You’ve got seeds in your teeth. A guide to germinating carnivorous plant seeds.
Sow you want to grow your own carnivorous plants from seed, but aren’t sure where to start?
Read on as we dish the dirt on some basic steps to help get your seeds sprouting.
Germinating Venus fly traps is relatively easy, and it all starts with a good potting medium.
The best material you can use to sow your seeds into will be able to hold moisture but allow good airflow and be free of nutrients and fertilizers. Peat moss or perlite fit this brief, but so does coco-coir and sphagnum moss.
Venus fly trap seeds prefer moist humid environments, so placing your potting medium into a container you can seal can help you create a mini-greenhouse. You can use things like Tupperware, or zip-lock plastic bags.
To sow your seeds, place them onto the surface of your moistened potting medium, and light dust or cover them with a fine layer of the medium. You don’t want them to be buried, or even underground, they just need enough of a cover to keep some moisture directly on the seeds.
Place your container in a sunny area and try to expose them to direct sunlight. But, too much heat can kill your seeds, so you’ll need a location with lots of sunlight, but not a lot of heat. You should aim for a temperature of between 24-32o Celsius.
Keep the medium moist with a spritz of water and open the container daily to keep the air inside fresh. Within 3 weeks your seeds should have germinated. After around 6 weeks, you can remove the little seedlings from their container and transplant them into a more permanent location.
Growing sundews from seed is a much slower process, with seeds taking anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks to germinate. The exact time will depend on the species you germinate, and the quality of the seeds.
Potting medium again is an important consideration for sundews, with high moisture retention and good airflow being essential. You should also be able to pack down this medium a bit to get a ticker layer at the bottom of your container to hold more moisture.
For sundews, using artificial light to help germination can be a good idea. This will help you control the amount of light and heat they’re getting, but you can also use natural light if you can position your containers in a suitable location. Exactly how much light will depend on your species.
To sow your seeds, sprinkle them onto the moistened medium and dust them lightly to get a thin layer of coverage. Avoid clumping your seeds together otherwise they’ll compete and your germination percentage will be less.
Once sowed, you want to aim for high humidity and a temperature of 27o Celsius. You can simulate humidity by again using Tupperware containers, zip lock bags, or plastic wraps.
Once your sundews begin to germinate, they will not produce carnivorous leaves until they produce their first true leaves, and these regular leaves may continue until the plant has enough energy available to begin production of its true leaves. This process can take the longest and can run up to 6 weeks.
Once your plants begin to produce true leaves, your seedling can be removed from the container, and you can begin hardening off the seedling by slowly exposing it to more natural conditions. This process acts to acclimatize plants to their future surroundings.
Germinating pitcher plants are a bit more involved and are where carnivorous seeds can get tricky.
These plants require their seeds to undergo a process called cold stratification, in which the seeds are exposed and stored in cold locations for extended periods. This is done to simulate a cold season and allows the seed to break any hardwired winter dormancy so that it can germinate. To stratify your seeds, you’re best to moisten them, wrap them in a paper towel or fabric cloth, and store them in the fridge for 6-8 weeks.
2 months later when your seeds are stratified, it’s finally time to sow them, again using a free draining potting medium. Sprinkle your seeds on top of the medium and spritz them with water. to moisten them.
Using the Tupperware containers, zip-lock bag, and wrapping them in plastic wrap trick again will help you maintain humidity and temperature.
Place your seed containers into a sunny spot or under a grow light and aim for 12 hours of light a day and even as much as 18. This is when artificial grow lights are handy.
Seeds will then need to sit for weeks before they germinate, and even longer for the seedlings before they’re ready to transplant. Pitcher plant seedlings are extremely fragile and vulnerable, so it’s important to maintain their moisture levels and temperatures in the early stages to ensure they survive.
The Utricularia genus contains carnivorous plants known as Bladderworts, which get their names from the bladder-like sacks that line the plant's leaves and stems.
Much like Dionaea, bladderworts have sensitive little hairs which are triggered when prey walk along with them. This causes a trap-door-like section of the bladder to snap open and suck in the prey. Once inside, the plant absorbs the prey.
Trumpet pitchers have the same seed stratification needs as other pitcher plants, so you’ll need to cold stratify your seeds in a damp and cold location for several weeks.
Once stratified, you should sow your seeds into a peat moss or sphagnum moss potting medium, and cover them with a container or plastic bag.
The aim with trumpet pitchers is a high humidity & high light environment, with a temperature of between 20-25o Celsius. Grow lamps are great in this situation.
Freshen the air in your containers regularly and keep the medium moist, and you should have germination in around 4 weeks. Once your plants have set their true leaves, you can begin to move them into more permanent containers, or areas.
You can continue to supplement their light with grow lamps, but you should progressively mimic the natural light patterns of where they'll be living.
Because of the huge range of varieties of bladderworts, there are different techniques and requirements for germinating their seeds.
A safe bet is to use peat moss or sphagnum moss mixed with crushed pumice as your planting medium. A light, free-draining medium is essential no matter what variety you’re trying to grow. Unlike other carnivorous plants though, a little bit of fertilizer being present in your medium won’t hurt your bladderworts.
Place your seeds on top of the planting medium, and keep them moist by adding the lightest dusting of pumice or perlite that you can spray with water regularly.
Like other carnivorous plants, wrapping these containers in a plastic bag and placing them in a warm location will help the seeds germinate. You’ll need to continue to mist the seeds regularly to ensure the planting medium doesn’t dry out.
As seeds germinate and the plants begin to grow, you should relocate your plants and increase their light exposure, preferably with grow lamps. With this extra light comes an increased demand for moisture, so continue monitoring the planting medium, and add water as needed.
Butterworts are the same as bladderworts in that there are so many different varieties, you’ll really need to specifically research the type you want to grow.
The same basic principles apply with a free draining soil medium and a moist, humid environment. You’re aiming for anywhere between 16-26o Celsius with light for at least 8 hours a day.
If you can establish these conditions and keep your planting medium moist, you should have seedlings in 2-4 weeks.
Maintain the moisture, light and temperature for the seedlings before gently relocating them to more permanent containers when they’re around 2cm wide.
