Observations: "The Perfect Starter Carnivore"
One of the biggest hesitations by beginners on raising carnivorous
plants, as with orchids, is that they're presumably hard to keep and
easy to kill. In some ways, they're correct, but it has to do with
the varieties being sold. Just as the reptiles sold
by pet
shops as "beginner pets" are invariably some of the hardest to care for
(nobody needs a red-eared slider or a green iguana as their first herp,
and any pet dealer who gives a beginner a box turtle or a baby boa
constrictor or Burmese python should be shot in the face), most of the
carnivores offered for sale really aren't suitable for beginners. Venus
flytraps are intended as impulse purchases, but they tend to be rather
fussy about their growing conditions, and one good soak with municipal
water that's overly mineral-laden will send them to the compost heap
before you realize what's happened. (Here in Dallas, where our
municipal water is best described as "crunchy", watering with rainwater
or distilled water is the only way to keep them alive.) All of your
North American pitcher plants get too big, need too much light, and
require enough growing space that keeping them in small containers
isn't a good idea for a beginner. Bladderworts are beautiful,
especially the various terrestrial varieties, but you aren't going to
see them capture prey without a microscope. Asian pitcher plants need
lots of room. Butterworts have possibilities, but they also tend to be
susceptible to nematode attacks, and they have real problems with low
humidity. And while I'm proud to show off the Darlingtonia
cobra lilies I grew from seed three years ago, I'm also smart enough to
know that I'm incredibly lucky: any mature cobra lily I've purchased,
no matter the source, has died on me in a matter of days or weeks.
Even if you follow the books, and I have as extensive a library of
books on carnivores as anybody else in the field, you'll note that
beginners need a reasonably easy plant to start with. Since
precious few people live in a place where they can just put a carnivore
into the ground and expect it to grow, it's up to the grower to provide
the proper conditions of light, heat, humidity, and soil. That's why I
recommend sundews, and one sundew in particular, for beginners to get a
feel for working with a carnivore.
The genus Drosera,
which includes all of the true sundews, is the most cosmopolitan of all
of the carnivores, being found on every continent but Antarctica. Drosera
was studied by Charles Darwin from native populations in England,
and the tribe has plenty of specializations necessary for
growing
in less-than-optimal climes. For instance, the tuberous sundews of
Australia live in areas extremely susceptible to fire in the summer, so
they produce large tubers (which sometimes look like tomatoes) and go
dormant during the summer, only returning to activity once the autumn
rains return. You have giant sundews in Florida big enough to capture
grasshoppers, and tiny sundews that produce sprouts (called gemmae)
that are actually spring-flung from the mother plant when they reach a
certain size. However, all of them have a series of characteristics
that distinguish them from other plants: they all have distinctive
hairs that secrete mucilage from their tips that snag prey, and those
hairs (known officially as "tentacles") have the capacity to move in
order to further ensnare prey and press the prey against the leaf.
From there, specialized glands on the leaf surface produce
enzymes to digest the prey: some even have enough mobility to twist or
wrap their leaves around larger prey, mostly to increase the amount of
leaf surface area available for digestion. Other carnivores, such as Bylibis and
Drosophyllum,
may also ensnare prey, but they don't have that touch of
mobility.
(As an aside, the famed Venus
flytrap is a member of the Drosera
family, as all it really is is a highly specialized sundew that no
longer produces mucilage. With some varieties of sundew, you can see
similar leaves that give important clues as to how Dionea's traps
originally evolved. Just to let you know.)
Anyway, while sundews are a good start for an incipient carnivore gardener, many are still not quite perfect. Most sundews from areas with distinctive seasons need a dormancy period in either winter or summer,and preventing the sundew from going dormant, as with most carnivores, will lead to its death. This means that anyone wanting to set up a small terrarium for work or home has no choice but to leave the terrarium outside during the winter or take out the plant and put it in the refrigerator for three months, and what good is a terrarium you can use only nine months out of the year? Others, such as the Cape sundews of South Africa, are incredibly fecund in their abilities to self-pollinate, to the point where they fill a terrarium full of seeds and seedlings, and they require a bit of headroom to grow to their greatest potential. That's why I recommend one sundew, Drosera adelae of Australia (PDF), as a first plant for the beginning carnivore enthusiast.
As I write this, I have a carnivore terrarium on my desk:
it's a
little two-liter glass cookie jar with an adjacent 23-watt compact
fluorescent light. That light won't produce enough light for a lot of
carnivores (Venus flytraps, for instance, usually request more light),
but little D. adelae
thrives on it. You know it's happy when its tentacles turn red and each
one has a nice fat glob of mucilage on the end: that mucilage requires
a lot of energy to produce, so it's a great indicator of light levels
in the terrarium. In fact, adelae
doesn't much like direct sun, and it tends to die back if it gets too
much light. It's ridiculously easy to get established, as each stem
will throw off long grey moldy-looking roots (the "mold" is actually
the root hairs, and the hairs can be impressively long and bushy) at
any opportunity, and new plants emerge from the roots on a constant
basis. Best of all, as opposed to the Cape sundews, having to trim
flower stems is not necessary, as adelae
only produces flowers when conditions are
just right. A few wingless fruit flies or ants every month
sprinkles onto its leaves, and it and its sprouts will grow for years.
Now, if you're asking about outdoor or at least open-air carnivores,
that's a different story, and one for a different time. However, if
you're looking for a gift for a child who might have problems with a
flytrap, or if you feel that you don't have enough confidence to keep a
carnivore alive, take a look at an adelae.
