Utricularia graminifolia flower and other cool stuff

Back at the beginning of March – 3 months ago – I first noticed a flower stalk forming on my Utricularia graminifolia. Yesterday it finally popped its first flower.

Neat little flower. Foliage is looking pretty good too.

So cute! U. graminifolia is considered one of the more fiddly terrestrial/semi-aquatic utrics. I grow mine in an undrained glass container about 18 inches from my lights. I let the water pretty much evaporate all the way before refilling almost to the top of the container (covering the plant entirely). I've heard of several people using this method to successfully grow U. graminifolia to flower. There are several more flower stalks coming up, which is exciting. One thing to note when using this method – when you first plant your plug of U. graminifolia there's nothing holding the peat together, so watering really stirs it all up. The peat settles after a day or so. Once the plant fills in the container watering isn't so much of an issue anymore.

 I've also got a flower coming up on my Drosera collinsiae (Fairyland, RSA).

Very nice rosette of leaves on this plant.

This is a really handsome plant that hasn't gotten much attention on the blog. It started to flower once before, but I clipped the stalk when I noticed aphids on it. Now we're flowering again and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one won't be similarly afflicted.

These next two photos I recently posted on my Instagram, but I decided to share them here too because not everyone has Instagram. First up, look at this wild picture of my Drosera burmannii (Hann River, Kimberley, Western Australia).

Dig that weird splotchy coloring.

I had let them go a while without being fed, which gave them a lovely, luminescent red color. Then, a couple days after a heavy feeding, I noticed that there was this mix of pale pink and deep red leaves as the new growth grew in. Super cool!

I also shared this photo of Drosera enodes, which I took as part of my project to improve the pygmy sundew pages on Wikipedia.

One of the loveliest pygmies, imo.

D. enodes forms this little dome composed almost entirely of dew, and it's really, really cute. I love my little pygmies.