Drosera regia in South Africa

[Christian Dietz]

Hi,

there seems to be only one known little population of Drosera regia left in southafrica. We had the great chance to visit that place during our trip there. The plants are growing in dense vegetation and are rather hard to take pictures of.

Christian

 

[jimscott]

I have hard time keeping this one going. I usually get one leaf emerging, one leaf peaking, and one leaf in decline.

 

[pappydew]

Wow, that vegetation is pretty dense...you'd miss them if you weren't looking close enough

 

[Christian Dietz]

Hi,

btw, this population consists only of about 50 plants. These are the last ones growing in nature! There are hundreds more in cultivation than still exist in habitat.

The dense vegetation is the biggest problem for D. regia. The plants are just overgrown from them.

Btw, this location is almost unfindable if you do not know exactly where to look. I doubt that anyone can find the plants just buy luck. It's a more complicated work to that place and you will only see the plants if you almost walked over them. We had to remove some grass to take the pictures. As we did not want to disturb them too much, we only removed a bit of grass and left most of them untouched. A fire is urgently needed there to ensure the survival of this unique plant! The other know location of this plant is already extinct due to overgrowing grasses. The same might happen to these last remaining plants there!

regards,
Christian

 

[dewy]

That's really very sad that they are being overgrown like that.. Is there anyways something can be done to prevent them from dying out? If they all die out is it possible that they might be reintroduced back into the region or probably not?

 

[pappydew]

I wonder if controlled burns are an option

 

[Tamlin Dawnstar]

One of the most ancient Drosera species. Perhaps a concerted letter writing campaign to the landowners might convince them to burn off the grass? Thanks again for sharing. I'm seeing things I never hoped to see.

 

[dashman]

Let's pray a lightning storm is near.

 

[flytraplady5]

Thanx for sharing these photos as this is one place that i will ever visit
I was successful in getting seeds from one of these plants few years back. haven't had a decentsized plant lately to try it again.