FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

so I upgraded from the cheaaaaaaaapo wobbly chinese focusing rail I was using to a much more solid older vivitar that for the $20 or so I paid is a most excellent upgrade until the days when I might want to spend $300+ on something new....(never)

we were checking out the leaf pulls from the generous box Hollyhock sent and low and behold 3 leaf strikes already from the P. rotundifolia x gracilis leaves she sent along!


P. Rotundifolia x Gracilis really large photo of a really tiny blossom. this is uncropped but resized down full resolution it is 22.5" x 14.5" !


pulled back shot for scale/reference showing some of the other smaller strikes!


D. Capensis ' Wide Leaf' one of the other plants recovering nicely after shipping!


here is an update on our own D. Capensis 'Wide Leaf' seedlings that we were growing but I killed mostly by letting it dry out once, back to recovered and growing rapidly now that they are. there are approximately 20 that have now resumed or have started to resume new growth from the fully lifeless and blacked stuff that had shown no life for 3 weeks now!


D. Intermedia seedlings. we uhh forgot cold stratification originally on these back in September so in November made a few 2" containers with moss and loads of seeds and fridged them, removed them from the fridge 12/3 mass seedlings popped out by 12/20. this is them at of 1/8 and they've began getting maxsea treatments and have acclimated to not being bagged and are under the light soaking it in! these were from seeds harvested by the kid from the two drosera she picked out at the UNCC gardens that they had for sale! so taking it full circle from harvest to growing more, we have some plants for this!

Heck yeah for updates and macro shots! Glad to see those seedlings are making a come back. I continue to torture mine and they're still holding up. Excited to see my cold stratified seeds do something. Still waiting. Lol

Mawy_Plants wrote:Heck yeah for updates and macro shots! Glad to see those seedlings are making a come back. I continue to torture mine and they're still holding up. Excited to see my cold stratified seeds do something. Still waiting. Lol

I'm hoping the extra Sessilifolia seeds I held back from the first attempt germinate now that I've tossed them in (after killing their other siblings in that dryout whoops). no sign of life of them after about a month now (the others started in under two weeks...but they were covered so hoping bagging things back up we will get those going again too!)

glad you like the shots! those were really meant to just be more of test shots than anything with the rail but I was impressed enough to want to post them either way! the leaf strike was exceptionally cool I thought at least for first timers like us with them. the latest thing the kid has been learning a little about as she wants to is what I'm doing with the stacked photos and how it works she let help line me up to start that series of shots on the ping strike, and since we use a lil cheapo wired shutter release button she sits down to be the honorary button masher for me

Love the Ping macro shots, I'll have to trade you for one when they grow up!

playing around again last night and snapped some more photos with the slowly evolving and improving macro setup still playing a never ending battle against lighting (that is the you know...constant battle in all photography!) but I'm starting to love some of the results:

first up, one of the Cephalotus picked up for the wife is starting to color up nicely under the lights, snapped a few photos of this handsome thing. both plants have about 5 new leaves emerging at the moment so looks like they are finally settled in!




up next we have a photo of the D. Intermedia now that they are a bit bigger! with a penny for perspective (in a 2" pot)


after we killed all the old sessifolia (and capensis) by accident we sprinkled the remaining half of the seeds into the try - ended up bagging the whole thing for two weeks to see if maybe we couldn't speed things up (nothing was germinated after about 2 weeks) removed from bag and low and behold sprouts all over! they are still very very tiny! one photo is showing the larger of the seedlings with a penny for perspective, the other photo I don't think is good by any means, but it clearly shows the different stages of how the plants emerge and develop on the various seeds and emerging buds in the photo so I saved it and showed and pointed it all out with the kid. she was not as interested as I was in showing her, but sometimes... dads are boring.





lastly the pothopping drosera that came with one of the Cephalotus has put up flower stalks, the plant *looks* to be D. Tokaiensis, thought the curl of the flower stalks was neat so snapped a couple photos of it

Hey John you should check out macro flash rings on amazon. They have some for pretty reasonable prices. As low as $20-$25. Nice shots by the way.

thanks KK -- I ended up not liking most of the cheaper flash rings out there - I've been collecting the bit and pieces I need to properly move our flash off camera and get it positioned where I want -- got most of the pieces now, just need to work on making the diffuser I want to build next!

it should be a nice step up once the rest of the random parts roll in.

also started using out tablet as a 7" live screen/viewer (and minor control adjustments) waiting on the rest of the pieces for how I'm mounting that in our setup also. it is nice to get a full resolution 10x digital zoom i can drag on the tablet vs the compressed view on camera- already able to hit much more precise points with focus to make sure I get the sharp focus i want in certain edges -- I look forward to keeping moving forward!

thx for the feedback also! as with all things...including the plants... a work in progress haha