• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Carnivorous plants....

Well, the smaller fly traps are proving to be completely adequate as disposal areas for ticks we find crawling on our legs after walking around the property. Bout time there is now some beneficial purpose for those blood sucking pests. Now if I could just get these insectivorous plants to leap up into the air to snatch mosquitoes......
 
Looks like Mr. Toad figures that those flytraps and sundews need a little help catching bugs....

toad_flytraps_01.jpg
 
Most of the flytraps are putting out flowers now. Hopefully I'll get some seeds to try my hand at growing them up.

ft_flowers_01.jpg


ft_flowers_02.jpg
 
Been trying my hand at growing some sundews from seeds I bought off of Ebay. Looks like my Drosera regia is starting to sprout!

drosera_regia_01.jpg


drosera_regia_02.jpg


drosera_regia_03.jpg
 
Actually I think that toad is intent on making a permanent residence there. He's STILL hanging out in the tub. Doesn't even bat an eye with Connie and I walking all around him. Hopefully he is making himself useful and snagging some of those darn yellow flies that are biting the hell out of us.

Some of the flytraps are opening back up, but I may just leave them be instead of feeding them to see if the yellow flies are attracted to them. Maybe I need to put an octenol block from the mosquito magnets in there to help bring the yellow flies in.

Waiting for the seeds to develop so I can try my hand propagating flytraps from seed. I should have quite a bunch of them the way things are looking.
 
Venus Fly Trap seeds!!!

I've got seeds!

vft_seeds_2014_01.jpg


vft_seeds_2014_02.jpg


vft_seeds_2014_03.jpg



Looks like I lost some during the rain that came through before I got home from being out of town, but at least they dropped into the bog tubs. So they aren't really lost, just that I was unable to collect them. I propped some of the flower/seed stalks up with some bamboo stakes that were leaning outside of the tubs, so good thing I did that. Otherwise those seeds would have been lost in the grass around the bog tubs.

I collected the rest and there are still a lot more to come. Looks like one of my smaller fly traps is putting out a late flower stalk, so I should have more, I guess, later on. Do they flower more than once a season?

The plants seem to have fared well through this stage, as they were all putting out new traps the entire time they were flowering and setting seed. Plus I was catching small grasshoppers out of Connie's garden to feed them, so I guess that helped. Sure wish they would catch yellow flies! They would have had bulging bellies this year.

Now I just have to set up some of the seeds to try to grow them and see how that goes. Should be pretty neat to see little tiny venus fly traps growing up if I'm successful getting them to sprout.
 
The seeds from my venus flytraps are beginning to sprout!

vft_07_2014_01.jpg


vft_07_2014_02.jpg


vft_07_2014_03.jpg


vft_07_2014_04.jpg


vft_07_2014_05.jpg


Looks like some of my sundews (burmani) are coming along too. Still small as all get out, but at least they are alive.

sundews_07_2014_01.jpg
 
That is awesome! Currently my D. dielsiana, D. spathulata, and D. binata dichotoma are all working on flowers. I'll try to get pictures when they fully open.
 
I don't think my sundews and venus fly traps like being in the same tubs together. The vfts are doing a LOT better than the sundews are, so maybe the sundews like the soil wetter than I have it. But to be perfectly honest, if I have to choose one over the other, I would rather have the vfts anyway. They are so darned exotic looking. And I get a kick out of finding small grasshoppers and caterpillars in Connie's garden and feeding them to the traps.

Speaking of which, another vft has put out flowers and looks like it might be setting seed. Not sure what I'll do with all the little vfts, though. I got a BUNCH of seeds that are now beginning to sprout.

I have a few sundews potted separately and sitting in shallow water dishes, but I have do dump the water about every other day to get rid of the mosquito larvae that I find there. This would be a real pain in the butt if I had a BUNCH of those pots to have to deal with. Heck, I'm retired! I don't want a hobby that will be a lot of work!
 
Those are just so neat. I had a little potted venus fly trap that was pretty fun. I don't think I could have planted it outdoors in Arizona, though. I liked feeding it bugs from outside.
 
Surprisingly enough, the venus fly trap seeds are nearly all sprouting. I decided to snatch some pics of them before Connie moved them into the two tubs with the other larger plants. I guess I may have to move some of them around and maybe set up more tubs when they get bigger. Hopefully they will do OK out there.... But I couldn't keep them where they were much longer as the sundews I set up seemed to succumb to mold. Figured I had better move these guys why they were still looking strong.

vft_babies_08_2014_01.jpg


vft_babies_08_2014_02.jpg


vft_babies_08_2014_03.jpg


vft_babies_08_2014_04.jpg
 
Fascinating. The seeds on the plants looked like caviar.

Rich, with racks and tubs. Growing little ones into bigger ones. I feel deja vu.....
 
Fascinating. The seeds on the plants looked like caviar.

Rich, with racks and tubs. Growing little ones into bigger ones. I feel deja vu.....

Nah... It would take a huge investment for a building to hold enough of these to be able to sell enough of them to make any profit. Then I would need to hire people to help out. Then suddenly, next thing I know, where did my retirement go? I'm WORKING again!

Not sure what I'm going to do with these things when i get overrun with them. I'm not even sure I'll harvest the seeds next year. Perhaps I should get a kiddie's pool and sink it into the ground and make a larger bog for these things. Too bad we don't have a natural bog area anywhere on our property. We do have a stream, but it's heavily wooded and not likely suitable for insectivorous plants.
 
Perhaps I should get a kiddie's pool and sink it into the ground and make a larger bog for these things. Too bad we don't have a natural bog area anywhere on our property. We do have a stream, but it's heavily wooded and not likely suitable for insectivorous plants.

Now that would be super cool.
 
After putting the baby fly traps in the mini bogs, it looks like most of them are doing fine and making little traps to catch their own meals.

vft_babies_01.jpg


vft_babies_06.jpg


vft_babies_07.jpg


vft_babies_101.jpg


vft_babies_102.jpg


vft_babies_107.jpg
 
And of course I took some pics of the older fly traps while I had the camera in hand..... :)

vft_09_2014_01.jpg


vft_09_2014_02.jpg


vft_09_2014_03.jpg


vft_09_2014_04.jpg


vft_09_2014_05.jpg


vft_09_2014_06.jpg
 
which of your plants like mosquitos. I have a spot with so many of these little biters, you can't go outside the door without getting bitten. I love these types of plants, and have a sunroom with a glass ceiling , so even a plant that loves sun for the latter half of the day will be happy here. I grow my fig trees in this room, any suggestions.
 
None of them actually "like" anything. They will take whatever they can get, whether actively attracted to them, or simply by accident when an insect makes a mistake by landing at the wrong place.

In the case of the fly traps, I don't think mosquitoes will be standard fare for them as there is nothing in the traps to attract skeeters as far as I know. I really think that they feed mostly on ants, as the design of the leaves leading to the traps is a natural path for ants to make. Recently I had a problem with ants deciding to build a nest right among some smaller flytraps I had growing. I was fretting about how to get rid of the ants without damaging the plants when a couple of days later apparently all the ants vanished. All of the traps were close, so I presume that the fly traps themselves took care of that problem. Poor planning on the part of the ants, I think.

Anyway, I think the best bet would be sundews as far as mosquitoes are concerned, especially the threaded kind, since mosquitoes would be likely to alight on the upright stems coated with the sticky globs that will entrap them. But honestly, with the moist soils needed to make sundews happy, you might just be creating even more of a problem by providing areas conducive for mosquitoes to breed. I have some sundews set up in individual containers outside that sit in pans of water and we have to constantly check on those pans to dump them when we see mosquito larvae in them. Any way to block the mosquitoes from reaching the water to lay eggs would likely be even more of a pain in the butt than just dumping the water when needed.
 
Back
Top