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Aquatic Utricularias

zozo

Member
Joined
16 Apr 2015
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8,643
Location
Netherlands
Utricularia :) can't help it, but i find this a very special intriguing plant sp. I did some researching on it and was amazed about the number of actualy very beautiful aquatic forms this sp. has.. And none of them ever to find offered at any lfs other than the UG. And if you find some, it's only via special channels for relatively high prices. :)

Anyway after looking around i decided to give the (sub)tropical Utricularia volubilis a go, which has a rather intresting submersed growth and even a delecate emersed flower to offer.
Graines_Utricularia_Volubilis_Seeds_Bladderwort_Plant.jpg

To buy as plant it would cost me about € 40 for 3 little 4 cm plants.. Crazy!! So i decided to order me a bag of seeds so i can propagate it myself and see where it ends.

Any UKAPS members experienced or intrested in growing aquatic Utricularias?? I'm very intrested in what you have to tell about it. :) And willing to try other aquatic U. in the future as well. For now i first try the Volubilis, seeds are on the mail.. :woot:
 
maybe it's easier to get seeds

It is :) till now only found one adress that sells it as plant.. Not realy cheap and with a minimum quantity of 3 plants for the U. Volubillis.
Institute of Botany in Trebon, Czech Republic:

Seeds are found al over the net i ordered 10 seeds from Italy.

Propagation requirements seem to be the same as the Red Australian aquatic Aldrovanda vesiculosa L.(Droseraceae)

But found references on the internet, that even 3 years old seeds still germinate on wet cotton in a petri dish. And far less fussy as discibed above.
I guess it is as difficult as UG is, after all it's a carnivor, so it needs an astablished invironment with enough microbes to feed on.. This is a little of my UG and seems to be very happy till now..
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No idea yet, but if i get U. Volubillis seeds to germinate it will do fine in here after that.. :) Here seems to be enough to find to feed another few hungry little bladders..
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I notice, if you manage to get UG to do this, it aint so fussy anymore after that.. I moved some of this UG to another tank with different parameters. And it doesn't realy care about the different values, as long it has food in it's bladers and enough microbial live around it to keep feeding it keeps happily growing. :thumbup:
 
I hate Utricularia Gibba with a passion though which sometimes comes as a pest with farm plants then turns into an almost impossible to get rid of weed.
 
Lol :lol: Today i got i received my Volubis seeds :eek: i had to look twice to find them... Man they are tiny.. :woot:

That huge thing next to it as size comparison is a Micro SD card 11 mm width, everybody nowadays probably know from their smart phone.
Naamloos.jpg


Well i have no idea how i have to manage this, these seeds are bearly to see with the naked eye if it wasn't 10 of them together.
How the hell a'm i going to see if they have germinated.. o_O The discription says i've to germinate them at least 2 cm submersed on something like peat and not cover them with soil.

Well whish me luck..:nailbiting: Have to think of something sterile to place it safely above the drip tray from the sump of the tank.. This one is lit, moist and a constant 25 C.
I guess i'll try some coco peat, dunno yet..
 
Hi all,
The discription says i've to germinate them at least 2 cm submersed on something like peat and not cover them with soil.
I'd try some "long strand sphagnum moss" sold for carnivorous plants and orchids. Just put it in a small container with some rain-water.

Another option might be any spare moss? from your emersed wood (with the Utricularia graminifolia etc.)

cheers darrel
 
Hi Darrel, thanks for your reply and ideas.. That long strand sphagnum is something i already searching for, for a long time already. Its no where to find, only via verry special channels with actualy unreasonable shipping costs. Only thing readily available is the regular sphagnum in dried bricks, which i tried a while ago but aren't long stranded. And actualy when submersed melts away pretty soon. Not long ago i managed to get, at least i thought that was what was offered, live sphagnum. They sended a reasonable portion but less then 10% was realy alive. I tried but till now nothing of the non green part revived. I've managed to keep some alive, which i'm actualy using at the time to grow some UG cuttings emersed in a propagator.

I indeed was thinking about it to put the seeds in there, but then i thought how the hell would i see when these tiny seeds germinate. How do i keep it apart if i put it among other green stuff, which probably grows 10 times faster then this, can't wait for ever for them to show?

So i decided to take a petri dish put i little bit of sterile and inert buffered coco fiber in it and top it off with demineralized water with a few drops of algea based root stimulator and a pinch of crushed dried cappata leaves to kickstart some microbial life in there. On this pretty dark substrate color i hope to be able to see when some seeds germinate when showing some white rhizoids or green leaf.

Still a good idea as you sad tu put them togheter with some already matured UG and moss. That way i'm sure there is some food in there utricularia needs. But i first want to see something green so i know it's there and know where it is and what i'm looking at, so i can keep track of it's growth..

At the moment i'm at a point of no return, the seeds are already on the dark coco soil in a petri dish under a few milimeters of water. Impossible to find back at this stage :) The 2cm submersed the seller states i think are a bit over the top, can't see the point of that, submersed is submersed, a 0.10 mm seed wont realy notice this difference i guess. Also red some articles of poeple growing the vollubis completely emersed.. We'll see..

The day i see something comming up i'll update this topic..
 
A little update, i actualy have no idea if my Volubillis experiment was succesfull, had the seeds in a petri dish in the sump.. But one day i flooded the sump a bit to high and the petri dish started floating and ended up under the cascading water trickling down. Now the petri dish got flooded and everyting inside ended up in the filter sponsh.. :wacky: I didn't clean that sponsh for a rather long time, till i saw something green growing in it.. Took it out and placed in a seperate container again.. Yet i do still not now if it is graminifolia or volibillis what i have growing, it grows rather slow and still is tiny. Might need to order me some new seeds or maybe a complete plantlet. But wait a few more weeks maybe i see what i got in time.

But i found me a Utricularia Stellaris :) which actualy also is a very beatiful plant.. You could easily mix it up with some kind of parrot feather like sp. they are lookalikes in this stage of life.
They seem to be rather fast growing, the supplier i got it from said it's ideal for a starter tank because of it's rappid growth. Well i'm not that far to see but placed it near the surface of my low tech tank so it can make use of the Hygroryza aristata roots for hold and anchor and see what it'l do..
DSCF6556 (Kopie).JPG

This is from above
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Who knows it's going to grow this for me..
Utricularia_stellaris_PBirnb_DSCN0735_106249.JPG
 
I've had success with other seeds (echinodorus, bucephalandra and eriocaulon) using a thin layer of a muji cotton pad on top of aquasoil.
It's sold for vaping which is why I had I but it's great at wicking water and nutrients without getting saturated
Might join you with the utricularias soon :)
 
That's a good idea mr. luke :) I believe a still have a package in a first aid kit i never used.. Accasionaly i use those make up cleaning cottons, they also do great fro germinating seeds. But since i came across the information that leaf litter works best for Utricularia spieces, i went for coco fiber some spaghnum and leaf litter.. I should have put a cap on the petri dish. Or not put it in the trickle part of the sump. :banghead: But i might be lucky and have some germinated volubillis, still to early to say.

Anyway, very intrested in your findings if you join.. :thumbup:

Here is good info on them.. They even have a seperate webshop nowadays, but i forgot to save the link. They might guide you to it if contacted.. :)
http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.com/aldrovanda/aldrovanda_for_sale.htm
 
I think i might be lucky with what i was able to salvage from the sump after spilling all the volubilis seeds.. :woot: As far as i can see now i have at least saved 1 of the 10.
Also have graminifolia floating around in the tank and ending up in the sump..

From what i salvaged out of the sponge i see a distinct differens in grow characteristicts after leaving it to grow for several weeks..
S0096821.jpg


The other 4 might be volubilis too, i realy can't see yet, much to curly to see any distinct shape. But graminifolia doesn't branche from it's rhizoid like that as far as i know.
:nailbiting: I hope i can make it survive to adulthood and propagate it. :)
 
Thanks Sarpijk.. I do admire rare plants. :) But most of them are not realy for long term succes.. Usualy the joy is short lived, onelittle mistake and you're busted and need to try it over again. I've killed more then i kept.. :rolleyes::oops::(

And Utricularia intrigues me the most of all carnivorious plants..
giphy.gif


 
Well my Utricularia volubilis experiment turned out in an uther failure.. It first looked like i had something goin.. Had a jar on the window sil and all lloked fine... Till one day i looked a bit closer to the jar again and noticed it was one huge wig of hair algae growing in there, all the moss and everithing else was intangled in it. Impossible to take it apart without ripping all to pieces. Funny is, this algae was so fine threaded, it was only noticable from up close.

Anyway, tried to salvage what i could and took out what i thought would be the volubilis.. Took a new jar, sime new sphagnum, some almond leaves, some sedge, a snail and a small piece of spider wood, because i know this stains the water significantly. And made me a new littlle nursery bottle. It kinda worked with the spiderwood the water turned into tea, smelled like cow droppings :wacky: and the algae stayed out..
DSCF7502 (Kopie).JPG

And today i opened the bottle and took a closer look of what green stuff i'm growing in there.. And i'm not so sure anymore if i'm growing volubilis.. It more looks like it all 10 volubilis seeds i had got lost in the mess i made off it and i'm actualy growing some Ricia instead.. :shifty::shy::lol:
DSCF7501 (Kopie).JPG

I'm still not sure, but it suspiciously looks like it.. :arghh: It grows agenizingly slow, something i'm not realy used of with ricia.. There are still some other green pieces in the bottle i can't realy determine what it is.. So i'm not giving up yet. I also can't find any documentation anywhere of how young vulibilis actualy should look.. Could be it branches the same as ricia does and look simular.. Realy do not know. And i'm definetely going to buy me a new batch of seeds and try it again.. And this time more carefull, so that i know it realy is what it is. :)

But this above is most likely going to turn into nothing special.. Unfortunately.. Mission failed.. :oops:
 
Round number 2, 10 new fresh seeds, 10 new chances.. :).. But this time better prepared and made contamination impossible with this little "Hermetosphere" (Love that word :woot:) on peat, sphagnum, cappata and sand mix...... It needs at least 25°C and light to germinate, so i put it on a well lit spot but still a little 40 watt halide bulb above it to raise the temp a bit..
DSCF7536 (Kopie).JPG

If this fails again. I kick myself .... :mad: Then i have to and will buy a plant grown for me by the real specialist. :rolleyes: But that's going to cost me.. I cross my fingers.

I hope i can show you something green in there in a few weeks. :rolleyes:
 
Good luck Marcel...I hope it works this time:)

Thanks Tim, me too.. But i think it will, had some germinated the first time, but i was a bit to careless and unprpared, distroyed all.
But this is a plant i realy would like to grow.. I have an idea that could work out realy well if i succede (instead of suck with seeds..).

And thats a Utricularia/moss setup only maybe in Iwagumi dunno yet and U. graminifolia carpet, volubilis (resambling something like a giant hairgrass) and stellaris (Resambling myriophyllum) in the background.. In my theory it is the other non carnivorous plants needing ferts which are not always in fovar for utricularias and always make it fail or at least not very long lasting. With using utricularias only this maybe could work out very well on the long run.

That's where i wish to go with this.. Carnetopia... :lol:

The volubilis is the only one i'm missing, still. A fully grown plant will cost me over €30.. :eek:
 
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