Nepenthes Bicalcarata

It has deadly fangs. I can’t understand the logic. The idea is for insects and small creatures to fall into the pitcher and drown. But the sight of the fangs should actually send them running for cover. Unfortunately for insects, the lure of the nectar-producing pitcher seems to be too strong. Many curious ants have [...]

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Nepenthes Competition

“We’re starting the monthly plant competitions again – but only with the nepenthes. Will you support the competition? Just send us a photo of your plant.” It was a modest online nepenthes competition with no prizes at stake. Did I want to enter? I had seen my friends prepare for these competitions. And it involved [...]

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Feeding Pitcher Plants

I’d look out for plump flying ants whenever it rains the night before. Fortunately for me, the recent rains brought some. They swarm around the lights outside the house and invariably find their way indoors. So I’d get them – before they get in. I swing my flyswatter around with as much panache as a [...]

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Nepenthes Ampullaria

    These ground-hugging squat pitchers look like nature’s tea-cups or shot glasses. Except that I wouldn’t want to take a sip of its slimy cocktail of drowned insects. But ampullaria pitchers are lovely with their wide lips and narrow lids. There are two sorts of pitchers; aerial pitchers and basal ones. The aerial pitchers [...]

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Carnivorous Plants – Melbourne

  Gobble Guts – that’s how some people refer to carnivorous plants Down Under.  I thought it was cute. Perhaps the comic touch makes them seem a little less macabre. Gobble Guts, Jungle Jaws, whatever … I love them all. What fun it must be to have a CP garden in Australia. With so many CPs [...]

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Nepenthes Gardentech

Yuks. What a name. When someone asked me if I was keen to buy one, I actually sniffed and said “I think not.” But I changed my tune as soon as I googled and saw a picture. This hybrid is a real beauty. A cross between nepenthes ventricosa and ampullaria, this nepenthes looks like neither [...]

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Grasshoppers, anyone?

The cluster of grasshoppers on my thunbergia erecta didn’t know what hit them. First, they were surveying my plants and wondering what to munch and devour first. Next, I turned the tables on them. I bagged the lot. There were 83. Imagine how much havoc these little critters would have wrecked in the garden. Imagine [...]

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Propagating Venus Fly Trap – Leaf-pulls

I did my first leaf-pull when I found a distorted leaf with a blackened trap. Since it wasn’t looking its best it didn’t seem too much of a sacrifice to experiment with it. After a few weeks, I saw a nub forming at the base of the leaf. This soon became a baby dionaea muscipula pink [...]

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Dionaea muscipula pink venus

My pink venus loves the sun. Since moving it to the front of the garden where it enjoys the sun all day, it has responded well and thrown out more leaves and traps. Even the colour has deepened. The plantlet that grew from a leaf I had stuck into the sphagnum moss is growing as [...]

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Venus fly traps

“See, don’t touch!” I read the terse notice. “What a killjoy. What antisocial behavior,” I thought. That was during my pre-carnivorous plant days. Now I am tempted to stick a similar notice for my VFTs. When I read that a Dionaea muscipula (VFT) trap turns black once it’s closed 3 or 4 times, I paled. Have I ever [...]

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