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Post by dvg on Aug 23, 2013 11:36:31 GMT -5
Cook1973, i've found that flytraps do better with eating medium sized insects such as houseflies.
When i put my vft's outside, they typically feast on daddy long legs/harvestmen spiders.
If you put a live bee or especially a yellow jacket hornet in your trap, expect them to escape form your vft and be loose in the house, if that's where you're growing your plants.
If the trap does manage to stay closed and attemps digestion of such a large meal, expect the trap to turn black soon.
dvg
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Aug 23, 2013 12:37:58 GMT -5
Cook1973, i've found that flytraps do better with eating medium sized insects such as houseflies. When i put my vft's outside, they typically feast on daddy long legs/harvestmen spiders. If you put a live bee or especially a yellow jacket hornet in your trap, expect them to escape form your vft and be loose in the house, if that's where you're growing your plants. If the trap does manage to stay closed and attemps digestion of such a large meal, expect the trap to turn black soon. dvg I was thinking that way dvg, then someone said a bigger insect will give the trap more nutrients it needs rather than a small one! It seemed logical to me..bigger prey means more nutrients(BTW I am never gonna feed these anything with a stinger lol !) but I decided to seek advice from people who would know from experience or other forum members.(Thanx) I was just curious because I never heard of a trap taking down large prey One more thing, How can I keep birds from staling the traps? I had 2 birds hit my window trying to get them,I made a few greenhouses from plastic bottles,this helps stop the birds but then they cannot get bugs unless one goes in the bottle or I feed them. I made a shallow greenhouse from a plastic bottle just kept the top off and put a empty pot out all night as a test,this morning there are spiders and aphids inside that could not find their way back out and died in the water I had in the test pot! Might try this with plants later they are not fully developed yet but this seems to work so with a vft in there they should feed well. Big moths can fit in there but hide in trees once it gets daylight until it gets dark again and seem to just stick to the outsides of the bottle!! Guess I will see if the BIG JAW can convince one to go n the bottle later llol! |
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Post by lloyd on Aug 23, 2013 13:48:45 GMT -5
Coarse netting will keep most animals out-they are scared of getting caught. Even big bugs will get in to feed/pollinate the plants.
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Aug 23, 2013 17:56:01 GMT -5
Coarse netting will keep most animals out-they are scared of getting caught. Even big bugs will get in to feed/pollinate the plants. Is the screen mesh like in a door ok to use?? or did you mean netting as in fish net? |
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Post by Katie on Aug 23, 2013 18:34:48 GMT -5
I'd imagine screen door netting would keep pollinators out. Maybe a fishing net would be better.
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Post by lloyd on Aug 23, 2013 23:02:12 GMT -5
I bought my netting at a garden website. It's a very coarse netting for deer. You can find it at lots of places, in stores or on the net.
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Post by shoggoths on Aug 24, 2013 10:07:23 GMT -5
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Post by H2O on Aug 24, 2013 14:31:49 GMT -5
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Aug 24, 2013 16:47:16 GMT -5
what if its outside and say for instance it traps a large moth and digests it but until it opens there is no way to tell what it ate? is there a way to save the trap if it starts to die? |
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Post by H2O on Aug 24, 2013 17:10:22 GMT -5
I don't think you'll have anything to worry about, if it digests it that's great, if it doesn't the worst that will happen is you loose the trap. Try not to over think the feeding, just let it do it's thing and it will be fine. Like DVG said if you choose to hand feed for traps stick with smaller bugs.
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Aug 24, 2013 19:46:52 GMT -5
I don't think you'll have anything to worry about, if it digests it that's great, if it doesn't the worst that will happen is you loose the trap. Try not to over think the feeding, just let it do it's thing and it will be fine. Like DVG said if you choose to hand feed for traps stick with smaller bugs. Gonna go a diffrent way,if it fits in the trap and triggers digestion its game over! either way it dies if it means killing the trap lol !!! If it fits then its fair game for the VFT. Same for my Sundew, its a hunter and a trapper that needs prey!!! My BIG JAWS died back out of shock b it had the chance to eat and are coming back......Interested to see what this bad boy is capable of !lol !! |
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Aug 25, 2013 10:30:59 GMT -5
I was putting my BIG JAWS in the sunlight when I noticed a second trap forming on another leaf,what I seen I never heard of being new to this field.
The second trap is forming but the leaf is wider on 1 side that the leaf where the other trap is opening !!!
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Post by Dennis A(cook1973) on Aug 27, 2013 11:50:39 GMT -5
I don't think you'll have anything to worry about, if it digests it that's great, if it doesn't the worst that will happen is you loose the trap. Try not to over think the feeding, just let it do it's thing and it will be fine. Like DVG said if you choose to hand feed for traps stick with smaller bugs. Gonna go a diffrent way,if it fits in the trap and triggers digestion its game over! either way it dies if it means killing the trap lol !!! If it fits then its fair game for the VFT. Same for my Sundew, its a hunter and a trapper that needs prey!!! My BIG JAWS died back out of shock b it had the chance to eat and are coming back......Interested to see what this bad boy is capable of !lol !! Recently, I had a friend give me his flytrap cause the root was damaged and he had no idea as to what t do and thought it was going to die.( I still do not know what he expecte me to do, but I like a challenge and took the plant.)
when I looked at it half the root was crushed on the part broken off(might have happened packing it for me)
All I did was take a razor blade and tweezers and held it and then cut the part off root that was damaged and threw it away,I made a hole in the peat ,put the partial plant with the good root in the soil,gave it lots of light and watered it.
Today it has 2 leafs with buds on the end to make new traps and a stem coming out of the plants center!! I did this like 1.5 months ago, but it never entered my mind if this was propagation or not !!
Was this a form of propagation? Cause all I did seemed like common sense..try saving it b4 you toss it !
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Post by dvg on Aug 27, 2013 14:23:01 GMT -5
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Post by Maiden on Aug 31, 2013 22:57:46 GMT -5
"I was thinking that way dvg, then someone said a bigger insect will give the trap more nutrients it needs rather than a small one!" Hello cook1973  i wrote some threads on this subject on other forums, so maybe im the 'someone'. Here the original text: Bigger prey provides increasingly higher nutritional value, but large insects can easily escape the sticky mucilage of flypaper traps; the evolution of snap-traps would prevent escape and kleptoparasitism (theft of prey captured by the plant before it can derive any benefit from it), and would also permit a more complete digestion. Larger insects usually walk over the plant, instead of flying to it,[22] and are more likely to break free from sticky glands alone. Therefore, a plant with wider leaves must have adapted to move the trap and it's stalks in directions that maximized its chance of capturing and retaining such prey - in this particular case, longitudinally. Once adequately "wrapped", escape would be more difficult.[22] Then, evolutionary pressure selected the plants with shorter response time, in a manner similar to Drosera burmannii or Drosera glanduligera. The faster the closing, less reliant on the flypaper model the plant would be. As the trap became more and more active, the energy demanded to "wrap" the prey increased. Therefore, plants that could somehow differentiate between actual insects and random detritus/rain droplets would be in advantage, thus explaining the specialization of inner tentacles into trigger hairs. Ultimately, as the plant relied more in closing around the insect rather than gluing them, the tentacles so evident in Drosera would lose its original function altogether, becoming the "teeth" and trigger hairs — an example of natural selection hijacking pre-existing structures for new functions. Completing the transition, at some point in its evolutionary history the plant developed the depressed digestive glands found inside the trap, rather than using the dews in the stalks, further differentiating it from the Drosera genus.(...)" -=- B52 and others giants cultivars have abnormal sized traps, it can catch bigger preys for sure but i dont think its a must for the plant. They dont need that kind of big prey, and its even too much nutrients for the plant. What i was trying to say with my very good english, is that drosera(regia) evolved into a 'snaptrap' system because this way, the plant can catch bigger prey and the assimilation is better with a sealed 'stomach'. Lately, i saw a video of a giant flytrap catching a little snake, so very big prey can be catched, but its useless for the plant. The average dionaea(typical), have small traps, .5", and the perfect prey have to full 1/3 of the trap. Of course, this is from my personnal experience and own researchs, im not the vfts yoda Hope this help a little bit at least ! |
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i wrote some threads on this subject on other forums, so maybe im the 'someone'. 
