The collection in flower, 2017

Finally – the collection is in flower and the first pitchers are opening!

This is the Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea / all red flava pond - most of these are FRT 1-1.

The flava var. flava/maxima/rugellii/cuprea/ornata pond (so striped/veined/green and cut throat flava). The pot at right is a mini-bog I set up just for my VFTs. Behind it is the red tube (flava var. rubricorpora) pond.

And finally, the leucophylla pond.

  

There’s only a few leucophylla flowers open so far – cv. Tarnok and a random clone from my friend Owen. The majority of the other clones are still a week or so off flowering yet.

 

This is a flava var. cuprea I got from Gotcha! Plants back in 2009. Its been a very solid performer.

 

Another coppertop flava, this is ‘F1’ (as in flava clone # 1) from Fly Free Zone (David & Felicity Martin). Over 30 years old and still one of the better coppertops around.

Here’s the only Sarracenia with pitchers fully opened – flava var. maxima ‘Honeysuckle Road, Harleyville, NC’. Greg Bourke imported a load of seed from this locality in the early 2000s, germinated some and gave the rest to other growers, one of whom was Ron Abernethy, who then gave this and a few other plants to me. Var. maxima are a surprising rarity here in OZ; most I’ve grown turned out to be a hybrid with Sarracenia alata, or produced a copper lid if grown in full sun.

At left is another Harleyville, NC, plant, this time a var. flava. I brought this plant at the Sydney meeting of the International Carnivorous Plant Society in 2007; it sometimes produces very pronounced teeth on the umbrella of the flower. At right is another var. flava, this time fro Gotcha! Plants in Queensland.

A few more assorted flava flowers, noting also that the Blue Mountains Drosera binata growing in the same pots are also out of dormancy.

Here’s a couple of special things from the all red flava pond. At left is a cross between FRT 1-1 and a clone of flava var. atropurpurea I used to grow from Phil Reytter of Lithgow. Phil’s plant was not very vigorous, so it went from the collection last year. But its cross with FRT 1-1 is very vigorous. At right is a Sarracenia x moorei backcross I like to call ‘David Martin’ after its breeder. It produces spectacular red tubed pitchers with very heavily veined lids. Its been a bit temperamental in the collection here, but I’m hoping that it will come good for me this year.

 

And to close, the flowers of FRT 1-1, a leucophylla-introgressed all red flava grown by David from imported seed in the 1970s.

‘Till next time!

Inching closer to the first 2017 Sarracenia flowers…

The first Sarra flower of the year is getting close – nearly all the plants have produced scapes that have started to nod forwards. Note the pond at upper middle is less developed than the rest of the ponds; these are the Sarracenia leucophylla.

The first to open is going to be a coin-toss between S. flava var. ornata ‘Biddlecombe heavy vein’ and a nice clone of S. flava var. maxima from Honeysuckle Road, Harleyville.

The Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea ‘FRT 1-1’ contingent may have been the first to appear, but they have been well and truly overtaken.

As mentioned above, the Sarracenia leucophylla are usually always a little bit later to flower than the S. flava. These are the flower buds of cv. “Tarnok”. Its taken since 2009 when I first got them from Gotcha! Plants to get them to a decent population. I’m thinking it may be an idea to hybridize some of them with any overlapping S. flava varieties to see what I get.

Elsewhere in the collection, the sundews are beginning to emerge from dormancy. These new leaves of D. binata only opened in the last few days. They are always a spectacular sight at this stage of their development…

As are Drosera filiformis. These are the typical variety.

 

To close, here are some succulents – a flowering Pleiospilos nelii stone plant (which remarkably takes our winters with very little protection) and an unnamed Lithops.

A couple of quick pics from the lowland Nepenthes terrarium

Just a quick post to show some of the pitchers in the lowland Nepenthes terrarium I set up a few years back. The amps are finally producing basals! I need to get in to do a prune and tidy up soon, so I will post a few more pics then.

The first pitchers emerge and a hot spring day

 

The first pitchers of the season are beginning to sprout from the rhizomes, which is great - but it means the Sarras have broken dormancy a few weeks earlier than usual. Its been a warm winter on average here due to a string of high pressure systems over southern Australia, but that still meant some very cold nights with the clear skies. When I used greenhouses, I'd have the first pitchers appear in early September, but outside it would usually be sometime in October, so a September emergence is odd. Today is also very hot, with our garden thermometer recording 34 C as I blog this. I'm just hoping this does not mean I'll get lots of pitchers shoot up, only to have a late frost burn their tops off a few days before they open.

The warm and dry weather has also meant the honeybees have started raiding the Sphagnum and peat for water - again, a lot earlier than normal. Usually they start to become a bother in December.

Strange weather...

Drosera filiformis ssp. filiformis gearing up

I love Drosera, but not so many do very well with our cold temperatures. The typical and alba forms of Drosera capensis do well, but the red and broad leaf forms quickly departed. Drosera slackii went backwards steadily until I took pity on them and gave them to a friend in Sydney. Drosera nidiformis and D. burmanni hung on in small numbers for a long time, but eventually petered out. Drosera pygmaea did really well, but disappeared after the bog gardens went back to pots. Drosera rotundifolia also did well, but again I nearly lost them putting them into pots - their winter resting buds were hard to find while I repotted in the dark. That said, there is a new leaf visible in a photo on the blog post above (after) this one – check the photo with the bees.

Perhaps the best performing Drosera I've grown outdoors here are Drosera filiformis ssp. filiformis and Drosera binata (all forms of the latter are very reliable). Drosera filiformis is something that looks amazing when grown en masse, so I have a 200 mm pot crammed with it. Here's a photo of that pot just breaking dormancy:

Easy to see Nepenthes on Sentosa Island, Singapore

In Australia, we have a tradition called Schoolies Week, which is a celebration of finishing high/senior school. It has a bad reputation because it usually involves 17 or 18 year olds heading to a part of southern Queensland called the Gold Coast, where they partake in large volume of alcohol and get up to mischief. Nerd that I am, I instead went to Malaysia and Singapore with my father to look at butterflies and Nepenthes. I got to see Nepenthes tentaculata on Mount Kinabalu (we only spent a day there – dammit!), Nepenthes macfarlanei, N. sanguinea and N. rampsina (plus hybrids of the latter two) in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, and a variety of Nepethes in Singapore. A particular highlight was seeing Nepenthes rafflesiana growing on Sentosa Island in Singapore. We had no idea they were there at the time (noting this was pre- my family having internet); I spotted them from the monorail on the island. As it was getting dark, we did not take pictures at the time.

I had the opportunity to re-visit Singapore earlier this year, and went out specially to re-find N. rafflesiana on Sentosa. I first went and photographed Papilio (Achillides) gloss swallowtails in the Sentosa butterfly house, which is on the way – they were stunning, but the butterfly house itself has seen better days. This gloss swallowtail is P. daedalus from the Philippines.

Some friends and I make it a point of pronounce Achillides as Ahhh(!)… chil-ee-dees, because you have to say “ahhh!” at how beautiful they are! Above is a male P. peranthus transiens from Bali, Indonesia.

Then it was Nepenthes time. They are very easy to find; follow Imbiah Road from the Butterfly House down to the Shangri La resort, and they are about half-way along on your left, hiding in the banks of skeleton ferns.

There is a plant at bottom centre in this photo, and a few others twining their way through the ferns out of view.

Here’s another hiding under the cover of the ferns.

Habitus, showing upper pitchers.

Ditto.

And a more exposed plant.

Here’s a closeup of an upper pitcher and an undeveloped pitcher.

And detail of the unopened pitcher.

Most of the pitchers I saw were upper pitchers. They were a decent size, around 20 cm (9 inches).

I did luck upon one lower pitcher though – it was on the way out though.

Neps are protected in Singapore, and the Singaporeans take their nature conservation very seriously. I don’t have a reservation about saying how to access these particular plants, as there are a number of online guides describe how to access Nepenthes in Singapore anyway. These particular plants are very easy to see while on holiday without needing to go to extra effort just to see some Nepenthes. Bukit Timah is also a good place to see Nepenthes – I saw N. gracilis there and must have walked right past N. ampullaria – and it can be accessed easily via Singapore’s public transport system.

Another nice thing to do in Singapore is to visit Gardens By The Bay. They display some magnificent plants!

The Lego CPs and Rafflesia are cute!

My only tip with this place – try not to do it on a weekend during school holidays – our visit was spoiled by obnoxious children screaming as loud as possible to test the acoustics of the greenhouse.

Sadly, there was not enough time this trip to see any other Nepenthes – maybe another time!