Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:04:08 EDT From: Kit6pww@aol.com To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg2372$foo@default> Subject: Drosera adelae
Hello!
My name is Debra Blanke, and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area near San
Jose. I just signed up for this service last week, and have been obtaining
lots of great information from the people on this net - thank you! I got
involved in carnivorous plants a little over a year ago when I noticed some
plants being sold at a local hardware store. My best friend's husband
mentioned that he's been interested in VFT's and others since he was a kid, so
I got him some plants, too. Turns out, his wife took over care of his plants,
and has many more now, just like I do. In fact, we are a dangerous duo at CPS
meetings, and probably a great blessing to CP sellers!
Now I have several Nepenthes (in a window greenhouse I built), and many
Drosera, Dionaea, Utricularia, and Sarracenia kept outside and distributed
among several minibogs I put together. I joined BACPS last January and joined
ICPS last week.
Along the lines of my main interests right now (tropical Drosera who like low
light levels and high humidity - namely, D. adelae, prolifera, and schizandra,
the latter two of which I am trying to find for myself), I am possibly having
problems with my D. adelae. I hope you might be able to help me out. I
bought two adults a few months ago, one of which had several babies (I have
since separated them out and they are now in their own pots). I have them in a
mini-greenhouse set-up which meets all the criteria for these plants (low
light, high humidity, fairly steady temp's between 72 and 80 degrees F). They
all sit in 1/2" to 1" of water (filtered), and their growing media is
half/half peat and sand.
UNTIL RECENTLY, everything was going along quite usual, and the plants varied
little from the time I got them:
Flowers were a deep red color.
Leaf tentacles were numerous, red, and just oozing with lots of mucilage.
Adult and baby plants growing like wild.
JUST RECENTLY (within the last three weeks - both adult and baby plants):
Flowers have paled out to an off-white color with reddish-tinted centers.
Adult plants started putting out loads of flower scapes (3-4 a plant), and
concentrating less on other growth.
Leaves are about the same size, maybe a little longer, but the tentacles are
now transparent in color, appear to be considerably more sparse, and very
small amounts of mucilage on them. Baby plants have no flower stalks, yet
their leaves, tentacles and mucilage are doing the same thing as the adults -
growth seems to still be good.
SO, I cut off all of the flower stalks to see if this would make any
difference. The only thing I have done differently in the last few weeks
(when all of this started happening) was that I started using RO water (we
recently installed a 5-filter system at our house), as opposed to the bottled
distilled water we had been using before. I would think things would be
better now, OR POSSIBLY, I don't have a problem at all. I have read that D.
adelae in the wild tend to have whitish blooms and grow larger with less
light, and the nursery I obtained these plants from exposed these to the same
light all the other CP's were exposed to ( I understand D. adelae can tolerate
more light than D. prolifera or schizandra), so maybe the light at the nursery
was causing more coloration in the tentacles - less mucilage doesn't seem
healthy. MAYBE my plants are wilding out?
PLEASE HELP! I appreciate any suggestions you may have.
Best Regards to ALL!
Deb
PREVIOUS
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:31:34 PST