FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My Drosera capensis Bain's Kloof Mother-Plant has been getting too tall.
The stem is so tall that adequate nutrients can't reach the growing point any more.
The new growth has been looking ragged, lately.
The best way to fix this is to chop up your Mother-Plant and start each segment as a new plant.
I dug up the old plant and cleaned the old media off the roots.
I removed the old dried leaves.
I mixed up fresh 2:1 peat:perlite media.
I transplanted into a 5 x 5 x 7 inch pot.
I made the first cut right at ground level.
She gets the benefit of the entire root system.
I chopped the aboveground stem into two pieces.
One contains just the growth point and 1/4 inch of the stem.
The other contains the remainder of the stem.
I buried the stems vertically, their cut end even with the top of the new media.
The roots will grow a new stem and leaves.
The buried stems will grow new roots and a new growth point.
There were a couple Pot Squatters in the old pot. They got transplanted along with Mother.
I bagged it up and will leave it bagged for 4 weeks.
Then I'll see if there is any new growth.

Looking at the photo, I could have cut up the roots into hundreds of segments and started a clone army of hundreds of identical Bain's Kloof Cape Sundews.
But I believe in quality over quantity.
I've had this plant since January of 2017.
It has always been one of my favorite plants.
You have to treat your Mother-Plants right!

Could you do the same for Drosera madagascariensis? That is a very interesting way to propagate drosera, I have never heard of that way before.

sanguinearocks101 wrote: ↑Thu May 21, 2020 2:44 am Could you do the same for Drosera madagascariensis? That is a very interesting way to propagate drosera, I have never heard of that way before.

Yes you can.
I think it was Adrian Slack in his first book who wrote up this propagation technique.
He called it decapitation.
Cut off a plant at ground level, the roots grow a new plant, the plant, inserted in media, grows new roots.

D. madagascariensis is a perfect candidate for this method of propagation.
It's particularly good when the vertical stem gets too thin to support the plant and it keeps toppling over on you.
I have a Drosera madagascariensis that's about 7 or 8 inches tall with three heads.
I call him Cerberus.
I have him staked to a tall Bamboo skewer to keep him upright.
One of these days, I'll clean him up and chop him up too.

Very cool. Learned a lot just from reading that. I just purchased what I hope to be bain's kloof seeds a couple days ago. Was inspired by seeing how awesome the plant is from the last time you guys were talking about it. Still going to give the auction a shot though, because idk what to expect from the seeds.

Awesome technique. Hope it does well

There is new growth from the section of stem attached to the roots.
That took about 5 1/2 weeks for a new growth point to appear.
I'll post an update photo or two in the next week as time permits.
So Mother survived the operation and is back in business.

Let me tell you, that title made me do a double take. I was all like, is that appropriate for a plant forum? I know it's about Carniverous plants but does the OP harbor a real life Audrey II?

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Here are a couple photos of new growth popping up from the chopped up Mother-Plant.
There appear to be two mature growth points emerging from the buried stem.
This section had the benefits of roots so I'm not surprised it appeared first.
The other major stem cutting has to manufacture roots as well as a new growth point.
I figure another month or so waiting for new growth on that one.