Great things to keep on a sunny windowsill, fascinating to watch...and a good way of dealing with some of the pesky flying things that get in the house, and can;t get out again!
This is my biggest plant....
It's a venus flytrap, dionaea muscipula to the fancy talkers. This specimen is a 'B52' variant, one of the biggest. A well developed plant can make traps up to 5cm across, thoguh this one mostly has traps 3-4cm across. They are basically green....but have a central part of the trap that goes pinkish....probably to help lure in those flys. In some variants, it can get very pronounced as well. The more sunlight it gets, the redder it goes.
This fellow....
Is a variant that has taken the red almost to purple. It's an 'Akai Ryu' or red dragon variant. Looks spectacular in summer.
I also have a base variant flytrap that has got to be over 10 years old...possibly older. It was the first one I ever got, from a DIY shops garden centre. Usually...these end up dead, either from abuse or poor care. They are also force grown in artificial media...and not with any great care. Mine was lucky, and survived. Its still going strong after being repotted a few times.
The weay these things work is fascinating. On each 'trap' there are 3 trigger hairs each side. If an insect hits one...nothing happens....until the second contact... which causes the trap to snap shut. Not completely shut, but enough to trap prey. Then....as the insect struggles, the hairs are further stimulated, causing the trap to tighten. Eventually, the trap presses together tight enough to form a seal...and the plant starts to secrete digesting fluids to break down the insect and absorb the nutrients. Each trap can trigger a couple of times before the hinge basically wears out. This is how most DIY shop plants die....starved...as the traps are triggered with no food...die...and the plant tries to grow more. They grow in poor soils with little nutrients and need payback for the effort a trap takes to grow.
Care is simple. Stand them in a tray, and let them soak up the water. Use de-ionised water ( mine get rain water) and give them plenty of sun...but not too much heat. Feed them flies. I use an electric zapper to stun prey, as I think live prey is what they want...though to be fair....I open the window and they catch what comes in...and in summer, I let them sit outside. They do a good job feeding themselves.
I also have a sundew or two...
which catches flies by means of sticky sap globules on the leaves. The sap is acidic enough to dissolve the juicy bits of bugs, and the things just land on and can't take off again.
and some pitcher plants....both the upright Sarracenia types, which are basically trumpet shaped death traps for insects, and Nepenthes ...which are the hanging down types. These things catch ground insects that fall into a corrosive swimming pool of digestive juices.
But the flytraps are the active hunters
