the good and bad news of carnivorous plants

Well, I'm down to a single carnivorous plant, that's the bad news. The sundew dried up for whatever reason. The butterwort, aka Pinguicula, is the surviving plant. Both were brought outdoors when the weather was consistently warm enough especially after we transplanted our tomato plants. They were a great help in capturing flying pests last year. This summer, the Ping did all of the work.

The good news is that my Ping is growing a flower! Woo-hoo! I'm excited about this as I didn't think it would happen. As with most plants that flower, they're reproducing. Maybe I'll be able to harvest a seed?

I expect that it will blossom soon. Stay tuned for photos is the Ping flower. 

UPDATE: Well, the flower didn't make it. I don't know what happened. I checked the next day and the stem of the flower had fallen over. :(

tiny terrors

Following up with an earlier post regarding a terrarium of carnivorous plants, which I eventually did get but not to my expectations. The shorten version is that I got a kit of parts for a terrarium but with no proper instructions of how to put it together and the plants I received were not in great conditions or sized to fit in the shapely but squat apothecary jar.

Luckily, I found someone in my area who is well experienced and knowledge about carnivorous plants. He will be opening up an online business for growing carnivorous plants called Midtown Carnivores (MC). MC was very helpful in explaining what I needed to do to rehabilitate my plants, and provided me with the proper growing media to plant them in. He also explained that carnivorous plants do not grow to their best potential in an enclosed terrarium so keeping it in an apothecary jar was no longer an option.

I'm happy to report that with MC's instructions and media, my plants are doing well, growing, and "eating".

In addition to providing me media for my plants, MC spared two plants that he established and are healthy. One is a sundew and the other is a butterwort. It helped me to have these healthy plants because it helped me to understand and observe how a healthy plant should look. I was really excited when I first noticed a desiccated bug on one of the butterwort's leaves.