Last Friday was a good CP day on all fronts. Having managed an afternoon off, I visited Owen O’Neil at Strange World Carnivores. Its always a treat to see the tens of thousands of plants he grows.
One plant that Owen has loads of is this handsome hybrid between S. leucophylla and S. oreophila. It produces decent spring and autumn pitchers.
Being a S. flava fiend, I also admired this S. x catesbei looking cross.
Owen will be attending the Bus Depot Markets in Canberra right up to Christmas this year, and had some very nice plants on offer last weekend.
After catching up with Owen, I headed back to Canberra for the AUSCPS Christmas party, where I came across one of the most impressive CPs I’ve ever seen: a massive Drosera schizandra grown by meeting coordinator Barry Bradshaw! Here’s the plant, with my hand for scale:
A few meetings back, David Colburn brought some of these beauties down from Sydney to sell (two of which are on my windowsill). They were growing them in coffee jars, and Barry dryly commented “what are you going to do when they get big?”. Now I know what he means! The tube at the bottom of the image is for watering; Barry uses pure live Sphagnum as growing media, with marbles in the base of the bowl for aeration and a water reservoir. The plants get no direct light and are grown indoors, with the temperature not dropping below 20 Celsius.
Barry also brought in the two other Tropical Queensland sisters: D. adelae and D. prolifera. There were all sorts of comments made about The Three Wise Drosera…
Barry grows all his plants in oversized goldfish bowls, with the D. schizandra and D. prolifera getting some cling wrap over the opening to bump up the humidity. I have some ideas for my plants now, and hope to re-try D. prolifera again next year.
To close, here’s some CPs in the collection with prey (and an escapee). More photos to come from the collection soon.
