Carnivorous plant hobbyists unite! Discuss anything. (OP a bit long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve been collecting carnivores for several months. I’ve ordered some plants online, and I scrounged the best of the bottom of the barrel of the unhealthy looking plants at the local megahomegardencomplex. They are special needs plants, it’s really not their fault.

Anyway, I’ve decided the basic rectangular ten gallon aquarium plus the a folding glass top (about $25, tank $10, folding glass top $15) is fantastic for keeping many carnovores together and keeping them humidified (the holy grail of carnivores). Misting (just use a plastic bottle [$3]–but fergoodnessake not the old 409 or Round Up bottle) is easy, and you can leave one half of the glass top open of the terrarium-aquarium gets a bit fried near a particular window during the day.

What I’ve learned is that VFTs, sundews, and some pitchers can handle sun pretty well, and survive out of terrariums in pots if kept wet and in the shade. They cannot direct Florida Summer sun for more than an hour or so without constant misting and a nice breeze. Full sun means full sun somewhere else obviously. Carnivores don’t like temperatures in the 90s much either.

But, they are great terrarium plants. Find a nice lit area by a window, keep a mister with distilled water and move the lid up and down occasionally—that’s about it in terms of regular upkeep. A friend told me that I could buy fruit flys to release in my now pretty jungle like first ten gallon terrarium. Um… I might just do that. It’s not necessary I should point out. Strangely, with the right soil, temp, and humidity carnivorous plants needn’t eat to survive.

A great step-by-step carnivore terrarium.

  1. Soil and prep. (once you have your fish tank / terrarium) Mix peat and perlite, maybe some silica sand, and possibly some of that stringy (not ground peat) in a combination that’s about 60% regular peat (the plastic bag in the garden store kind, Scotts is one, there’s a few others equally fine), about 20-30% perlite and whatever of the rest. Mix thoroughly. Wet it down—WITH DISTILLED OR RAIN WATER ONLY. All carnivores survive on RAIN or DISTILLED. Don’t drench it, just make it wet enough that you can manipulate it and the regular peat isn’t powdery any more.

Make the lowest peat mix depth about 4 inches. I mound some spots up to six or seven for the rolling terrain look–and because some plants root deeper (VFTs) but don’t get tall. Some do the opposite (cobra lilys).

Now you need plants. I have four VFT types (dente, typical, green dragon, green–averaging about $3 a plant) some have already reproduced or the original shipment came with offspring). I have 3 “big mouth” hybrids ($10 per, but they’re purple), some red dragons, and dentates on the way. That will give me red, purple, green, green and red, and red and yellow VFTs.

In the sarracina pitcher plant group (more like growing tubes fluting wider towards the tops, often with very decorative tops), I have a purpurea from Exotic Gardens, something else I rescued from Lowes (still surfing to ID that one), six basic and five hybrids on the way, colors including purple, yellow, red, red and yellow, and more. I adopted five soon to be dehydrated Cobra lilys (cousin to sarracina) from Lowes for about $1.50 each.

The nepenthes is a ‘true’ pitcher plant in that it grows normal leaves, but some leaves have these wild insect traps (pitchers) that hang off the end. I bought two huge nepenthes from Lowes for $20 each. The manager said, “I’ve been here for years looking at these plants and we’ve never sold one of these.” DING, VALUABLE MATURE PLANT FOR LOW PRICE I looked in the back row and found two plants making red and yellow pitchers about six inches long and just over two inches wide in some cases. Seriously gigantic. I transplanted them from their sorely cramped 6 inch plastic hanging baskets and into two of those 16" metal, coconut lined hanging planters. That took two bags of peat moss ($6), plants ($40), baskets ($28). Those plants were a bargain, and a rarity, unless you live near a carnivorous plant nursery. I don’t. I have them hanging outside where they only get direct morning sun, and some dappled afternoon sun.

I have lots of drosera (sundews) of several varieties–some sprout little copies of themselves, a nice feature. I also have some butterworts (pinguicula) (the least sun tolerant of all), which also sprouts little offspring from the dead and wilted lower leaves.

Going shopping. I have done numerous internet searches on this issue. I’m not spamming for anyone, but my experience looking around might save you some time. I mentioned two online businesses that I’ve ordered from, plus scavenging Lowes. I’ll probably order from others later. FYI, Most vendors sites provide detailed info on caring for the plants.

Exotic Gardens
Cooks
I Love Carnivorous Plants!
The CP Jungle (VFT section)
Peter Pauls
CP Bog
Lee’s Botaincal Gardens
venus-fly-traps.com There’s more, but that’s a good start.

AT SOME POINT I WILL BUY FROM THE CHARITY PLANT NURSERY–Meadowview Biological Research Station

FAQ, VERY useful

2

Brother (Sister?) Carnovore-lover!

I’ve been jonesin’ for a trip to California Carnivores for awhile, ever since my VFT succumed to aphids (stupid hardware houseplants). I’m lucky to be relatively near them. I later had my Sarracenia Pupura die from a bit too enthusiastic overpruning. I’ve learned my lesson.

I’m impressed that you managed to find a Nepenthes at Lowe’s. I’m forever getting the stray friend/co-worker who buys a VFT at Lowe’s or OSH or some other hardware store, and has no idea of what to do with the poor things. I’ve seen plenty die from having been drowned in tap water.

My Nepenthes x. Holland hybrid is going gangbusters, though. I raise mine in the bathroom since I don’t have room for a proper terrarium. There’s good sun in there, never gets horribly hot and it’s constantly humid.

3

Oh, yup, count me in, I love carnivorous plants! Especially Sarracenia. The native plant nursery I work for has a good sized bog garden, as well as a whole hoop house devoted to bog plants. ( I won’t be commercial, Beagle, but you can e-mail me for the address and more info.) We have several hybrids produced by two local NC botany professors…

When I do garden tours, the bog is my favorite stop, especially with kids. I’ll cut open an old pitcher (a modified leaf, not a flower, as often mistaken) and show the remnants of bug bits stewing. “Yeecchhhh!” is often the adult response, but the kids always say “COOL!”, and want to know more. They’re right; carnivorous plants are amazing in their adaptation to supplement deficient soils with insects.

Here in NC, Sarracenia, Venus Fly Traps, and native sundew overwinter fine outdoors, and don’t need a terrarium at all. My understanding is that Darlingtonia (Cobra Lily) need cool night temps to thrive. This summer, an 11-year old wiz kid from Las Vegas visited the nursery, having googled for local sources while passing through. He was amazing in his knowledge, and was growing Darlingtonia in Las Vegas. I asked him how he kept them cool at night, and he smiled and said he carefully put them into a cooler with ice every night! He’d purchased several plants with a keen eye, but I gave him an extra nice mixed species one as a gift. He reached into the back of his grandma’s car and fished some Darlingtonia seed he’d collected and gave it to me, with detailed instructions on growing it. This kid is going to be the next generation’s expert!

I’ve been hunting for an old claw-foot bathtub to make a bog garden. Last week, a local antiques dealer pretty much gave me one. That’ll be this weekend’s project; all my pitcher plants will finally have a little growing room.

4

Sarracenia is a particularly beautiful, simple, elegant, and yet a stealthy, efficient killer of insects. Right away I liked those. The purpurea I first bought was outside for several months. Needless to say it developed some pretty distinctive red veins. Well, you know what that particular variety looks like from most angles, let’s face it, no it’s not in my head, [sub]a forest of penises[/sub]. Anyway, what a conversation piece.

I just ordered some VFT and sarracenia hybrids from Cooks. They seem to carry as many as any place I’ve yet found, usually at reasonable prices. Dangerous Plants–site was FUBAR when I tried to post the link in my laundry list before–had a nice (cheap) collection of sarracenia types. The only overlap in the two orders was the Judith Hindle, which is really pretty, and I can live with three of them–so I ordered the Dangerous Plants collection also.

Darlingtonia can be pretty tough, from what I can tell from my limited experience. I never purchased any when I bought various plant collections, so I assumed they were sensitive. The beginner collections tend to focus on tough, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, back to Lowes, where I found those little plastic terrariums which include some kind of green VFT, a cobra lily (darlingtonia), and a nepenthes (sundew). I talked the manager into selling me the terrariums at half price ($4) as none of them had all three plants alive, and few had two healthy ones. I managed to find four with fairly healthy cobra lilys, scrounged several adelade sundews (lots of little bonus adelade sprouts) and one VFT. All for about 16 bucks.

The cobra lilys never, I can assure you, had evening temperatures much below 75 degrees during their seemingly long stay at the Lowes garden center. At times in the afternoons the temperatures must have exceeded 92 even in the outdoor garden center. The shade and misting helps. But 92 is 92. All the individually packaged butterworts were dead, of course.

They seem to like the window location so far. Of course, night temperatures are AC controlled. It’s not like they are roughing it.

mojave66 Believe it or not, they have been watering those huge nepenthes with tap water since they got them. Which as I mentioned might be a couple years. I asked. Twice. Their mister is just tap water. :confused: Since I transplanted them I’ve been misting with distilled. Hopefully the rainy season will keep them nice and wet.

I like the bathroom idea. For a while I had some VFTs in a big clay pot. I’d move it all the time for light, rain, humidity—you know the drill. Finally, I began showering in the guest bathroom to humidify the room for their afternoon stay in the bathroom.

Anyway, that’s one of several reasons why I now have two ten gallon aquariums and two smaller circular terrariums. It’s just too much work walking your plants. Dogs are bad enough.

5

You have cast iron nepenthes, Beagle. :smiley:

I had a couple of Darlingtonia several years ago. You can keep them cool by using melting ice cubes to water them. But they are fussier than your average CP. All it took was a minor heatwave to kill them both off.

6

mojave66 I was so confused, as evidenced by my “:confused:” that I rolled up my sleeves and did some old fashioned research (well, I clicked the mouse a few times).

As it turns out—and I am about 1 hour ahead of the curve on you on this—nepenthes are more resistant to tap water and the associated impurities. I’ll still mist with distilled, it’s less than a dollar a gallon.

Did you keep your darlingtonia outside? Whatever the answer to that question is, what’s the magic temperature of death in your estimation?

7

Personally I’m partial to Butterworts ( Pinguicula sp. ). Small, some are very easy to care for, pretty flowers, and those big, flat, geasy leaves which are some how so remarkably effective at exterminating small gnats and whatnot.

It’s been mentioned in similar threads before, but I’ll once again put in a plug for Peter D’Amato’s ( he’s the fellow who owns the aforementioned California Carnivores ) The Savage Garden:* Cultivating Carnivorous Plants*:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0898159156/qid=1059517339/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-1331029-8088958

  • Tamerlane
8

Tamerlane, I agree. I always try to save the little butterworts–progeny of my first Pinguicula Primuliflora (whew!) from Exotic Gardens. I use them as accents around the plants I put on the little peat mounds. They like whatever shade they can get, I’ve found. They stay nice and low–which mixes well with the taller plants in terrariums–then upon maturity shoot up those cool flowers. The small ones I have now are little more than sprouts. But, they all show signs of new growth.

Exotic Gardens instructions were completely correct. But, had I followed them, I wouldn’t have learned so much. I took the primuliflora out of it’s little protective dome, put it outside in total shade (ha ha, it was as hot as hell anyway), thus heated it up, dried it out, and barely saved it with constant misting. Then, in desperation, put it in intensive care under a tupperware pitcher turned upside down on the kitchen counter. I’d mist it once a day, remind it how much I regretted baking it nearly to death, and put it back under the pitcher. Amazingly, it came back in the high humidity and AC. It even flowered while in tupperware intensive care. Now at home in terrarium heaven it’s rewarded me with little primuliflora and looks to be growing very well.

Speaking of plugs, I just found this place with another internet search.— Carnivorous Plant Store. It looks like it has a pretty good selection.

Personally, I like to shop around. Especially when I can do it while sipping a cold beverage in front of a computer. Moreover, prices and availability seem to vary a great deal. Not surprising, even wheat farmers have bad years.

9

The Savage Garden does indeed rock. It has some great photos of rare hybrids, too. Not only that, but Mr. D’Amato is a great guy. He can be frequently found hanging out at Cal Carnivores and is fun to chat with.

Beagle, I lived in LA at the time and it hit about 95+ during the days my Darlingtonias went down. I did keep them in indoors, but we didn’t have air conditioning and no amount of ice or water kept them cool enough. In retrospect, I should have have just found a place in the fridge for them.

One of the next plants I’d like to get is a ping, as well as a sundew. Anyone here attempt a cephalotus? they are amazing looking, and expensive.

10

Cephalotus? I’m a sucker for Latin names, and I have too much time on my hands this evening.
The Albany pitcher plant?
It’s apparently very popular
even down under.

I checked California Carnivores, it’s a call for availability and pricing plant. What a great looking pitcher. Perfect. Something else to buy. :smack:

sundews I have drosera adelae, spathulata, and filiformis. Those are pretty common varieties. They are nice plants, tough, and pretty good at catching little gnats and flies. I’ve seen spathulata curling around tiny flies more than a few times. The spathulata and adelae like to make little spathulata and adelae, nice if you’re looking to fill a small space in a terrarium. Just tear one off, plant, water.

11

I just received my shipment from Cooks. That was pretty fast.

Sarracenia hybrids (fluted pitcher plants): 1. (rubra x oreophila) x purpurea ‘burkeii’ 2. oreophila x (flavia x purpurea venosa) 3. (leucophylla x purpurea) x rubra gulfensis 4. Judith Hindle (2) 5. leucophylla x rubra ‘Sheridan.’

Drosera hybrids (sundews) 1. pulchella x ericksonae 2. rotundifolia x intermedia

Diaonaea Muscipula (Venus Fly Trap): 1. Big Mouth (3)

The sarracenia hybrids were shipped bare root. I clipped off the dead pitchers, misted their root balls, planted them, watered them in and they look happy to be here. They are so tall that I’m already looking into a taller tank or a lid that adds a few inches. These plants would be great for someone with an old gigantic fish tank, but got sick of fish.

The drosera were a bit dry, though they were shipped in pots. I misted them with distilled and put them in the plastic terrarium boxes that I saved from my Lowes purchases. They make great ICU for carnivores. Small enough and air tight enough to give the plant a quick shot of needed humidity. They also hold the water that drips out of those little green pots everyone ships plants in.

12

That’s a great haul! Woo!

Know what we need? Links to photos of your terrarium.

I love sundews because of the sparkly red on their leaves. They’re gorgeous in filtered sunlight. And there are amazing amounts of variety to them.

Cephalotus is actually an Australian native, hence their love for them.

BTW, being out in Coastal California, it’s easy to get an outside bog up and running. I really want to do that someday-- create a rock waterfall with pockets full of sarracenia, drosera, fly traps, butterworts and bladderworts in the water. I don’t know if darlingtonia would survive over here, but maybe if they were close enough to the running water to stay cool.

In the meantime, it’s the bathroom for 'em.

13

I can take digital photos of the whole shebang in a week or so. I’ve got some interesting things coming in over the next couple days. The tech. side of this past taking the photos, loading them on the computer, and e-mailing is nothing I’ve ever done before. I don’t have a website. :o

The sarracenia are big, and seemingly tropical sun tolerant. I left them outside today in their temporary terrarium home praying I wouldn’t have brown stalks when I next checked. I think they liked it. That’s one sun tolerant plant. Out of days of darkness while being shipped, into July Florida sun. If I can put one of my old clay pot, bowl combinations back in use I do. About ten minutes ago I finished transplanting them from the aquarium to the bowl.

I think they look much better. For one thing, the decorative parts of the plant are now visible, that kinda helps :D. They just seem to look better in something round also. Now they have more room to root down and grow up.

I’m considering creating a backyard bog garden, focusing on the sarracenia (because they might survive as much as anything else). To do that I’ve got to find the right kind of decorative fence to keep the dogs away without guard towers and barbed wire. One interesting note, sarracenia supposedly like to eat wasps. Leaving such a plant inside would be a crime against humanity.

I’m just getting into the sundew varieties. They are a very interesting plant. To me all the carnivores are automatically interesting. In bog, plant eats you!

14

Darlingtonia is native to the bogs of Northern California and Southern Oregon. Sunset Western Garden Book says that they will only survive in zones 4-7, 14-17. These are all areas with oceanic influence. LA is well into zones 22-24 in Sunset’s scheme, so it’s no wonder your Darlingtonias died, Mojave66. I wouldn’t try them unless you’re on the California Coast from Pt. Concepcion northward, unless you can find an exceptionally cool spot year round to place them.

I think a good rule of thumb here is, if you’re on the coast and can grow Monterey Cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), Darlingtonia may work for you.

15

I provided some bad information about Cobra lilys earlier.

They actually aren’t good terrarium plants. The humidity is not as important and they root much more than I thought. The particular examples I bought had much of the root systems removed for packaging. I’ve been doing a bit more research. I apologize.

My next plan is to buy a large ceramic pot with a bowl for all my darlingonia. Running water is crucial, but soaking the root system is bad. Such a setup should work, I guess. I has to work better than the shallow holes I dug in my terrariums for them (likely to cause root rot). Luckily that all happened recently. I bet if I transplant them (again) all will be forgiven.

16

Color me lucky in the carnivorous shopping department.

But first, I digress into a completely obscenity free rant about botany and the female mind. If you would like to skip it, go down to the three confused smilies.

I just bought two palm trees at a local mom and pop garden store. They were $20.00 per tree, about three or four feet tall, with a nice start on little trunks approaching maybe a foot. Maximum mature height is between ten and fifteen feet.

In our backyard we have two small oaks (only about 14 feet or so each, counting the tallest little tiny branch going up). Those came with the house, they were about seven feet tall then. Possible maximum height? Get back with me in 300 years. I have planted a crepe myrtle which is about eight feet tall (pink). I have another planned when the lightning and thunder stops, already nine feet sitting in a pot (white). I also planted a tiny little cheap Persian lime tree about two years ago that’s about seven feet tall now.

Now without too much detail, I hope, these palm trees were to go (and went, despite Beaglette’s protestations) on each side of the walkway into the yard. It’s not like Versaille or anything, it’s just that the grass part of the yard (non-patio) is surrounded by beds of ornamental landscaping along the fence (the beds are only between four and six feet thick) and the side of the patio. There is one little three stepping stone shortcut off to the left where the gate is, and the walkway straight ahead. Any other route into the grass part of the backyard from the sliding glass door involves walking through landscaping, shrubs, etc.

I buy the little palms, plant them, love them, AND THEN SHE TELLS ME, sorry,

Two giant palm trees sitting there next to each other will look really stupid.

If anyone can translate this into testosteronenglish, I’d much appreciate it.

No I didn’t say, “you mean like the oak trees that came with the backyard?” I thought it really hard though.
:confused: :confused: :confused:

At the aforementioned mom and pop garden store I found two nepenthes in pots (again way in the back, look for cobwebs) that looked like they had been growing weeds for about two years. Green pitcher traps about four inches long, a bit more in some cases. One stalk is so long I’m going to make several cuttings (one way to turn mature nepenthes into more nepenthes)*. I got them both for $25.00. :smiley:

Two more 16" hanging baskets later (another $28), and I’m already considering more, as these are so mature I might just go get more to make babies.

*Don’t trust me, look it up. I’ve been learning this stuff on the fly off the internet for a few months. But, what I think I read is that you can cut about three large leaf growths back on a large nepenthes and simply plant the cut end after trimming the bottom leaves, it supposedly roots in about three weeks and starts a new plant.

17

Twenty. Five. Dollars. My.

I’m female, but I have no excuse for Mrs. Beagle. Personally, I don’t think I could have resisted your quip.

My dad once convinced my poor mom that there existed such things as “Bush Palms.” My dad got a good (verbal) bruising once she realized, after trying unsuccessfully to find one at the local nurseries, that such a thing just did not exist. What’s even funnier is she is easily the confirmed green thumb in the house.

Doobieous, I love in the SF Bay Area now and close enough to the coast that I can get away with outside Darlingtonias. Fortunately for my plants, since then I’ve gone from “oooh look, neat plant, I want to buy that” back in my LA days to actually reading a couple of books on the subject and, better yet, far more books and classes on gardening and botany. In a way, dreaming about a carnivorous bog is comforting me on the utter despair of growing decent tomatoes and corn in my foggy gray area.

18

That is, I live in the Bay Area. The part about “love” belongs in a TMI thread. :smack:

19

Utter despair over tomatoes and corn?

[sub]Don’t anyone mention citrus, ever. Ever, I say![/sub]

Might it be the fog and gray weather? Naaaah.

Personally, your idea of a waterfall carnivorous plant bog got me thinking how cool that would be. I’ve been occasionally daydreaming little designs. Not that I could pull one off here with many varieties of plants. But, if you could do it in a place with an amenable climate, carefully constucting the environment to maximize growth, and start with cheap younger plants it’s not impossible to imagine something almost otherworldly without that much of an investment of money. Time, OTOH… But, with time and a bit of study your initial carnivores will make more.

Anyway, corn grows in four packs at Publix.

20

I know this is riveting at least 15,000 members of the board, so I won’t spare any detail.

The last two pitcher plants (nepenthes) I bought had vined for quite a while sitting back there in the mom and pop garden store. When they vine they don’t produce as many pitchers, BUT that means you can make cuttings. In this case, lots of cuttings.

I bought another four 16" baskets (clearance sale could not have been more timely).

Today, using one vine off one plant, I managed to make six cuttings of about five leaf sections each. They say three is minimum, I figured there was no shortage, play it safe. I placed all of them in one basket to hopefully create a really busy hanging basket some day.

I cut the stem’s (hopefully) root end diagonally, trimmed the lower leaves off completely, cut the top leaves in half (that’s what ‘they’ say), wet the stem, dipped the cut end it in rooting hormone, and stuck the cut end in the pot. Watered it all in with distilled, though that’s supposedly not necessary with nepenthes. I’m being careful as they have all just been transplanted, and have delicate root systems. In this case, watering cuttings, it just seemed like a good idea.

If this works, I might go into the pitcher plant business. :wink: