Carnivorous plants

Post Reply New Topic

Anyone know anything about keeping carnivorous plants? Specifially the genus Nepenthes? I have somewhat too frequent incursions of flies of varous sizes and levels of annoying, and I'm feeling spiteful. The places that sell them online say they are "best kept in a terrarium" for the sake of air humidity. But does that mean they'll die or barely get by outside of one, or that they just won't thrive as much?

All I know about them is that they're not for casual botanists. You'll need to do a ton of research on what do to because they're a bastard to grow and cultivate and keep alive.

As above, carnivorous plants occupy quite specific niches, if you can't replicate their natural conditions it's unlikely they will survive. I kept venus fly traps for a while, generally high maintenance and they couldn't feed themselves either.

Thanks for your input, guys. It's roughly as I suspected.

Get a spider and put a plant costume on it?

I occasionally see Venus fly traps for sale and have felt tempted to buy one, but I really stink at caring for plants. They seem to hate me for some reason and wilt by my presence. Some people think plants can read our minds, I don't know about that but *any*one who claims to have ESP would need therapy after reading mine.

Also I have two carnivorous pets, my cats, who might like to add a nice salad to their diet, and I don't get many flies or bugs in my home anyway. Although I did have a real problem with fruit flies in the winter from keeping a small green bin indoors.

Actually there was one plant I've successfully grown, and that was cat grass. It required hardly any care at all, just water and put next to a window. And naturally when it was grown, my cats wouldn't touch it.

I've never kept them but always thought they were cool.

I knew some people once years ago who had venus flytraps. It depends on your climate: they would need a hothouse in most conditions and they lived in the Western Cape pf South Africa, a temperate Mediterranean climate, and kept them in a hothouse as far as I recall. Quite small plants really, and I liked them.

I bought two small but healthy-looking Nepenthes Alata today. Supposedly, highland varieties like these should be fine without terrariums, if given plenty of water and sunlight. This should prove interesting

Now, there's a "Want!"-inducing contraption.