BunsenH
Plant
In the spring, my tofu-fed VFT put out a flower stalk, and I tried to be thorough about cross-pollinating the flowers. I knew that letting the plant go to seed would take a toll on it, but I wanted to have enough plants that I could divide them into groups for different diets. Having several plants for each food type, ideally genetically identical, would let me compare how the plants did. Unlike the various forms of propagation by division, seeds don't have identical genes. On the other hand, some variation in the plants would give a better comparison for how different foods might affect VFTs from totally different genetic backgrounds. It's a tradeoff.
I got 108 seeds in total. Given my lack of experience, I had to guess at when they should be removed from the flowers. Too soon and they wouldn't be mature; too late and they'd start losing viability, according to what I read on-line. I went with taking them, flower by flower, when each flower was clearly dying and drying.
I bought three plastic trays of bakery items to convert to "pots". These were about 4 cm deep and 20 cm square, with removable lids that I could use as trays to contain water. I cut lots of holes in my "pots", and filled them to the brim with a slurry of peat moss (from a garden centre) in water (rain or melted snow, if I recall correctly) as a growth medium. This was probably a mistake. I should have used a mixture of peat moss with perlite and possibly sand, so the medium would aerate better.
I marked the edges of my "pots" to create a grid, and planted the seeds at the grid locations. I did this by dampening the end of a wooden toothpick and using this to pick up a single seed, then to place it where I wanted it. I pressed the seeds gently into the soil surface, shallowly, not enough to submerge them. When I was done, I covered the seeds with a very thin layer of fine peat moss, just enough to cover them, and misted this with water until it was moist. Then I placed the "pots" in bright indirect light.
For weeks. And almost nothing happened. There seemed to be a few fine white threads that appeared, looking like they might be roots growing the wrong way. On the other hand, they might have been cat hair. Our cat's fine hair gets everywhere. The only plant that appeared didn't look much like a VFT: much too dark green, and the leaves had the wrong shape, assuming that any leaves after the cotelydons should have had at least vestigial traps.
Eventually, I gave up. I assumed that the seeds were infertile, or I'd planted them so incorrectly that none of the VFTs made it above the soil. I decided to give the mystery weed plant a bit more water and light, to see if I could identify it. I kept the soil around it slightly damp, and put it in direct sunlight. I let the other two "pots" just dry out.
And a couple of weeks after that, I suddenly noticed one bright-green dot. Near the mystery plant, the area that was slightly damp. In case it might have been a VFT, I got the entire pot slightly damp, and was rewarded a couple of days later by a few more tiny sprouts, approximately in the grid locations. So I continued with the water and sunlight. I'm now up to 11 VFT seedlings, identified by their bright-green colour and the seed coats that some of them still have attached. And I got rid of the mystery weed. I've gotten the other two "pots" damp again, and put them in the sun as well. There isn't any sign of activity there yet.
I've been playing with the idea of scuffing up the soil surface, using something like an old toothbrush or comb, in case the seeds were too-deeply covered by dark wet peat moss to be triggered by light. I'm undecided regarding how wet I should keep the medium, since I know that VFTs need moisture, but they also need soil aeration. The wetter the soil, the less light is getting through. I'm trying to go with "damp but not wet" but it's not easy to control that, in bright sunlight or in light rain. I'm also waffling about trying to extract the plants as they appear, and replanting them in a better medium: carefully sterilized and with a better composition. That kind of disturbance isn't good for plants just out of the seed, whose roots are very fragile.
Here's a picture of one of the most recent arrivals, taken with my phone through a 10x tripod magnifier that I bought for high-school biology, way-back-when. I've been marking the plants' locations with diamonds cut from plastic mesh from a bag of onions, side length about 8.5 mm. The shiny black seed coat is visible towards the bottom, with the first leaf still partly inside it. I think that the still-tinier leaf above that is showing the beginning of a trap.
I got 108 seeds in total. Given my lack of experience, I had to guess at when they should be removed from the flowers. Too soon and they wouldn't be mature; too late and they'd start losing viability, according to what I read on-line. I went with taking them, flower by flower, when each flower was clearly dying and drying.
I bought three plastic trays of bakery items to convert to "pots". These were about 4 cm deep and 20 cm square, with removable lids that I could use as trays to contain water. I cut lots of holes in my "pots", and filled them to the brim with a slurry of peat moss (from a garden centre) in water (rain or melted snow, if I recall correctly) as a growth medium. This was probably a mistake. I should have used a mixture of peat moss with perlite and possibly sand, so the medium would aerate better.
I marked the edges of my "pots" to create a grid, and planted the seeds at the grid locations. I did this by dampening the end of a wooden toothpick and using this to pick up a single seed, then to place it where I wanted it. I pressed the seeds gently into the soil surface, shallowly, not enough to submerge them. When I was done, I covered the seeds with a very thin layer of fine peat moss, just enough to cover them, and misted this with water until it was moist. Then I placed the "pots" in bright indirect light.
For weeks. And almost nothing happened. There seemed to be a few fine white threads that appeared, looking like they might be roots growing the wrong way. On the other hand, they might have been cat hair. Our cat's fine hair gets everywhere. The only plant that appeared didn't look much like a VFT: much too dark green, and the leaves had the wrong shape, assuming that any leaves after the cotelydons should have had at least vestigial traps.
Eventually, I gave up. I assumed that the seeds were infertile, or I'd planted them so incorrectly that none of the VFTs made it above the soil. I decided to give the mystery weed plant a bit more water and light, to see if I could identify it. I kept the soil around it slightly damp, and put it in direct sunlight. I let the other two "pots" just dry out.
And a couple of weeks after that, I suddenly noticed one bright-green dot. Near the mystery plant, the area that was slightly damp. In case it might have been a VFT, I got the entire pot slightly damp, and was rewarded a couple of days later by a few more tiny sprouts, approximately in the grid locations. So I continued with the water and sunlight. I'm now up to 11 VFT seedlings, identified by their bright-green colour and the seed coats that some of them still have attached. And I got rid of the mystery weed. I've gotten the other two "pots" damp again, and put them in the sun as well. There isn't any sign of activity there yet.
I've been playing with the idea of scuffing up the soil surface, using something like an old toothbrush or comb, in case the seeds were too-deeply covered by dark wet peat moss to be triggered by light. I'm undecided regarding how wet I should keep the medium, since I know that VFTs need moisture, but they also need soil aeration. The wetter the soil, the less light is getting through. I'm trying to go with "damp but not wet" but it's not easy to control that, in bright sunlight or in light rain. I'm also waffling about trying to extract the plants as they appear, and replanting them in a better medium: carefully sterilized and with a better composition. That kind of disturbance isn't good for plants just out of the seed, whose roots are very fragile.
Here's a picture of one of the most recent arrivals, taken with my phone through a 10x tripod magnifier that I bought for high-school biology, way-back-when. I've been marking the plants' locations with diamonds cut from plastic mesh from a bag of onions, side length about 8.5 mm. The shiny black seed coat is visible towards the bottom, with the first leaf still partly inside it. I think that the still-tinier leaf above that is showing the beginning of a trap.
Last edited:
