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Ping "babies"

Hi All,

I have a couple of pings that were amazing in their production of deep pink flowers this spring, and they also developed several "babies". I need to know how to separate these babies from the parent plant (or if I should), what growth medium to mix, etc., so I can have even more pings!

Thanks!

cpwitch
 
Hi cpwitch and welcome to the forums! Do you know what kind of pings they are? If it weren't for the color description, I would have thought that you have P. primuliflora and the "babies" were vegetatively produced plantlets. In which case, I would have strongly advised you to just leave them be. I have tried separating those and ended up losing them,one by one. P, primuliflora has a developed root sysytem and is best propogated by letting them naturally spread. It is senistive to being moved and has iris-colored flowers. However, if you have a Mexican ping, the color is pink and the roots are not nearly as developed. They are much friendlier to being moved around and the plantlets don't react to being separated. In my opinion, to be safe, I would leave things as they are, and wait a little longer until the babies grow up. They will separate themselves. But if you want to do that now, I would use tweezers, one to hold the parent in place and one to apply the separation. I'm sure that there are other ways, too!
 
Thanks for your response! I think my pings may be Mexican pings (?). I got them at Lowe's over a year ago, so they can't be too exotic
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You say the plantlets will eventually separate themselves, but right now they are hanging over the small pot the parent is in. Should I transplant the entire plant into a larger pot? And if so what's a good soil mix? I don't want to do anything to harm them, but also don't want them to be so crowded that they will suffer.

Thanks again!

cpwitch
 
You're welcome! Mexican pings, for me, have been very compliant when being both moved and separating plantlets. It was the P. primuliflora that I practically butchered in those processes. I watched those plantlets die, one by one.

Below are two (not so great pics) of two of my Mexican pings. Do they resemble those?

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Here is a P. primuliflora. does it look more like this?

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Okay, maybe the clarity is suspect.

Soil media: I read so many approaches to ping media and they include LFS, sand, peat, lava rock, perlite - in any combinations. I'm not an expert and haven't done anything more sophisticated than mixing sand & peat, topdressing with LFS. Hopefully, others will chime in and share their mixes. mine grow well, but they don't flower, so there are some variables that I haven't figured out yet.

If you have a larger pot to use - go for it. They're not fussy. To be certain of avoiding shock, what I do is prepare the new pot first, with rinsed, wet media and carve out a hole in the center, to acommodate a "plug" of the plant. By plug, I mean the soil surrounding the plant, with the undisturbed plant itself, moved as one unit to the new pot. Let us know how it goes!
 
Thanks again Jim. I do think I have Mexican pings -- the leaves are fairly broad and seem to match your pictures. I think I'll try to move the entire plants into a larger pot. That way I won't have to separate the babies but there will be ample room for them to spread out. I guess overcrowding isn't as much of a problem for cp's as other plants due to the small root system. The flowers this Spring just blew me away -- so many from one small plant, so amazing. I want to encourage my pings to to a repeat performance next Spring!

cpwitch
 
You're welcome! Hey, wait a minute! Did you say flowers? Um.... we gotta talk. I can't get a mexi-ping to flower if my life depended upon it. P. primulifora... piece-o-cake! The only time I saw flowers from a mexi-ping was in January, when BCK sent me a variety pack and the P. sethos had the very beginnings of a bud. So inherited that one. Another followed and that was it! Mine produce greenish-pink leaf after another, but that's all I get. I have one friend that is reasonably convinced that it is a function of the window pane that is the problem. What are your growing conditions and what do you feed yours?

Yes, overycrowding for plants with small root systems seem to not be an issue.
 
Merry Meet again Galen!

Mexican Ping's have proven to be nearly foolproof when it comes to dividing them. I don't even fuss about it any, just gently tug the babies away from the mother and set them in new compost and put a little mix up against the roots. I use a very loose and aerated mix of 40/40/30 perlite/vermiculite/peat and have the best results keeping a uniform moistness vs wetness, not that I think it matters much as friends grow their's very wet with equally good results. They are very forgiving plants and adapt to almost any substrate mix and moisture level. Mine are left totally dry during the winter months after they form dormant buds, which happens when the daylength shortens, usually along about Samhain or a bit before. I treat mine mostly like echeveria, although with a bit more water during the growing season. If you transplant and get broken off leaves, they will quickly bud if laid on a moist compost and make more plants, again behaving very much like echeveria in that.

Jim, the trick to flowers is giving them enough light, nothing much more than that. With enough light even the resting rosettes flower from time to time. Feeding also helps with the process, but I don't actively feed my plants and still get the flowers
 
Thanks Tamlin. I would venture to say that SE sills isn't quite enough light to induce flowering. Unfortunately, I have the SW ones clustered and tiered with sundews & bladderworts, so the butterworts have taken a backseat, as it were.
 
Granted I have only been exploring Mexican Pinguicula culture for the past nine months or so, but I respectfully disagree that the light from a southeast-facing windowsill would be insufficient to induce flowering.  As long as it is not shaded by any nearby trees or buildings and you do not have triple-paned, insulated windows with UV-protection, then southeastern light would be excellent for most pings.  I have had my own pings in unobstructed eastern, western and southern windowsills all summer long and most have been producing a steady stream of flowers, multiplying like mad and acquiring wonderful tones of red and bronze to their leaves.
 
  • #10
The sill on which they reside are unobstructed, but I'm not sure if there are 1 or 2 windows (1/8" thick) that the sun has to pass through. It is an old building, so i can't imagine there being much sophistication as to them. I am confused as to flowering times, since S.G. indicates 2 times a year - winter and late summer. Ping-Man indicated that I might see some action as photoperiod decreases. I have Utrics that flower on the SE sills, though that doesn't prove anything. A butterwort is different than a bladderwort and the species within the genus differ with respect to ease of flowering. I dunno.
 
  • #11
How often pings flower and what time of the year depends on the type of ping. Some will flower continuously all year long, some will flower while in a winter bud and some will flower just once or twice a year.

The garden centre wesers will even flower on an east facing windowsill. I have one flowering in an east window at the moment. During the winter months I bring many of my butterworts indoors and they happily flower in a west facing window that is double glazed, so the glass is not the problem.

Give your pings time they will probably flower for you eventually
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  • #12
The plants that I have flowering on an east-facing windowsill are Pinguicula 'Sethos', P. 'Aphrodite' and P. 'Titan', but these three are all so hardy that they would probably bloom and grow unphased in a dark cellar.  
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  • #13
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Ispahan @ Aug. 27 2005,7:42)]The plants that I have flowering on an east-facing windowsill are Pinguicula 'Sethos', P. 'Aphrodite' and P. 'Titan', but these three are all so hardy that they would probably bloom and grow unphased in a dark cellar.  
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Except for me! I'm sure I'll figure this out eventually, just like all the other CP's that gave me headaches (Darlingtonia, Byblis liniflora).
 
  • #14
Thanks all for your replies. Jim, my cp's, including my pings, are on my north facing patio and don't get much bright light until around May. They are in a small greenhouse and I have their pots in pans with about a quarter inch of water in them. I had three pings this spring just burst out in flowers -- as many as six flowers on one plant. It doesn't seem as if something that small can produce so many flowers at once! The flowers stayed on for several weeks. That's also when the babies grew off the parent plant. So far all of my cp's seem to like the location and treatment, except for my nepths who live in a terrarium in the house. They like the higher humidity. I live in So. Cal so over the hot summer I open the greenhouse from time to time to keep air circulating. They also get a little more direct sun now. But I must be doing something right as I haven't lost a plant in a long time
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cpwitch
 
  • #15
Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, it's got to be your window glass!

My P. 'Sethos' is sending up another flower stalk right now. My P. 'Wesser' is getting ready to bloom and it is going to be a double hitter. The P. agnata just finished blooming again and so did the P. gypsicola and the P. agnata 'True Blue'. April has the clone to the P. agnata and hers is sending up a flower stalk. My 'John Rizzi' is about ready to bloom and that will be the 4th time this year. Even my little gigantea looks as if it is going to send up a flower scape. And, the U. sandersoni 'Blue' bloomed... again.

Check your window glass before you drive yourself nuts. Maybe you could add two grow lights. If your plants bloom, you've got issues with your glass at work which is what I have suspected all along. It's a laboratory dear, I suspect they have special glass there in all of the windows.  Bye the way, all of my pings are an eastern exposure over here right now. In the winter when they are inside and receiving western light from windows that are Low E II and some with argon, I have to add supplemental lighting or they'd be toast. Low e and argon might be great for some orchids and they definitely reduce fading of textiles and such but they don't do Mexican Pings any justice.
 
  • #16
CPW, Remember when I said that I have a friend that is reasonably convinced that it is the window pane? Well.....

I don't see any names on the panes that the lab has in that old bulding, but they are 1/8" thick. Except for the afore-mentioned U. sandersonni blue that obly sends up 2 stalks, most everything flowers. Only Mexican pings totally refuse to flower. I just moved as many of the pings to SW windows, from the SE windows last week. Laura, I'm gonna ride out the rest of growing season as is and see where we end up moving.
 
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