Hot and long summer season feels like it will never end and the mosquitos and flies are celebrating.
It is always the right time to get yourself a carnivorous plant that will take care of the mosquitos, insects, and bugs that bother everyone, especially in the hot season.
Carnivorous plants teach us about the survival of the fittest and how life constantly adapts according to environmental changes to sustain itself and reflect the complicated dynamics and balance of life on our planet.
Carnivorous plants grow in wet, low-nutrient sites including bogs, swamps, forests, and sandy or rocky sites and can be found on every continent except Antarctica.
They trap, digest, and absorb nutrients from animals but rely on photosynthesis for energy.
The idea of a plant eating an animal has always fascinated all of us. It is suggested that such unique plants play the role of consumers, rather than producers, in their ecosystems. The general name for this group of plants – "carnivorous"– supports this idea.
However, no known plant obtains a majority of its energy from the animals it “eats” and flourishes in poor nutrient environments.
Many of them mimic the fragrance that flowers produce and the nectar in order to attract their prey. Once they catch their prey, they digest it and turn it into their food. Prey is lured to the plant by specialized leaves or traps, which may function as active or passive, depending on whether movement is involved in the capture.
Venus Fly Traps closes its traps on the prey.
Pitcher plants have specialized tubular leaves that are often topped with a hood.
The plant's nectar and brightly colored traps attract prey to the plant. The lip of the tube is slippery, and when insects land on the edge of the tube, they fall into the narrowing trap.
Downward-pointing hairs on the inside trap wall prevent the insects from escaping. The prey is digested by enzymes, and the nutrients are absorbed by the plant and it continues living this cycle.
Their main “diet” are mosquitos, insects, bugs, and mini reptiles. You do not need to feed them.
They prefer bright light, and require high humidity. I recommend to water them with ONLY rain or distilled water. They require moist-to-wet soil in the warmer months and less moisture in winter, BUT their soil should never get dry.
I recommend to water them properly once a day and mist them twice a day. Yes, carnivorous plants need daily attention the same as your pets do.
Garden soil is not suitable for carnivorous plants. They grow in sphagnum moss or you may mix three parts peat moss to one part sand. Their growing temperature requirements vary and some require a distinct cool dormancy period but not all of them.
There are about 720 species of carnivorous plants which are able to attract and trap prey, secrete digestive enzymes, and absorb digested nutrients.
Their types of traps fall into five basic categories but I will cover the first three of them as they are related to what we actually sell at Verdant Lyfe and are available on our website.
The three basic categories are:
Pitfall Traps
Flypaper Traps
Snap Traps
Pitfall Traps
Pitfall Traps are modified, rolled leaves, sealed at their edges, which contain a pool of digestive enzymes and bacteria.
Pitcher plants secrete nectar sugars, which attract insect prey, and have downward-pointing hairs that restrict their exit. Slippery, waxy flakes line the insides, which are the cups, helping to prevent the prey from escaping.
It is interesting to mention that spotted blotchy coloration creates patterns of light, which appear to prey as “false exits”. But the insects eventually tire of trying to find a way out and fall into the trap. That is when the digestive enzymes start to play their role and break down the prey.
Flypaper Traps
Flypaper Traps coat leaves or hairs with sticky substances such as Butterworts and Sundew plants secrete gooey proteins to attract and trap the prey.
In Butterworts, tiny glands make the leaf shiny with secreted mucilage, which lures and captures small gnats. The leaves respond to the stimulus of prey touch by secreting more mucilage and insect entrapment stimulates a second set of glands to release digestive enzymes. Digested nutrients are absorbed through openings in the cuticle, which require that the plant live in humid habitats. Butterworts have reduced roots to anchor the plant because the insects provide nutrients. Stalks produce flowers at some distance from the carnivorous leaves – so as not to risk digesting pollinators meaning bees butterflies, flies, moths, beetles, and wasps. Those flowers are around 6 inches away from the Butterwort and Sundew. Nature is amazing!!!
There are over 100 species of Sundews with diameters ranging from 1/2 an inch to 40 inches. Their mucilage glands, however, are much more prominent, raised on long stalks or “tentacles”, and specialized surface glands absorb digested prey. Both tentacles and leaves are highly mobile; tentacles can curl around prey in seconds, and leaves can grow around prey in as little as 30 minutes. Many Sundews depend completely on insect prey for nitrogen as they no longer produce the enzymes of traditional plants, and their roots are reduced to simply anchoring structures.
Snap Traps
Snap Traps catch prey with rapid leaf movements.
Only two species can move quickly enough to be categorized as “snap traps”.
The Venus Fly Trap is easily the best known.
Two-part leaves are modified for photosynthesis and for insect-catching (the tips of the leaves develop into famous traps). Three hairs on each of the two trap surfaces are so sensitive that they can distinguish between raindrops and prey. If two trigger hairs are touched in succession, or one touched twice, an action similar to the one that causes your muscles to contract closes the trap within 1/10th of a second. The exact mechanism is not understood, but some combination of osmosis, pH change, and ion flow causes the two sides of the trap to “snap” from open to bend inwards.
Fringes of stiff hairs mesh, preventing the prey’s escape. Secreted enzymes digest prey over a period of ten days, and then the trap opens again.
It is estimated that each trap catches only 3 insects per lifetime.
To sum it up, you can be successful at growing carnivorous plants if you follow this:
-Keep the sphagnum moss wet
-Use only rain or distilled water
-Mist it twice a day
-Use a humidifier (optional but recommended)
-Give the plant bright light
Get yourself a new pet plant and purchase a carnivorous plant.
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