> I have recently gotten a clone that is
>actually larger, and produces big stemmy plants. It's also producing seed
>and I think I'll have enough to stuff the mattress AND feed the soviets.
Sounds good - maybe you can swap us some of the seed (and uglinosa seed too?)
for the peltata seed (which is almost ready for posting to you all).
>Lastly, something VERY STRANGE has come up in my D. banksii seed pot.
>I have never seen this plant, nor do I know anything about it. Well,
>Something is in my pot which looks like a cross between a tuberous and
>a pygmy Drosera. It looks most like D. pygmaea, but instead of forming a
>snug ground hugging rosette it is erect, holding its leaves like a tiny
>D. capensis. What is more, the elliptical leaves (1 mm across) are
>bright red (lamina, the petioles are green), and peltate. I've never
>seen anything quite like this plant. It is surely very similar to a
>pygmy of some sort, but I have about 35 spp of those and this is
>different. Anybody ever grown D. banksii? Does this sound like it?
I know that many of the "rainbow" sundews (peltata etc.) produce a
rosette of leaves before sending up the main stem, but never that small.
I'll have a look at our books, but something that springs immediately to
mind is that for some reason, Erickson placed banksii at the end of the
drosera section of her book ("Plants of Prey"). This always puzzled me,
since it should have been with the other rainbows. Maybe it is a weird
plant! The other possibility is that it really is a pygmy "weed" - not
all of them are ground huggers (I think).
******
According to Rica Erickson's book, it sounds like you've got a D.
banksii seedling! "Lower leaves minute and withered, increasing in size
to about 1mm across (huge!) on very slender leaf stalks up to 5mm
long..." Suprisingly, it seems that this plant is not tuberous "..no
bulb." and may be an annual (not stated, but possible - keep your seeds
if you get any, just in case). Now I know why it was stuck at the end
of the Drosera section...
Some of our newer Utrics are flowering this year (yey!). U. capensis
has a nice but small flower which is pale purple on the corolla with two
dark spots on the lower lip, just below the "large" (comparitively)
palate. The upper lip of the corolla it quite pointed and
notched/divided. Looks very nice. The U. peltata and U. praelonga
(bought as a U. tricolor :-( ) have several flower stalks, as does the
U. pentdactyla and (of course) U. sandersonii, livida and subulata
(which is growing in most pots in the greenhouse - @#$#%^#$ weed!). U.
menziesii looks like it's dead :-( I hope it managed to produce a tuber
or two... Drosera binatas are all growing well and sending up flower
stalks. Even the dichotoma "(not so) giant" is seeming to be growing
well for once...