Lazy Fly Trap

[David Kotschessa]

I must be too well trained by my cats....

I have this little fly problem.

I figured one natural way to "deal with it" would be to have a venus fly trap around. A nice symbiotic relationship between me, the insects in my house and the plant.

So I'm watching these flies buzz around the thing...Getting closer... land on the window... fly away to another part of the house.

So I killed the thing myself and fed it to the plant. You think the cats were talking to it and said "Don't worry, if you just sit there and look pathetic he'll give you food." ?

Has anybody seen a venus fly trap EVER ACTUALLY CATCH A FLY OR BUG?

[James]

I have. Years ago. The inside of the plant gets pinkish and puts out an odor that attracts them. If it's not with color, it will still chomp but maybe not attract too well.

[David Kotschessa]

The one I bought is quite tiny. I do recall that pinkish color on larger plants when the traps get bigger. Maybe I need to give this one some more room to grow.

I just keep thinking that if I continue to feed it manually it will get spoiled. :)

[paghat]

I've a few larger bug-eatin' pitcher plants that do well outdoors, & when I clip out older pitchers, they're always stuffed with exoskeletons. I've frequently been weeding or working nearby & heard buzzing inside the pitchers. One that is very low-growing seems to have a decided preference for earwigs & wood louses, while a toller one gets moths & flies & wasps.

But the idea that a wee indoor venus flytrap might catch flies all over the house was, at best, a delusional hope. If you want to see it capture its own food, enclose it in a terrarium or set a belljar over it, with a few baby crickets (from the petstore) turned loose in the same finite space, & you will see flytraps feed themselves just fine.

-paghat the ratgirl

[FayeC]

I have a tiny fly trap that we got at Rona and they look like miniatures..... It caught something the other day.I think it was a tiny spider (could only see thin legs) but nothing big....I am thinking of feeding it some dead bugs too as they said that if it is not in a location with plenty insects you might need to give it some plant food....... I just don't want to end up killing it so I am taking the "natural way" and offering some disabled insects (not dead) so it can do some of the job itself...

FayeC

[David Kotschessa]

I know...i KNOW!! {sobs uncontrollably}

Actually it wasn't really so much that I wanted it to take care of my fly problem. I just thought it'd be a win-win situation. "You eat flies, I got flies. Join the family!"

Hmm, well, I don't have cable so...

[Jim Carlock]

Found some good information:

page indicates the plants need to be watered with distilled water, because tap water will slowly kill the plant. It also indicates that you should never feed it hamburger. It suggest placing the plant into a tray of water to keep the soil moist and somewhere I just read that the actual leaf of the fly trap is the carnivorous part of the plant and the plant itself is still gets most of it's energy through photosynthesis (ie, sunlight hitting the leaves). A leaf will die after 2 or 3 entrapments of flies.

They seem to have originated in a 100 mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Apparently North Carolina has put laws into effect that make people criminals for collecting wild fly traps. :-(

The following link is pretty neat and educational...