Growing pygmy sundews from gemmae

Last year I got some pygmy sundew gemmae.  Gemmae is sort of like a cutting that the plants made themselves.  I find it fascinating that a flowering plant can make gemmae like this.

I got a mix of two species, they look very different so I could tell them apart pretty easily as soon as they grew large enough.  

Gemmae tend to grow much like seed, but a lot faster.  Unlike seed grown plants, all gemmae are genetically identical to the parent plant.  

In a few months the gemmae went from tiny green dots to mature, flowering pygmy sundews.

Drosera pulchella

Sadly when the gemmae were available I did not have any spare pots, and had issues buying peat moss.  I grew them in plastic cups with holes punched in the base, and the peat moss had been sitting out in the open for some time.  For this reason there was a lot of moss and things growing around my pygmy sundews.

Drosera pulchella and Drosera pygmaea

Pygmy sundews

These flowers should produce very tiny seed.  Seed grown plants should have a little genetic diversity.  D pulchella and D pygmaea do not hybridise, so I can grow them next to each other and not worry about hybrid seed.  

Some species of pygmy sundews can hybridise, and several of the hybrids are sterile.  Gemmae are always exact replicas of the parent.  Which means that hybrids or even sterile hybrids can be easily propagated using gemmae.

Pygmy sundews produce from 1 to several hundred gemmae per plant.  This means in the wild they can colonise areas of soil quite effectively.  It also means that in cultivation it does not take too long to be able to grow a nice pot filled with these tiny carnivorous plants.

The weather is turning, so I hope some of my plants produce some gemmae.  If they do I should be able to grow a few more of them and hopefully will be able to have a few extras to trade at some stage.  If I ever do have extra of these they will be listed through my for sale page.