U. gibba

[goldtrap2690]

i got a u. gibba that i got from spec , its cool but how do i stimulate it to flower , i hear that you have to lower the water table until the plant goes all the way down to the peat .

 

[Vic Brown]

A low water table so that the plants are growing as semi-aquatics, and also you need a very crowded mass of stolons to get it to flower. Whilst U. gibba grows very well at low light levels, they need some direct sunlight to flower well too.

The picture below is not from my plants, but one I took at a friends collection last week, it is growing as described above, and having seen how, I will be changing my growing conditions.

Vic

 

[goldtrap2690]

thanks

 

[Wesley]

Pretty flower! It makes me want to retry growing a U. gibba. I killed my last one. I let it get to hot with to much direct sunlight.

 

[Giles_KS]

I grow U. gibba in a shallow plastic container with a layer of peat on the bottom, just about covered in water (although the peat slopes a bit so it isn't all covered). I also have D. intermedia & U. tricolor in there (plus U. lateriflora and U. subulata as weeds). The gibba grows and flowers OK like that in the greenhouse in sun. I think the main thing is that the plant has to be resting on something before it can flower - Lowrie has pictures of flowering plants supported by algal mats.

Giles