FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

"Big Pink" is an unregistered cultivar, or variety of Drosera capensis-- a large warm temperate species from South Africa. The species is arguably the most magnificent and overlooked species in our hobby. I'm happy to see the climbing interest in this large, and red colored variety. But along with its rising popularity has also arisen some confusion about its traits and about what happens when "Big Pink" selfs and produces seeds. Moreover, after growing this variety extensively for a few years, I feel it deserves a more formal description/and/or discussion.

In late December of 2014 I received three small plants in the mail from Josh at Carnivorous plant connection (flytrapking now) which is the original source of this variety.

Since then I have been able to raise hundreds of individuals via cuttings:

My original plants the day they arrived


Propagation



Though Josh hasn't formally described the variety, on his website he says:

"Big Pink" is the fastest growing, largest and most colorful cape sundew cultivar.

And I have to say I agree! Although the leaves might not be the largest of the varieties, it can hold onto a huge amount of leaves even in sub-optimal conditions. Here's one that got quite large in my conditions 2015-2016.



On a more detailed note, "Big Pink" does vary a lot from the cultivar "All red". "Big Pink" tends to have longer and much slender petioles. "Big Pink" does not color up as readily as "All red", and grows much faster, stemming along the way. In fact, when fed often "Big Pink" will not redden at all... only darker tentacles will be noticeable.

"Big Pink" is thought to originate from a Drosera capensis 'Albino' x Drosera capensis "All red" cross, which may explain its tendency to color up less than the vanilla "All red". "Big Pink" flowers often, and when the seeds are planted, something, perhaps unexpected, happens. The selfed progeny of "Big Pink" result in a mixture of red plants and 'Albino' seedlings in a 9:1 ratio approximately. As far as is reported, none of the F1 generation of "Big Pink" have the vigor of the parents, in fact the red seedlings for all intents and purposes seem identical to "All red" varieties.

When selfed, "Big Pink" struggles to produce much viable seed, despite developing massive inflorescence with many small individual flowers. The flower morphology is also somewhat unique within the species, aside from occasionally being huge, the stigma may be highly flared and lobed more than other varieties.





Note the flared stigmas. Zoom in on the photos for more detail.


Outcrossing different varieties is a largely unexplored area in Drosera and especially capensis. However, I have made these crosses with "Big Pink" and have the following notes:

Drosera capensis "Big Pink" x 'Albino'
Fairly straightforward cross which yielded simply a higher ratio of 'Alba' to "All red" around 5:4 in favor of alba. Moreover, no new or novel specimens are observed. Although sometimes I think I see a slight elongation in the leaves of the 'Albino' plants not seen in norm, but that is not definitive. I'm currently working on the reverse cross (TBC).

"Big Pink" x 'Albino' experiment


Drosera capensis "Wideleaf" x "Big Pink"
In this cross I used an absolutely excellent, vigorous, large and very wideleafed "Wideleaf" specimen I originally obtained from Meadowview with my other favorite capensis I created a cross that is pretty special to me. Nearly all the plants of this cross are extremely vigorous, rivaling "typical" and "Big Pink". They occasionally blush light to dark red on their leaves, and particularly the old/dying leaves. Some widening of the blades and petioles is more obvious on some specimens than others.

Grow bin of the "Wideleaf" x "Big Pink" and reverse crosses




As they mature I have noticed that some specimens more strongly retain the "Wideleaf" blade to petiole length ratio (photos soon) than the longer petiole to blade ratio in "Big Pink" whilst the petiole remains slender in both iterations of this cross. This makes for an interesting leaf type. See the reverse cross-



Drosera capensis "Big Pink" x "Wideleaf"
This reverse cross is somewhat dissimilar to the previous. Firstly, some 'Albino' plants may be found. Generally, the non-albino specimens are much less vigorous, more red with shorter and slimmer petioles but wider and paddle-like leaf blades especially when young. Although they are darker and have wider leaf blades, they are less impressive in size and growth. The production of this hybrid was also harder to make because "Big Pink" seems to struggle making seed, whilst donating pollen from "Big Pink" to "Wideleaf" doesn't seem to be an issue.

Paddle-like red leaves




Updated 11/24/18

Great write up David! Thank you for sharing. Is there a trick to getting big pink to self pollinate? I recently had one flower, and not one pod was viable. Do I need to break out the tweezers and paintbrush?

I'll be trying several crosses with this plant sometime this summer, so any tips with crossing it would be greatly appreciated as well.

http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/board ... 30434.html
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boarderlib wrote:Great write up David! Thank you for sharing. Is there a trick to getting big pink to self pollinate? I recently had one flower, and not one pod was viable. Do I need to break out the tweezers and paintbrush?

I'll be trying several crosses with this plant sometime this summer, so any tips with crossing it would be greatly appreciated as well.

http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/board ... 30434.html
http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/board ... 31990.html

Boarderlib, I commend you for using this cultivar to make crosses. Hybridizing Drosera is an unexplored area in the hobby. So let's just talk about it for a minute.

Firstly, to answer you question, it is acceptable to store pollen in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks keeping it viable if you're waiting for other flowers to open up. When two plants are flowering, keep track of which flowers have opened and closed-- as you may discover you are simply missing the time that the flowers are opening. I would check on them for the first few hours the growlights are on in the morning, and the last few hours the growlights are still on at night.

You're better off harvesting the anther and let the pollen ripen than using an anther which has no pollen to begin with. Without visible loose pollen, you will notice fewer seeds.

In regards to "Big Pink" as a candidate for hybrids: what is good or bad? Pros and cons?

Natch Greyes and I once discussed the idea that "Big Pink"s vigor comes from a genetic recombination byproduct of its parentage. In a sense, despite the parents being the same species, there may be the effects of hybrid vigor known as heterosis. If you're familiar with a bit of genetics, heterosis is the phenomenon when isolated lineages (such as cultivars or varieties in cultivation) which only breed with themselves, or selfing, accumulate homozygous alleles. Crossing plants restores heterozygosity in the lineage. This is probably why we see vigor in the "Big Pink" varieties.

However, crossing any capensis with another species will surely result in a novel combination. So, based on that, the interesting restored heterozygosity of "Big Pink" may not contribute greatly to the cross. These assumptions and ideas may be wrong. Also, "Big Pink" does not accept pollen from other species easily, but can be a great pollen donator as it produces big flowers on large inflorescences often.

A good example of a capensis which is great for outcrossing is 'Albino'. For whatever reason, 'Albino' makes a lot of viable pollen throughout its flowering stage, the pollen just seems to always be ripe. It accepts other pollen types readily and produces a lot of seed. A lot of awesome capensis hybrids have been made using 'Albino' as well as typical.

So overall you may struggle to make a viable cross with "Big Pink" there is a chance you'll see something we haven't seen from hybrids yet, which makes it worth the extra trouble in my opinion.

I also have a lot of paddle-like seedlings. I have mixed typical and alba D. capensis. I think that paddle shape is caused because they are still juvenile. It will go away as they grow larger.

The other thing is, like OP mentioned before, some seedlings are vigorous. Extremely vigorous, compared to most of other seedlings. The ones with paddle shaped leaves are like 10 times larger. Most of those larger seedlings are alba or alba-like.

When I read this topic, I decided to give them all a decent meal. Now, they can all grow even larger.

PS: I have sown typical-alba mix, typical and Alba seeds together into a ice cream container. I wanted to test germination. It was a success. I wrote about it both here and on my blog. I have had quite a lot of seeds this year.

I love topics like this one, keep them coming.

Updated 11/24/18