Michael Livingston
MI:After watching my D. spathulata suffer for a few days I decided to
-snip-
MI:question is again how to save the plant, and also how to keep my
You may need to take leaf cuttings, if you want to start something
without those larvae - start the leaves in a pasteurized medium
(exposed to 125 degrees (F) moist, for an hour), and keep the
container screened. The way I understand it, the base of each
tentacle on a sundew holds cells which are capable of making a new
plant - just keep it in contact with the growing medium and keep
the humidity up; sometimes several plants will star from one piece
of leaf. The younger the leaf, the better the chances of getting
clones. Flower stalks also work for this. If there are any
fungus-gnat larvae in with the clones, they won't survive.
You might be best to just soak the existing soil medium with
Bacillus thurengensis (sp), sometimes called BT - it should work on
this larvae. Be quick about it, though - those larvae are fast
eaters. I have tried to suffocate them by putting excess CO2 into
the terrarium, but these seem to be resistant (for mushrooms
collected in the wild, the 'shrooms are placed into an airtight
container and the container is filled with CO2 - the worms wiggle
out of the 'shrooms and drop to the bottom of the container, where
they suffocate or, at least, they are no longer part of the food
chain for humans). Anyway, CO2 might work for this, given enough
time, but I was afraid of killing the plants, too.
In the future, be careful about the richness (nitrogen-wise) of the
planting mix; if there is any nitrogen, fungi grow in the soil,
which the larvae eat. Nitrogen also contributes to the breakdown of
the planting medium (in my case, long fiber sphagnum moss), and
causes it to quickly become toxic to the plants. With long fiber
sphagnum, this includes the collapse of the air pockets which the
roots require for the oxygen they provide. If not fertilized, long
fiber sphagnum can last for two years, but if fertilized, it won't
last six months.
Good luck.
-Douglas Wiggins zoron@nwcs.org, Portland, Oregon
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