growing in sandy clay in Nature(or is that schizandra?)
 I have seen your name for a long time and know you are a superior grower, so maybe this is your achilles heel plant..

 Cheers,

 Joe
Thanks for the compliment Joe
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I will get myself another plant I think & try again. I believe that it was aphids that first caused my plant to deteriorated and its never been the same since despite loads of tiny plantlets which never seem to go anywhere.

cheers

bill
 
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