Sundews in the cold

The sundews, or Drosera, are magnificent plants and one of the reasons I got into carnivorous plants to begin with. I first came across them in the early 1990s on a family drive, when my father spotted some from the car and stopped to show us. Interestingly, they were Drosera spathulata var. gympiensis, which was then undescribed.

Watering and trays…

Watering can be a huge chore if you have lots of plants. It used to be a double pain for me, because I used the styrofoam boxes made for holding vegetables. While they were cheap and did the job, they never held quite enough water to see me through the hottest months of summer. And they would always dry up just in time for the hottest day. This happened to me just after Christmas 2010. They trays were full one day, the next, I had dying Dionaea. As each tray only held 3 Sarracenia (8 if they were in 120mm pots), it also took me at least 40 minutes to make sure they were all filled. I still use some of these trays for my S. purpurea type plants, along with overflow S. flava from the greenhouse:

 

The week ending Sunday 31 August…

As the days start to get longer, the dormant plants in the greenhouse start to show signs of breaking dormancy. One of the first to break dormancy, an all red S. alata I call “Biddlecombe Red”, put on a good start with flower buds and a couple of new pitchers. Sarracenia alata is a problem for me here because they break dormancy way too early and burn badly. This plant was no exception and its new pitchers were burned during the two coldest days this winter (–8*C and –7*C). The flower bud is so far intact and looks to be the fastest growing of the handful of flower buds coming up.

The first signs of spring, 2011

Finally, a chance to write my blog again! July has disappeared with work commitments, so I'm grateful to finally settle back into a more gentle rhythmn. Its deepest wintere here, and here is the view from our backyard to the Brindabella Ranges, 30 kilometers to the southwest. It stayed on the ground for a good week after I took this photo, with the last of it melting on 20 July. There is still snow on Mount Bimberi, the highest peak in the Australian Capital Territory, as I write this.

The Brindabella Ranges with freshly fallen snow. Left to right are Mount Gingera, Mt. Ginini and Mt. Franklin. The Drosera peltata site I visit is in the hills below Mount Ginini at Smoker's Gap (not visible).

Tree shrews, rats and Nepenthes rajah in pitcher perfect mutualism WITH VIDEO!

One of my science scanners picked up this absolutely wonderful article co-authored by Charles Clarke on mutualism between the magnificent Nepenthes rajah and two species of mammals. In summary, a species of tree shrew (Tupaia montana) and rat (Rattus baluensis) both defecate into Nepenthes rajah pitchers while feeding on sugary secretions produced on the underside of the pitcher's lid. This type of behaviour has previously been demonstrated for N. lowii (link one and link two to the original research papers for N. lowii).

The full article (and a .pdf of the research paper) is freely available from this link:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021114

Also be sure to see the high-resolution image of Rattus baluensis feeding on a N. rajah pitcher here (a very high resolution, 9 MB .tiff file is also downloadable from this link).

As if the research article and photograph were not enough, Charles was also good enough to upload three videos of Tupaia montana in action on pitchers of N. rajah and N. macrophylla onto youtube. They are embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Nepenthes rajah video one:


Nepenthes rajah video two:


Nepenthes macrophylla:



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