Ladies and laddies and everyone
I'd like to discuss a bit of a cultivator's enigma: an unexpected morph of a fairly common plant, D. aliciae, dramatically and unexpectedly exhibiting low-light foliage. This caused a fair amount of confusion on Facebook, where growers speculated for a time that it was not in fact D. aliciae at all, but D. cuneifolia! I think this brings forth two points.
Firstly, we might be giving our sundews too much light. Many of us focus exclusively on irradiating our plants into tiny jewels covered in lush drops of dew and awash with a beautiful palette of oranges, reds, yellows, and the coveted deep maroon. But in our obsession over color and dewiness we forget that in nature these plants experience a wide range of sun exposures. Sometimes in lower light intensity, plants take on remarkable and unexpected designs. They may expand, broaden their leaves, even change their growth patterns, and these changes remain hidden in the static environment of a light setup. There, even the most careful grower can limit, unintentionally, the variable growth that can come out of even one plant. Even if it does mean sacrificing their fantastic traits of color to shape, compact little gems can become grand, almost "architectural" marvels, and express themselves in ways many of us forget is possible.
Second, these multiple expressions of growth are often telling of the specific taxonomy of the plant. Originally, as seen in the first link, this plant was more or less a generic D. aliciae, without location data or any outstanding characteristics. But in the second link the nature of the plant comes out under much weaker light. It has transformed from a dewey mass into a wide platter of cuneate leaves. This has led some to speculate on its taxonomy: is it merely D. aliciae from Silvermine, D. cuneifolia, or even a hybrid between the two?
Truthfully, either plant (they are the same one photographed under different conditions, 6 months apart) is desirable for different reasons, but as far as celebrity plants go the first has the cultivator's precedence in the hobbyist's world these days, if only by virtue of the fashionable status extremely colorful plants hold above greener, broader ones. Just one look at SundewGrowGuides makes one salivate over the tasteful potentials that high light intensity offers.
Flickr Summer, outdoors, Portland Oregon.
Flickr Winter, indoors, basement, temps in the 60s, 70s, significant temp drops at night into high 50s. Over a foot away from t-5 high output florescent bulbs.
Please comment and let me know what you think about this! And the jury is still out: is it actually D. aliciae?
I'd like to discuss a bit of a cultivator's enigma: an unexpected morph of a fairly common plant, D. aliciae, dramatically and unexpectedly exhibiting low-light foliage. This caused a fair amount of confusion on Facebook, where growers speculated for a time that it was not in fact D. aliciae at all, but D. cuneifolia! I think this brings forth two points.
Firstly, we might be giving our sundews too much light. Many of us focus exclusively on irradiating our plants into tiny jewels covered in lush drops of dew and awash with a beautiful palette of oranges, reds, yellows, and the coveted deep maroon. But in our obsession over color and dewiness we forget that in nature these plants experience a wide range of sun exposures. Sometimes in lower light intensity, plants take on remarkable and unexpected designs. They may expand, broaden their leaves, even change their growth patterns, and these changes remain hidden in the static environment of a light setup. There, even the most careful grower can limit, unintentionally, the variable growth that can come out of even one plant. Even if it does mean sacrificing their fantastic traits of color to shape, compact little gems can become grand, almost "architectural" marvels, and express themselves in ways many of us forget is possible.
Second, these multiple expressions of growth are often telling of the specific taxonomy of the plant. Originally, as seen in the first link, this plant was more or less a generic D. aliciae, without location data or any outstanding characteristics. But in the second link the nature of the plant comes out under much weaker light. It has transformed from a dewey mass into a wide platter of cuneate leaves. This has led some to speculate on its taxonomy: is it merely D. aliciae from Silvermine, D. cuneifolia, or even a hybrid between the two?
Truthfully, either plant (they are the same one photographed under different conditions, 6 months apart) is desirable for different reasons, but as far as celebrity plants go the first has the cultivator's precedence in the hobbyist's world these days, if only by virtue of the fashionable status extremely colorful plants hold above greener, broader ones. Just one look at SundewGrowGuides makes one salivate over the tasteful potentials that high light intensity offers.
Flickr Summer, outdoors, Portland Oregon.
Flickr Winter, indoors, basement, temps in the 60s, 70s, significant temp drops at night into high 50s. Over a foot away from t-5 high output florescent bulbs.
Please comment and let me know what you think about this! And the jury is still out: is it actually D. aliciae?
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