Thursday 17 November 2022

Utricularia subulata cleistogamous and chasmogamous flowers

Utricularia subulata, the zig zag bladderwort, is a small terrestrial carnivorous plant.  The leaves are tiny and often go unnoticed even among other tiny carnivorous plants such as pygmy sundews.

This carnivorous plant grows easily from division and far too easily from seed.  

Utricularia subulata flowers
U subulata flowers

This terrestrial bladderwort has lived in my carnivorous plant collection for quite some time.  

For years they have produced tiny flower stalks with cleistogamous flowers.  These were spherical flowers with no petals, these flowers never open yet they self pollinate and produce copious amounts of seed.  

These uninteresting flowers that never open seem to spread seed everywhere, as such I do my best to pull them out whenever I see them.

This year my Utricularia subulata sent up rather tall flower stalks and chasmogamous flowers.  

These are larger showy flowers that do open and do have petals.  These flowers look rather nice.



Utricularia subulata flowering

Flowers of Utricularia subulata



U subulata in a pot with pygmy drosera


This plant has been growing in my carnivorous plant collection for a number of years, under a variety of different conditions, and has never flowered like this before.  

I wish I understood what conditions it requires to send up flowers like this because they are nice.  

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