My Dionaea (Venus Fly-Trap) has flowered! Poor thing is a little confused, bless it. It should be just coming out of hibernation...but the central heating in my home has deprived it of that. Seems to have made it think its spring. Pictures below.
It has to eat live prey (insects only), so feeding it flys would be difficult. I tend to supplement it when it doesn't catch it's own food. I've caught spiders for it, which is tricky, hideous and doesn't work too well. Spiders have the nasty habit of ejecting their legs! Which makes getting them in the trap a nightmare..add to that I dislike spiders..and well..you get the idea. I have found catching a wood louse (cheesy bug for my UK chaps) is easy enough. I've had it less than a year and on its own its caught 2 wasps, a couple moths and a spider. Fortunately it doesn't need to eat more than once a month. You do need to be careful with how you water them though. Tap water kills them. So I have to catch rain water in pots to give it. Easy enough when you live in England! lol
I could send you some, my cat is good at catching them but never knows what to do with them so she just sits there while you can hear them buzz in her mouth. Not sure they'd survive the trip though.
Thanks for the thought! But I fear you are correct, the little buggers would die in transit. Uh almost. Thing is between about November and now the plant is supposed to hibernate. A lot of the traps die and it only needs natural daylight and a little water once every few weeks. Its had the later two things but the heat in my house has prevented it from entering hibernation. So it thinks spring has come early. I didn't know that they flowered either until I bought one and read up a little on them.
So much hassle! Just buy a ****ing rose bush and be done with it. Bitches love rose bushes. EDIT: Too meme?
I have one of these! It hasn't flowered or eaten anything yet, though. There aren't enough flies around at this time of year, and I can't be bothered to catch them for it. The idea of trying to feed a spider to it is icky. They move too fast and too enthusiastically for it to be straightforward....ugh. The idea. Like trying to force a feral cat into a shoebox.
Brilliant idea: Construct a large ant farm and then Mr. Plant can have as much food as it wants, just hope that the queen isn't dumb enough to climb up there and it should be sustainable. Using slippery walls you can prevent the ants from escaping an open container while permitting flys to have access to those beautiful flowers of doom. As a backup to prevent the ants from escaping, surround the ant farm in a ring of pitcher plants so that when they fall, they end up in other carnivorous plants.... but these may not obtain enough food, you can use mice to feed them... cats can obtain mice for you! But what's good at keeping cats within a contained space... dogs!
Just about everything is less hassle than females lol. In answer to if they need to be fed. Well not often. They absorb most of what they need from the peat moss they grow in. And during the summer months it happily catches its own munch. It does live in a small pot though, so the nutrients there are gonna run out I would think. I suppose I may have to change that at some point. I really don't know actually. @bindi Roses would take up too much space and they also don't eat bugs. There are roses in the garden anyway. And any plant that can eat spiders and wasps is worth a little effort!
