Adding to my carnivorous plants collection are the germinating drosera seeds. They are too tiny to see with the naked eye, but magnified, you can see the tiny green sprouts.

I have these growing on wet dry sphagnum (as in dry sphagnum with water added :p) in small plastic cups, so the light gets reflected and the digital camera makes for rather poor pictures. I’m experimenting with ways to get a better image, but this is it for now.

Drosera Spatulata seed germinating – Day 2. You can’t see much other than some white with spiky stuff sticking out, but under a small microscope, this is green and the white is tiny fragile hair.

Drosera Spatulata seed germinating – Day 4. You can’t see much other than some white with spiky stuff sticking out, but under a small microscope, there are two green leaf-blobs and the white is tiny fragile hair.

Drosera Madagascarensis germination – Day 7 When watching through an optical microscope, you can see tiny, tiny leaves.

Substrate: Sphagnum moss.

Method: Rinse sphagnum moss really, really well, put in small plastic cups, sprinkle seeds on top. RO water initially, but any water that needs to be added further is distilled (to avoid salt build up). The cups are small, sit on window sill or shelf with lots of bright light without being in direct sunlight. I am not using a plastic cover, for these and they seem to be doing fine, but the others I’m growing on tissue paper had to be covered.

At the moment the cups neither have drainage nor sit in a tray of water, but once the plants grow a bit and water requirements go higher, I’ll be transplanting them to their real pots, or punching holes in the bottom to sit in tray. To add water without displacing seeds, I drizzle it down the side of the cup instead of pouring on substrate.

None of these sprouts is larger than 1mm yet.