gejala pokok | symptomatic trees

So, our burmanii and ‘red dragon’ venus fly trap were infested by crawling aphids. One of the safest way to deal with it, is to immerse the plant in container overfill with water for at least 24 hours.  So we filled a big pot with distilled water and immersed both the CPs. It was painful…watching them drown. :( 

Almost immediately you see the aphids floated up onto the surface. Loads and loads of them. Quite terrifying, knowing these bugs were in your precious plant. There were small ones, tiny ones and big ones. Sigh…

Here they are again….after 24 hours.

Its true what petiolaris of gardenweb said - they will look like ‘drowned rats’ for a week or so. They look so different now, from when david first gave it to us. He must be so disappointed

Here’s how it looks when we first got it two weeks ago..

Ok enough of that.

Got a pesticide to treat lipstick plant that is infested with mealybugs.

Sprayed it as soon as i got home two nights ago.

And they all bloomed today.

The past two weeks, i’ve been noticing this white waxy web on my lipstick plant. At first it was on one flower, then i started seeing more and more of it. Especially around the bell shape stem. Now it has spread and slowly killing my plant..

I think its mealybugs. It looks a lot like it…

(picture taken from wikipedia)

Yucks! Going to go shopping for pesticides today. May it survive another day.

Some advice from mutant hybrid  of gardenweb on how to get rid of the pests thats been swimming in the sphagnum moss of the venus fly trap that we got.

Posted by mutant_hybrid on Thu, May 10, 07 at 23:34

Hi mukaketupat,Yeah they could be aphids if they are tiny green fat bodied insects that hang out in the center of the plant. If they are tiny white worm like creatures with legs, they are possibly thrips. Gnat larvae also like to live in peat moss. If you are worried about them, use only pesticides that are water based, never soap based. Something with pyrethrines or neem oil extract with pyrethrines would be great. Avoid anything that says potassium salts and acids or natural oils and fats (basically fertilizer). Also never use copper based fungicide on your carnivorous plants, it will harm them. Only use neem oil or sulphur based fungicide.

The red Venus Flytrap is the Red Dragon cultivar. It is exactly the same as a regular Venus Flytrap, just one that is bred to have all red, like a dog is bred to look short and long like a weenie dog. There are many types of cultivars of Venus Flytrap. One called Big Mouth, another called Dente that is all green, and another called Piranha that has short shark like teeth. Mine shows all of the variations at once on different leaves. One trap might show a double tooth, another gets red pigment all over the outside, and another gets short shark teeth. If I wanted to, I could make my own cultivars by continually breeding the qualities I see in my plant with qualities I see in another plant until I get one that is all red or all saw toothed double teeth.

Anyway, good luck with your plants.

Sigh..I’m printing his advice and taking it with me to the hardware store today. Its a lot to remember and better to be safe than sorry.

Got this plant two days ago.

Decided to call it ‘whoopi’. Its got curly succulent leaves, tubular, bell shaped deep red flowers. Found out the name of the plant, its aeschynanthus also known as Lipstick Plant.

Very very VERY pretty.

Its been raining and past few days and my gloxinia flowerbed was filled with water. Don’t worry, they survived. Propagated two of them last night / this morning.

This is kramer

This is kramer jr.
Used this right after i cut the stem..

I hope they don’t die.

The flower on my crown of thorns finally bloomed this morning! Yay! It used to be red, but this time its yellow!