Thursday, July 14, 2011

I brought home some carnivorous plants last month

...and I can't stop looking at them.  So I photographed them, so I could share them with you.  
The first one is of a baby sundew leaf doing her best impression of a Valentine.  
That stem is less than a millimeter wide, by the way, so she's satisfying my love for itty bitty sparkly things pretty well.  I also found the limit of how small my camera (a Canon G12) can shoot.
Next is a pair of Venus fly traps, just hanging out in a crowd, waiting for a fly.  I think the one on the left just told a joke and the one on the right is laughing at it.

These are American pitcher plants, a particularly brilliant cultivar called 'Scarlet Belle' with some bladderwort flowers, and sundews showing off their sparkling dew.  Three different species of carnivorous plants are growing in this one pot.

 Here's another sundew, a rotundifolia cross breed.  These colors just scream, "Summer!"
Below is a tiny patch of bonus sundews, "weeds" that grew in the pot of one of the American pitcher plants.  After I took home these pots, I realized there were entire ecosystems growing in them.
This last photo shows maybe 1.5 inches across of turf. At last count, I found 20 itty bitty sundews in this one pot.  Small stuff.  Some of them are so small you can barely detect there's a plant, but the dew sparkles in the sun.  I'm enjoying their mini-ness.  Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to bead any of these things yet, so you'll just have to be satisfied with the photos.  I purchased all of these beautiful, healthy plants from the good people at California Carnivores.

5 comments:

  1. LOL, I love carnivores! I love venus fly traps but always manage to kill mine by force feeding them hamburger. Thanks for the link Gwen, checking it out now!

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  2. Mandy, I just added the link for the fly traps because I had forgot that one. I linked everything to Barry Rice's "The Carnivorous Plant FAQ" courtesy of The International Carnivorous Plant Society rather than Wikipedia, because I felt like FAQs have more comprehensive information and a nice organization. I've spent several hours reading there. Good stuff. Amazing photos. I hope you enjoy it all as much as I have. You should be so lucky :)

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  3. Do these eat mosquitoes? I REALLY need help getting rid of mosquitoes!

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  4. Good question. I think most carnivorous plants will eat most anything they can catch. That said, mosquitoes are pretty large bugs, and consequently, you would need some pretty large plants to catch them. Also, I have read that some varieties of pitcher plants actually hold mosquito eggs while they gestate. The eggs are immune to the digestive actions of the pitcher plant's enzymes. Accordingly, I'd stay away from pitcher plants in general unless you get good info on a particular variety that eats mosquitoes. Venus Fly Traps with larger traps should work, as should a large sticky sundew. Good luck!

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