Be sure to use peat moss, not peat. Preferable would be to use
live sphagnum moss. U. dusenii is referred to as U. nephrophylla
now. It's not particularly difficult to grow. Sounds like your
seedlings may have been attacked by the "damp-off" fungus - particularly
dangerous in the cool temperatures and low light levels in wintertime.
>
>I haven't grown any other Utrics, so has anyone any suggestions what,
>if anything, I should be doing different.
Try bumming mature pieces of Utrics from other growers. Many species are
so prolific, they're like weeds.
>For the last few years, I have been trying all the Drosera seed offered
>by Chiltern Seeds in the UK. In addition to a 'mixed' packet, the
>species are cistiflora, erythrorhiza, glanduligera, peltata, planchonii,
>rotundifolia, and whittakeri.
>
>Some queries:
>
>Last year, glanduligera germinated in about 50 days, made little
>progress, and then died. In his book, Slack says that he has not been
>able to raise it to maturity. So has anyone out there had any greater
>success with it, and if so how?
I grew it last year. The species is an annual but life span is closer
to six months. Expect it to die after flowering. With my plants, just as
they were sending up flower stalks, they died. The consensus seems to
be to keep them dry - especially near the end of their life cycle. They should
be grown in a VERY sandy soil - use quartz (silica) sand - the best kind seems
to be "pool filter sand". This should be very white and very coarse almost
like grains of rice. Note that these plants are extremely small when mature -
about as big as a large pygmy Drosera.
>
>them off again (May). The growth consisted of an initial rosette, which
>then produced a somewhat prostrate stem with leaf pairs or triples
>arranged along it. No flowers were produced. Does this seem like
>erythrorhiza to people, or if not, what might it be?
D. erythrorhiza never has an upright stem. If it was prostrate, it may
be one of the climbing species - maybe D. macrantha (just guessing).
>Planchonii (sown in spring) germinated after 50 days, very soon died
>down, but re-emerged in October, producing upright wiry stem, but no
>more than about 1 inch (25mm). The leaves were cup shaped but with the
>inner, sticky, surface pointing downwards.
According to Rica Erickson's book, _Plants of Prey_, this sounds like the
'real' D. planchonii - cup shaped leaved pointing down.
I posted this last month:
Try the gopher for the Australian National Botanical Gardens:
>From the "gopher" menu, pick "Pacific Gophers", then pick "Australian National
Botanical Gardens". Here you can read Herbarium data from many plants
collected in Australia to get clues how to grow the plant (e.g. soil
type, sunlight, etc.).
If you don't have the "gopher" command, try using "telnet" command,
"telnet e-math.ams.org". Use "e-math" for login and password. Then,
go to the e-math gopher, then pick "other gopher sites" from the menu.