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Here I would like to share some photos of interesting sundews!

Paradoxa:
Standard rosette type, and stem forming type
Left: D.paradoxa “type form, plants to 15 cm tall, traps pale red” Lady Dreaming Creek, c. 5 km east of Goomadeer River, c. 8 km SE of Gumadeer, Arhnemland, Northern Territory
Right: D.paradoxa “white to pink flowers” Mount Bomford, Kimberley, Western Australia
paradoxas.jpg


Spatulata tamlin trying its best to be a christmas tree
spathulata.jpg


D. Ordensis Green and Ordensis Red
D.ordensis “leafy basal rosettes densely covered with white hairs > 12 cm Ø, with beautiful blood red traps, crowded many fflowered scapes > 40 cm tall, flowers pink” 21 km east of Kununurra, Kimberley
ordensis.jpg


Drosera gigantea flowering in tc
gigantea.jpg


D. Binata small variety
binatasmall.jpg


D. Falconeri Red / D. Falconeri green
D.falconeri “pink flower” Palmerston, N.T.
falconeri.jpg
 
Very cool! Ive been looking at all of your pics of them growing in TC and have a question(s) for you...

Do you keep them in there for the life of the plant or can you take them out of the TC and plant them in a substrate?

Are they self watering or does the TC provide all of the needed moisture since its a closed environment?
 
Very cool! Ive been looking at all of your pics of them growing in TC and have a question(s) for you...

Do you keep them in there for the life of the plant or can you take them out of the TC and plant them in a substrate?

Are they self watering or does the TC provide all of the needed moisture since its a closed environment?

When they are ready, you remove them from tissue culture and plant them in your media of choice.

The TC jelly provides the water/nutrients they need (I believe it's loaded with hormones to encourage growth?).
 
How does one go from TC to normal cultivation?
 
b.t.,

D.paradoxa “type form, plants to 15 cm tall, traps pale red”
- into individual containers with more agar or harden them. They are growing roots into the media.

D. spatulata "tamlin", D. binata
- split the clump

D. Ordensis Green and Ordensis Red, D. Falconeri Red / D. Falconeri green
- into their own individual containers

I can understand your need to perhaps save space/agar/containers but you might start having problems when one of the plants inside starts turning brown and affecting the others.
 
Cool your jets, Cindy. If only you knew how busy I am and how badly neglected a lot of my tissue culture stuff is. The roots of these plants are highly bad yet. With Byblis, I have more roots than agar in my flasks! It's really up a big spaghetti mess down there. And with clumps, binata multifida looks like green brussels sprouts! Boatloads of it, all over the shop. In fact, I think even brussels sprouts aren't this dense! It looks like a clump of dodder!

But, I will definitely get around to doing something about them. I still have this really funky dream that I might keep some of these plants in tissue culture long enough to, let's say for example witness, a northiana producing mature pitchers in tissue culture! Or heliamphora nutas producing mature pitchers in tissue culture. Wouldn't that be nice? Because the tissue culture makes the environment so stable, if I actually get that far, could actually bring the northiana to office and set it down on my worktable. That sounds really nice! Assuming that I actually manage to get it to produce mature pitchers. I haven't yet seen any nepenthes producing mature pitchers in tissue culture. I wonder why.

Jim, removing tissue culture plants and putting them in plain media is relatively simple after you have practiced it a few times. Open the flask, take out the plant, wash all the agar off, insert into your typical substrate. Cover it with a clear back or container and proceed to slowly remove this container or bag over the process of two weeks. That's it. The trick is to slowly drop the humidity levels to the environment instead of doing it overnight by opening the jar. For me, the easiest way I have found, is to plant everything into an aquarium, and cover the aquarium and leave the top two holes which I normally meant for you to run the oxygen tubes into the aquarium. After two weeks, they seem quite settled inside of the aquarium, then I slowly start removing the cover, twisting it in a clockwise position until it is perpendicular to the tank. At this point cover comes off and I'm done.
 
Wouldn't that be nice?

Hey! Sounds like that Cadbury advertisement we have at home...where everything is made of chocolate and can be eaten...including the gear stick! Ah, but I digress...

You haven't seen mature plants in TC simply because they probably don't mature in TC. How large a jar do you expect to grow your mature northiana in? The size of your office table? Until a certain point, the TC plants need to be deflasked or re-plated. It is not realistic to keep them germ/bacteria/virus free and try to get them growing. It is like us being overly-protective and worrying of exposing the children to bacteria and stuff. In the end, a young child is sickly because as a toddler, he/she didn't build up the immunity as he/she should have.

Now, get back to your TC work and stop reading the posts here. :-))
 
But how do you transition TC plants to normal growing conditions?
 
Jim, the process of hardening or removing something from tissue culture into standard media is not complicated. I had elaborated on it earlier but maybe it wasn't clear enough. Think of it this way, if you were to plant some seed of drosera or nepenthes, into an airtight container and sealed shut to maintain the humidity, getting those seedlings accustomed to air outside is a similar process is getting a plant out of tissue culture into a external environment. In both scenarios, the plant is accustomed to a highly humid environment, and your task is to slowly get it exposed to low levels of humidity outside. You may proceed to do so in a manner you see most fit but like I had described earlier, a plastic bag with holes made in it progressively over a week, or a container which is slowly removed over the course of the week, works best.
 
  • #10
I hear ya. This is not unlike what I've had to do with the infamous, "Lowes Cube Of Death" plants - and those plants were just plain neglected setups for failure.
 
  • #11
Jimscott, I got a few containers of TC Droseras while ago but didn't have the time to pot them up.

This clump was about to explode in that little container it came in. :lol:
tc_intermedia.jpg


Each plantlet has got its own root(s) so I cut them off individually.
tc_intermedia1.jpg


tc_intermedia2.jpg


In they go into a disposable container with perlite. They would be potted up in media in 2 weeks' time.
tc_intermedia4.jpg


tc_intermedia3.jpg
 
  • #12
LOL! There's that signature perlite again. I half expect to see heart-shaped bloodworms...

Seriously, did you do anything special, like gradually open containers during the day and close at night or drain the culture medium with distilled water?
 
  • #13
The containers are partially covered and opened slowly over a week. Once they are not limp when the cover is completely removed, I pot them up in media.
 
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