Re Sarracenia's prefferences

From: NEIL ARMSTRONG (n.armstrong@virgin.net)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2000 - 05:23:10 PDT


Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:23:10 +0100
From: "NEIL ARMSTRONG" <n.armstrong@virgin.net>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg2775$foo@default>
Subject: Re Sarracenia's prefferences

Dear List,

I thought I'd add my two penneth to the current "what Sarracenia's like to
eat" question.
Here in the UK I grow all my Sarras in greenhouses, so fly's and bees do
tend to be the biggest catch. However in the wild I believe ants, beetles,
spiders and other crawling thins are the usual diet. With regards the two
specific plants mentioned, S. Leucophylla is by far the most efective flying
insect catcher I have ever seen, filling up at an alarming rate, hoverfly's
seem to have a particular attraction to them.
As for S. Purpurea, in the greenhouse it is a very poor insect catcher,
although slugs like to drink from them, and end up drowning (hopefully),
although I did an experiment last year and put an S. Purpurea var Venosa
outside on a hot summer day and the difference was astonishing, it caught
wasps (almost exclusively) in every pitcher and ended up with several wasps
to each pitcher. In the greenhouse again this year, the same plant catches
only tiny fly's and midges.

Cheers everyone,
Neil Armstrong, very stormy Northumberland, UK.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:35:13 PST