Carnivorous plant developments

The cool thing about having a blog for me is that it's kind of like a lab book. I can detail my methods, make observations and see how things change over time.

Back in May I explained how I took my rather sick scorpioides to a bunch of experts who told me that my poor plant wasn't getting enough light and was growing sparsely. This photo was taken before it got so sick that it lost all of its sticky, bug catching bits. Back then it was sitting in a kitchen window sill in an east facing position. About two months ago we moved it to a warmer, north facing position and despite the fact that its lean is now far worse than before and needs re-potting to correct it (so its new roots are in the ground, not hanging out the side of a pot), it's totally thriving. Look at all of those sticky leaves! And that's a flower sticking out there on the right too.

Scorpioides - May 08


Scorpioides - Nov 08

Then there's the Albany pitcher plant (Cephalotus follicularis) that we picked up in July. Back then it was absolutely tiny, the little pitchers were about 1cm, if that. Now look at it! The big pitchers are about 3cm long now.

Albany pitcher plant - July 08

Albany pitcher plant - November 08

We have a few tubs of Sarracenias (no idea what exact species) that are flowering too. I think the flowers are pretty crazy - peculiar bright green stars, with a weird shaped bit poking out from the middle.

In other carnivorous plant news, a while ago Gina was kind enough to link me this: A gorgeous carnivorous plant calendar by A Print a Day available for download in pdf. I think her work is absolutely gorgeous. She also did some other carnivorous plant prints too in such great colours.

A weekend adventure to The Grampians

Friday morning Gib and I jumped into the car and headed off, filled up the petrol tank and ended up... in The Grampians National Park. It's about 3.5 hours drive from Melbourne - or closer to 4 hours if you forget to take the ring road and end up in Werribee instead (both driver and navigator got distracted by an interesting discussion on Triple J). It's a favourite destination for both Gib and I, although we've never holidayed there together before. We stayed in the National Park camp grounds because they're dirt cheap - you get drop toilets and no showers, but we were only intending to stay overnight anyway... but it ended up being two nights. We slept in the back of the station wagon: a convenient, portable "tent". Amazingly, the weather was perfectly cold and sunny the whole time we were there. After all the hiking we did, we were quick to leap into the shower when we got home.

The view out the back of our "tent". There were plenty of kangaroos in the vegetation.

We were a little unprepared: We had gin, tonic water and even limes, but no cups. Cups would have also been useful for the tinned soup we brought. A few extra bottles of water wouldn't have gone astray either, but we managed to make some good camping improvisations by getting water from waterfalls and boiling it for ages. We made pancakes out of tonic water. Perhaps an extra pair of warm pants wouldn't have gone astray either as it was extraordinarily cold at night.

Day one: McKenzie Falls and Briggs Bluff

We stayed at Smith's Mill camp ground, which is stones throw to the McKenzie falls. We sat in the car park having the classic camping breakfast: bite the middle out of a piece of bread and crack an egg into the middle and fry it up til it's all golden on the outside and gooey on the inside, but we had a hard time fending off a family of 12 carrawongs. We were down at the falls nice and early, about 8am, but still by 8:30 there was a crowd of tourists coming down. The McKenzie falls are far more impressive in winter than summer.

Breakfast at McKenzie falls

Gib at McKenzie falls

The Briggs Bluff walk was fantastic. It was about 4 hours return (estimated 3.5, but we took a wrong turn). While the view from the top wasn't nearly as breathtaking as other climbs, the walk itself was stunning. The terrain was so varied on the way to the top, starting with Beehive Falls, through forest, large boulders and sandstone, and other parts were open, rocky and swampy.

We were astounded at the number of carnivorous plants we found. Until a few months ago we hardly knew anything about carnivorous plants. Then after going to just a couple of the Victorian Carnivorous Plant Society meetings for advice on our plants, we learned that there were more than just Venus fly traps and your standard pitcher plants. Just by sitting in on meeting we absorbed information about the local, native species, and while we were in the Grampians we were able to spot them everywhere. It's amazing what's right under your nose without even knowing. I'm sure I've seen these plants a thousand times and thought they were just another moss or something.

Various carnivorous plants on the way to the top of Brigg's bluff

On the way to the Grampians we had joked about whether we'd see any Asterolasia phebalioides, the endangered plant that I picked up and have struggled to keep. l specimens, about a metre tall, with light green fluffy leaves, looking much happier than mine. I have wanted to see them growing so I can get a better idea on how to better manage my one at home. They're only found in a few pockets around Australia, and only in a handful of places in the Grampians. On the way up to the bluff we saw other Asterolasia but not the A phebalioides, but then to my absolute astonishment I found one on the way back. Beautiful, about a metre tall with thick light green leaves, looking much healthier than my one. Then we started spotting them all over the place in an area about 2/3 of the way to the top of the bluff. Coincidentally we'd found the best spot for them. Apparently the area surrounding Beehive Falls is home to the largest population.

A healthier specimin of Asterolasia phebalioides

Day two: Mount Stapylton

My favourite walk in the Grampians, up until now, has been Mount Hollow. I think that has now been surpassed by the walk up Mt Stapylton. The entire way along the walk is totally amazing: there are beautiful, sheer rock faces and stunning views the whole way. It's easy to navigate and the first part is a flat surface but quite steep, and then it sweeps down to an easy forest track. You walk past the Taipan Walls which are spectacular orange cliffs, through more shrubbery and then climb up some rocks to the first ledge. I was thinking at this point that it wasn't so bad, what are all of the reviews talking about when they say that people never make it to the top? It's at this is the point in the track where the yellow markers end and the red markers begin.

The red section of the track isn't so much physically challenging (it's definitely tougher but there are plenty of knobbly rocky hand holds) but it's a test of your mind. We took the red arrow to the left, which leads you across a couple of very precarious ledges. The first was about a foot wide and then you have to climb up through a narrow hole onto another rather precarious ledge which is a bit less than a foot wide and much more exposed. My toes are going numb just writing about it now. There's a nice flat rock face angling back that you can cling to for your life and eventually you reach a rocky outcrop with some rock pools. I don't particularly like heights, but this was the first time I've felt physically ill from heights. I think I could have coped better if there wasn't so much wind. I looked up and there was one short, final scramble to the top. It was steep and even more exposed. The hair raising experience on the previous ledges had totally done my head in and I just could not bring myself to do the last bit. I sat admiring the stunning view in a tight ball of petrified mess, wondering how on earth I'd make it down. Gib leaped like a mountain goat to the top, took videos and everything (bastard). He tells me that the ledges were much harder and that the last section is quite easy: just climb up through some nobbly rocks and you're there.

Will I do it again? Absolutely!

The track leading to Mt Stapylton peak. The orange cliffs are the Taipan walls, a popular place for rock climbing.

Me, freaking out, not far from the final ledge near the peak. The narrow path below me is about 2 meters wide at that point. The trees behind me are a couple of hundred meters below me (refer to picture above - you can see where the line of trees are below the shelf that I'm on).

New additions to the carnivorous collection

Meet our new purple pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) and Albany pitcher plant (Cephalotus follicularis, a Western Australian native) which were so kindly given to us by the Victorian Carnivorous Plant Society. The S. purpurea is currently living on the back verandah and we are ignoring it for a while. Apparently that's the thing to do with them in winter.


The C. follicularis is sitting in a north facing windowsill. There was another one growing on the same windowsill, and it grew very successfully (until it was moved to Gib's brother's greenhouse, where it was supposed to help it grow, but instead it died). I think these ones are quite cute, in their own little way! They're tiny at the moment, maybe 1cm big at most, but they grow to about 2-5 cm.


And meet my cat, Zoe. She is definitely not a "bright" cat (she is strange and stupid to a level you just will not believe unless you meet her), but she is beatiful nonetheless and I love her to bits and my most favourite cat we have ever had (probably because she is impossible to understand. Even the most aloof cats you can predict and understand eventually). Anyway, here she is sitting outside our kitchen window, wearing a wonderful garland of cobwebs, dead leaves and dead beauganvillia flowers. In the front of the photo you can see our sundews and venus fly traps too! We've had those for a while though.

Sticky plant questions answered!

A while back I made mention of our little carnivorous garden living on our kitchen window sill. One in particular, the Drosera scorpioides, has been struggling ever since we got it. It has been attacked by aphids several times, it's been slow to grow and it has lost its little sticky growths to catch bugs that it had back in March. So last night we decided to visit the monthly Victorian Carnivorous Plant Society meeting to see if they could tell us what we were doing wrong.

Drosera scorpioides - not enough light

From what we learned last night, it seems that all of our plants simply need more sun, especially the D. scorpiodes and also all of our plants need surprisingly less water than we realised, especially during winter. In fact, overwatering is probably the reason why our Cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica) died practically overnight just a few weeks back. What fascinated me was the extensive root system all of these plants have. For such small plants, their roots are massive! Everyone at the meeting was very friendly and helpful and weren't total nutters, so it was a very enjoyable night. We met one guy from Hobart who was visiting for the evening, so when we got to Tasmania in October, he has offered to give us a tour of the carnivous plants in the area. Apparently the better time to see canivorous plants in Tasmania is in late February, but we should still be able to see a few things.

Our cobra lily - RIP. Sorry for overwatering you!

Some very cool plants

One of the members generously donated this little one to us! Not sure what it is exactly, it's from South Africa though. Hopefully we will have more luck with this one than the scorioides...

The carnivorous plant collection

These carnivorous plants are some of my absolute favourite plants in our collection: they're both pretty (in my opinion anyway!) and functional. They sit on the kitchen window sill and brighten the whole place up - and keep those pesky pantry moths down too.

The smaller plant on the left is a cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica), named for obvious reasons. The little "tongues" on these guys are fantastic, such interesting little plants. They're very fussy, but amazingly we've had some luck with this one.

The bigger plant is my own personal favourite: Sarracenia flava. It's colloquially known as a 'cut throat' because in more mature plants a red splattered line forms across the neck of the leaves, but I just liked it because the shape of the leaves look almost alien! For a while I had this plant sitting in my work office and it became the focus of many office conversations. People were always shocked to learn that it was carnivorous (although I never mentioned its colloquial name! That'd really freak em out) and they'd lose interest in it after that, like it was socially unacceptable to enjoy a plant that supplements its diet with bugs. I don't really know!

Below, on the left, of course we have the classic carnivorous plant: the Venus fly trap. This one is growing well in this position, with nice, large leaves during spring/summer. The central pot in this photo has a Sarracenia flava plant growing amongst two types of sun dews: a Drosera capensis and a bifucating sundew (Drosera binata; the leaves are two pronged).


Finally we have our Sarracenia leucophylla: white pitcher plant. You can definitely see from the top of the leaves that it's related to the cut throat above. Gib particularly liked the white head on this one, with red veins all through it. In the bottom of the pot you can see an extra little venus fly trap growing too; it was a freebie that just popped up in the pot. (The giant vine you can see on the decking in the background is a native passionfruit but unfortunately its fruit can't be eaten).