Until recently I'd never even heard of the Venus fly trap clone "A2" developed by Henning von Schmeling.  I was exchanging some emails with David Conner and he mentioned it in passing.  I was immediately interested and went on the look for a trade.  I was able to secure myself a clone from the very generous Jeremiah Harris of the Colorado Carnivorous Plant Society.

I received the clone in the mail today, January 16th, 2010 and immediately potted it up.  It's a rather healthy looking dormant plant with good coloration.  I'm excited to see what it looks like during the growing season.

Here are a couple of photos of what it looked like after I potted it up.

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I put seed that I acquired from Steve Doonan of flytrapranch.com in vitro on March 9th.  I had written a couple of blog entries updating their growth:
Dionaea Seedlings in vitro Dionaea Seedlings in vitro - Update #1

Well, two weeks and two days ago on August 6th, I took some of them out of their safe little jars and brought them into the world.  You can see a thread I started with photos here:
Dionaea seedlings forum post

I thought that I would provide a little update on their status now that they've been ex vitro for two weeks.  They're doing great!  They look a little dried out, but I'm guessing that this is normal for plants coming out of 100% humidity into 40% humidity.  I kept them wrapped under plastic wrap for 2 weeks to artificially raise the ambient humidity for them and the last two days they've been on their own with whatever humidity level is in the house, which is around 40% right now.

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So Leah and I finally made the move to Ashland, Oregon.  Since getting settled in, I've got my new greenhouse set up!  I'm very excited about that.  It gives me plenty of room to expand my collection.

Unfortunately I kept most of my collection inside under fluorescent lights this spring in order to try to keep them cleaner so I could gather tissue for tissue culture.  When we arrived here in Ashland, I planned to just put them out in the greenhouse and let them acclimate.  I had no idea that the temperatures would be over 100°F the week we got here.  Between the heat and the intense sun that they weren't used to, most of them burned to a crisp!

The plants in these photos were either outside when we were living in Boulder, have recovered or, for one reason or another, weren't affected as badly by making the move from fluorescent lights to direct sunlight.

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Previously, on "Niels and the Insectivores": Yay! A flesh eating plant! ... Oh No! Fungus!

And now... The story continues.

"Come on Donnie 1, 2 and 3. You can make it!" said Niels in an encouraging manner to his pretty small plants. For weeks now, he had seen new leafs emerging and getting burnt by the huge Fusion Reactor in the sky, followed by new leafs emerging but not getting quite bigger than the previous ones. Tired of playing the waiting game, Niels decided to acquire some more Flytraps to inspire Donnie 1, 2 and 3, and to help them remember what they were growing to become actually.

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Just a quick couple of photos before I head out of town for a couple of weeks.  It's looking pretty good!

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This chapter takes place 3 years in the future when going back to 2005.

It was a long hot dry summer day and the Homo Sapiens Niels celebrated his 25th anniversary of escaping the motherly prison. He told stories to his mating partner about plants that could swallow elephants in 5 seconds but of course she did not believe him. Obvious however, was the fact that Niels seemed to be interested in some specific plants, who were taking revenge on the vegetarian animal kingdom for eating their kind, by eating their pet bugs.  Loving as Niels' mate was, she endeavored on a mission to find these legendary plants. Being a meat eater herself and hating mosquitoes, she did not fear these plants under the motto: The enemy of my enemy is my friend!

Making her way through the city jungle, she arrived at the Jan Breydelstreet in Ghent and gazed upon a piece of real jungle. It was there, that she found the shop "Papaver" who had some bug hating flora for sale. Not really impressed by the rather passive drowning tactics of a Sarracenia, she deemed an active sadistic Flytrap a worthy gift to celebrate the 25 year old bravery of her mate.

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So, it's been a week since I posted a photo of what I thought was callus forming on one of my cupped trap leaves.  You can see the blog entry here: Callus forming on Cupped Trap in tissue culture

Well, I thought I would give an update with some photos.  It's definitely callus and it's definitely progressing quickly!

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So after many failed attempts at establishing an explant in vitro, I think I finally might have had success.  On February 23rd, I put a lot of tissue from Dionaea muscipula 'Cupped Trap', 'Sawtooth', and 'Fused Tooth' into cultures.  All of them either died or got contaminated so far except one.  See the photo below:

That looks like the beginning of callus formation to me!  Finally tissue culture success with explants!  Man, micropropagation of carnivorous plants is extremely difficult if you're starting with explants.   Seeds are a breeze, but then of course you aren't guaranteed what type of plant you're going to get from seeds.

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I'm not sure what this is or if it's harmful to the explant, but I think it's from over sterilizing the tissue.

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I was looking over my plants yesterday morning and I saw that my Dionaea 'Jaws' plant had made a pretty unusual catch.

I've never seen two bugs caught at the same time before.  Not a surprise that it was the ever present Boxelder bugs, but I still thought it was pretty awesome and that I should share a photo of it.

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