New leaf, feeding leaf, and dying leaf.

Senescing leaf and its ‘bleeding’ trichomes

I’ve been growing Drosera regia for almost exactly a year now.  All of my regia except for a single ebay purchased ‘Big Easy’ are seed grown.  I have sowed several batches since late January of last year.  Only one plant survived to maturity from the first set, mainly thanks to my clumsiness, but this plant is now putting out leaves 6-8 inches long (pictured above).

In the first picture you can also see what I refer to as ‘bleeding’ on the senescing leaves of regia.  While this effect can  be witnessed in a variety of sundews it is especially noticeable on Drosera regia due to its long broad leaves and the massive glistening droplets of dew adorning them.

This picture was taken sometime in September.  The regia on the left is the one pictured above and the one on in the middle suddenly died (one of my only plants to suddenly die, ever.)  I have some hypotheses as to why that happened, but I won’t speculate here.  Once past the seedling stage they start to rapidly put on size and mass.

adelae in live sphagnum

Same pot of adelae 6 months later.

Here’s another sundew that looks a lot like regia, but is completely unrelated and grows on the other side of the world in Australia.  According to most sources it a lot easier to care for and quite weedy.  For me only the latter seemed to be true at first as I struggled to get this plant established for years.  Once established though, it seems to be quite happy and settled and has started to live up to its reputation.