One of the new seeds are this beauty. Probably one of my favorite.
Few years ago, I had a flower with this Darling’ and it’s really beautiful. But the seeds will be ready by January 2018… so the next flower will be from 3 to 5 years.
@botanyshitposts hi!! this looks… like smth in your wheelhouse but i have never seen an upside-down style plant like this on your blog before! do you know anything about these guys?
ok i know i reblogged this post already but didn’t see the @ lmao so im gonna talk about these babies now??
these are Darlingtonia Californica,aka Cobra Lilies! they’re only native to certain bog habitats in California and are carnivorous, which is easier to see when looking up at them from under the plant:
basically, bugs are attracted by the ‘tongue’ to climb up into the hole in the bottom of the trap. once inside, the translucent cells on the top of the plant tricks the bug into thinking that the way out is up. so the bug just casually like. either gets tricked into falling into the stomach or beats itself to death/exhaustion against the top of the plant, then falls, but either way the prey ends up getting eaten in the stomach acid in the stem.
these plants aren’t in cultivation as much as other carnivorous plants; they’re very hard/slow to grow and the weird form makes them even harder to ship to buyers without injury. i’ve heard that they do best with cold water being pumped constantly over their roots, and have even seen videos of careful setups where growers will float them on top of/on the shore of their ponds, then use pumps from the bottom of the pond to bring cool water to them but like??? ive also seen videos of them being grown with none of that at al??l so i have no idea if that works or if it’s one of those carnivorous plant community things where everyone has a different opinion on how easy/hard something is to grow but anyway, yeah they’re pretty hard to find and aren’t bred often as a result. they are beautiful killer babies though.
apparently in the wild they can grow in colonies, and i know that sarracenia (american pitcher plants) can do the same but its just like. unreal for meto see pics of:
Darlingtonia my darling… I actually worked on an experiment with these where insect capture was compared between plants with tongues on vs. plants with tongues clipped off and turns out the tongues don’t help attract insects like we thought! (article: http://www.amjbot.org/content/103/4/780.full)
honey-bun-diaries 
