Thursday, January 31, 2008

Random plant event: Dionaea muscipula flowering

So far, my goal of nursing the Dionaea muscipula along through the winter is going well, to the point where they've all budded. I knew this was possible in theory, but it's still a surprise, and now we're all eagerly anticipating whatever flowers we're going to get.

Click the picture to (somewhat) enlarge.


In a rare (possibly even unprecedented) non-wonderful move, Wonderful Co-Worker took the Venus flytraps out of the bright but cold place where they had been doing so well, and stuck them out in the middle of the greenhouse so the customers could see them. I appreciate the logic, that the ultimate goal is to sell them, and I agree that plants in flower (or at least in bud -- none of them have opened yet) are more likely to sell, but their dormancy wasn't necessarily over as far as I was concerned, and if this sets them back so that they all go black and die after I've tried so hard for them not to, then I'm gonna be pissed. The customers are supposed to kill the plants, if the plants are to be killed. Not us.

But anyway. It was terribly difficult to get pictures of this that were properly focused: I tried and tried for a close-up shot and failed miserably. If they don't all die or sell before the flowers actually open, I'll attempt to follow up with a picture of the flowers.

Bonus unrelated link:

I saw this a couple days ago, and find it intriguing. That's a story I want to hear more about.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure that your fly traps aren't dormant: they usually flower in the spring after they come out of dormancy. When they are dormant they pretty much don't grow anything, not new leaves, not flowers. So I guess yours came out of dormancy a bit early? So I bet the WCW didn't hurt anything and she's still perfectly wonderful :) One note though: when you have fly traps growing in less-then-perfect conditions (not that I'm doubting your set up, but usually it's hard to fully replicate their native conditions inside), it's best to not let them flower. Just chop off the flower stalk as soon as you see it, don't let it grow to be more than an inch tall. I don't have experience with letting these plants flower, but from what I read, flowering takes up to much energy, and so only perfectly healthy outside-grown fly traps should be allowed to flower, and an inside-grown plant might just flower itself to death. But your plants have what looks like fully-grown flower stalks, so I guess the buds are fully developed now, and you might as well let them flower and see the cute tiny flowers. You should post pictures when they open!

Anonymous said...

I'm not seeing the link??

Cool that you got flower buds! I hope they stick around and open for you.