The Deadly N. Deroose Alata - Bug-Eating Houseplant

This plant is a hybrid developed by a Nepenthes grower, DeRoose in Beligium.

Most pitcher plants aren't easy to grow in the typical home environment. However, this one makes an excellent houseplant. It tolerates a reasonable amount of growing conditions, and is very forgiving of mistakes. In really bright conditions the pitchers turn completely red!

The adult pitchers can reach up to 6 inches in length. This tropical perennial is a true tropical, and in colder climates must be grown as a houseplant. Now to the "deadlier" aspects of this plants personality...

It attracts prey with its brightly colored pitchers of red, gold and green. The pitchers also bear scattered nectar glands on the lid, peristome or "lip" surrounding the lid. According to Barry A. Rice in Growing Carnivorous Plants, "large glands on the inner edge of the peristome entice insects to the very edge of slippery danger."

Sundew (Drosera spatulata) - Bug-eating Plant

I've been inspired by Gayla at You Grow Girl - The Dirt to blog about one type of carnivorous plant that I have in my collection --- Sundew (Drosera spatulata).

This pretty, alien-looking plant has been sitting in my greenhouse collecting fungus gnats for several months now. I have read that it is considered to be a "weed" by many carnivorous plant lovers. As it tries to "take over" other plants in its efforts to propagate. It's true! I found spatulata appendages sprouting out of a nearby plant a few months ago, and had to pinch them off!

The spatulata's methods for attracting and capturing prey are somewhat more subtle than that of say, the Venus Flytrap. Their leaves are densely covered with stalked and sessile glands. The stalked heads look like tiny red-capped mushrooms up close. Each capped with a droplet of mucus. Insects are lured by the nectar-like mucus glands and the intense honey smell the entire plant gives off. According to Growing Carnivorous Plants by Barry Rice, "when an insect touches a stalked gland, the mucus does not glue the insect to the plant: instead, the entire blob of mucus is transferred from the gland to the insect. As the impaired insect careens from gland to gland, it eventually accumulates so much that it eventually drowns."