I promised you a serious blog post about Fred (N. chaniana x veitchii (S-TC)) and the pigmy sundews. Since the sundews are blossoming, it seemed like a good time to deliver. To give you some context, I was having problems with fungus gnats and their larvae in the soil cubes where I grow lettuce under LED lights. They were especially destructive of some of the slower growing greens like mizuna and I lost much of one crop to them. I didn’t want to use insecticide and read that these insects are a favorite feast for sundews. I consulted with California Carnivores about plants that would stay compact and ordered a few pigmy sundews. Fred was an impulse purchase.
Although Fred’s picture looks quite similar to the one I posted earlier, he gorged and lost one of his pitchers and replaced it with a new one. The small appendage that you see in the foreground will be another. The larger pitcher has already closed so I expect that it will soon turn brown and wither. I read that this is the natural progression. Since Fred has covers on his pitchers, I can’t see if he’s getting enough to eat but his color looks good, more like the catalogue description; more rose than the green that he exhibited just out of shipment.
Pigmy sundew Drosera callistos, “Brooklyn Large Form” is not large at all. The largest cluster is about the size of a dime and most of them are smaller. These have tiny, fuzzy white centers forming that I suspect are or will be the flower.
Pigmy sundew Drosera paleacea ssp. Palaeces has miniscule white flowers held on string-like stalks, about ¾’ above the clusters. To any gardener who has a blood lust for the critters that want to eat what we produce, notice the little back specs in the dewy pink fuzz: former insect agents of salad destruction. <Evil laugh>
I still have questions, like whether these plants need to go dormant and if so, what will that look like? And will those flowers have seed that I can harvest?