FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I have a couple of little dish gardens I'm really enjoying. What I've done for both is taken a cereal bowl, drilled holes in it for drainage, planted it, and set it in the bottom of a small terrarium. Each one sits in a fluctuating tray of water, with a small, bright LED light over it, and a window open at the top to allow a little airflow. The lights are bright enough to have some nice color and growth going- the D. spatulata var. gympiensis in particular is solid red.

Would love some suggestions on what else I can try. I'd prefer nothing bigger than a D. capensis, preferably smaller than they tend to get. Weedy types are fine, they'll be contained. Would rather not deal with anything that wants a dormancy or tends to be fussy- I'd like to be able to water these more or less when I remember to, feed periodically, and have them do their thing.

The first dish has:
-D. capensis 'Bainskloof'
-D. capensis 'Albino'
-D. spatulata var. gympiensis
-D. spatualta 'Fraser Island' (unhappy for unclear reasons, maybe too much light?)
-Ping. moctezumae
-U. sandersonii
All doing well except the Fraser Island, which is pretty much just sitting there, new leaves staying curled up. I need to test if shading it will help. The ping keeps getting the tips of its leaves scorched, so I've adjusted the light slightly.

The second has:
-D. capensis 'Narrow Red Leaf'
-D. hamiltonii
-U. dichotoma
All too freshly planted to tell how they're doing. They're settling in, at least.

I also have Ping. emarginata, D. 'Andromeda', and an unclear weedy terrestrial bladderwort in other setups, which I could try in these. I think the Andromeda would deeply not appreciate the light, though.

Ah, hm, just had a thought; Ping. emarginata grows on mossy rocks and cliff faces in the wild. Maybe I should set a couple of porous rocks in a bowl without any drainage and try to cover them in moss and P. emarginata. Like a mossy version of a ping rock. Are there any bladderworts that might be willing to climb through living moss, or sundews that don't mind very little material to root in?

I think something like D. burmanii and D. adelae might do well in your setup. .

U. alpina has done well for me in very wet and mossy conditions and it's "leaves" don't get too large either. You might have to deal with a large, but pretty, stalk of flowers though.

Darkroom Denizen wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2024 5:44 am I think something like D. burmanii and D. adelae might do well in your setup. .

U. alpina has done well for me in very wet and mossy conditions and it's "leaves" don't get too large either. You might have to deal with a large, but pretty, stalk of flowers though.

Oo, I could try D. adelae on the P. emarginata rock, since both of them like a little less light than the others might. And it had slipped my mind that there are epiphytic bladderworts, so thank you for the reminder!

Do D. burmanii absolutely require frequent feeding to do well at all, or is that only a requirement to grow them as perennials rather than annuals? And do they self-seed well enough, or do they need someone to go in and deliberately scatter the seeds?

Yeah! I would say adelae and prolifera would be good choices as they like low light and would scatter and proliferate lol. Although burmannii seem to like higher light imo, epiphytic utricularia are a good choice. The others that come to mind are asplundii and reniformis, they should be the easier ones though they get leggy and large if let loose to grow. Drosera burmanii do prefer to be fed quite a bit but will do fine without it, they do need to be messed with and high light to guarantee seed tho. Other than pings which are left you've pretty much got the assortment!
I would suggest looking at pings, most of them are capable of being nearly epiphytic.
If you are looking to keep small things look at terrestrial and not epiphytic utrics.
You could also plant some aquatic bladderworts in the water surrounding the rock if you wanted to.

Post some pics! It'll help us visualize

Here's the first one I made, which I believe was on January 1st? Almost everything seems quite happy. The U. sandersonii has been blooming nonstop, to a frankly absurd degree, and has runners multiple inches long. You can see the color of everything is, to my eye, quite good, even putting a faint pink tinge on the 'albino' cape. The bowl is about six inches across.
There are a few photos of when it was first planted in this thread, for reference. post449638.html#p449638
This is the second, with about a five-inch bowl. The cape is very unhappy because I kept it planted in nothing but damp paper towels for a couple weeks- I kept thinking "ah, I'll go and pick up the rest of the supplies tomorrow", and then somehow not managing to do that. It would probably have been all right if I'd managed to keep it in higher humidity, considering the other sundews were all right in their cup of paper towel.
This one has only been up for a week. Both sundew species have healthy new growth, with dew on the hamiltonii, and the bladderwort may have a little growth? Difficult to tell. The stone is basalt with peridot on it, which should leach little to nothing in the way of minerals. Basalt is an igneous rock (formed from hardened magma/lava) and not prone to breaking down, and gemstones are typically inert.
For reference, here's another of those lights over some flytraps. At the height I have it, I'd say it provides a good amount of light for flytraps in about a 2-3" diameter circle, acceptable light in more like a 4" diameter. I'll be tinkering with if I can move it up higher to get acceptable-to-good light in a wider circle. Either way, it should be able to manage enough light for any sundew, if placed only a few inches above them.

BumpyEvergreen wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 5:12 am I would suggest looking at pings, most of them are capable of being nearly epiphytic.

Do you happen to know which pings don't require anything like a dormancy? I know a good few don't truly go dormant, but it seems like most of them want a drier rest period.
My P. emarginata have been growing for four or five years with no changing care and no problems, and I believe P. agnata, P. moctezumae, and P. gigantea can do fine without. Though the last is rather too large for these, and agnata is probably rather large also.