Re: Sarr-Droso-Darling-Utric

Paul Temple (temple_p@bst.dec.com)
Thu, 27 Oct 94 20:38:16 +0000

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Barry

>Does anyone here have luck with U. menziesii? I'm good with tropical Utrics
>and Genlisea, as well as Tuberous Drosera. How the heck do I grow
>U.menziesii? I am trying to treat it as a tuberous Drosera but have lost a
>pot already. In the past treating it as a tropical has been equally pathetic.

Well, my claim to fame was that I was the first person to be recorded
as having flowered U. menziuessii in the UK, so I guess I must have
been doing something right!

Advice:

I use just an ordinary mix of moss peat (i.e. peat) and horticultural
sand, about equal parts but it doesn't seem to matter much. When you
can see any green component (i.e. sign of life) above the soil surface,
stand in a lot of water, i.e. keep wet. This does correspond to the
plants growth during the wet season, where apparentlky it surfaces on
little mounds above seasonal flooding.

When dormant, Adrian Slack's masterpiece recommends completely drying
out the soil and you might even be forgiven for therefore assuming you
can dig up your plants and store them dry. Do not. During dormancy
keep the soil just damp, e.g. with once a week watering or by standing
the pot on capillary matting kept damp from a reservoir.

Keeping the plant bone dry in dormancy seems to exhaust the poor little
tubers which get all too readily drained and disappear into infinity
(damn, another chance missed to be more anatomical in my description).

Hope this helps. Facinated that an Aussie might care to contradict -
too little ecological information available on this plant.

Regards

Paul