Carnivorous Plants: Flytraps, Sundews & Pitchers

Sherri Harah:

I’m Sherri with Home Show Garden Pros and you know, on the show we talk a lot about soil health, nutrition, plant foods, but let’s talk about some really cool plants. This world of carnivorous plants is amazing. So the Venus Flytrap is the most commonly known carnivorous plant because Audrey and the Little Shop of Horrors made that one famous. But there’s so many more that you can grow and you can grow them in your house and in your yard in here in the Gulf Coast region. So things like the Butterwort is amazing.

Butterworts, they look like succulents, but they have a sticky secretion on their leaves that attract small fruit flies and gnats. So this likes a humid condition. It likes to stay in water, but it likes the shade. So it would be perfect for your kitchen counter to collect all your fruit flies and gnats that come in the house. Very, very low maintenance, easy to take care of.

And they come in all different kinds. I mean, look how beautiful that is.

And then we have things like the sundew. Again, low light and this little plant on the ends has these little sappy hairs and you can see there’s little bugs stuck to them. And then the plant with its digestive juices on there, the bug is stuck, and then the plant basically eats the bug. It’s really, really amazing. And then there’s things like the Nepenthes or the pitcher plants here. These little pitchers have a little bit of water in them, and in the bottom is the digestive juices. They attract the bug, the bug gets stuck. Then the plant makes its own food with the bug bodies. So very, very cool. There’s so many neat things that you can grow. Get out and grow something good.