A plant stand occupies the bedroom window now.
Zeke’s bed used to be there. He had a few in other places in the house. Two weeks after he died we took them all to donate to the animal shelter, along with a few toys and brushes and hotpads. When we walked out it sank in all of a sudden: if we were giving his stuff away he was really, truly gone. I couldn’t go back to the house. We aimed the car vaguely north and drove.
When we returned at the end of the day we had a few new plants to fill the empty space.
Drosera capensis is a sundew, one species in a cosmopolitan genus found on every continent save Antarctica. It’s a carnivorous plant. Insects and other small animals land on its appealing dewy leaves, but all that glistens is not water. Sundew leaves are covered with small tentacles, each tipped with a gland that secretes a sticky mucilage. When an insect of a certain size lands on the leaf, it is soon stuck fast.
Most sundews will bend their leaves when prey lands on them, bringing more of the tentacles up to snare the victim tight. Drosera capensis leaves are remarkable in the genus: they will wrap completely around the prey, seemingly tying themselves in knots. The glands then secrete enzymes — esterase, peroxidase, phosphatase, protease — that dissolve the prey, its nutrients then being absorbed through the leaf surface. This is the main method by which sundews obtain nutrients: their roots are there to hold the plant down and not much more.
I put some chocolate on one leaf a week ago, a flake the size of a lentil, and soon the leaf had wrapped it tight and drooled enzymatic lust to cover it, a suspended drop that looked as though it would fall any second, for a week.
There are more dramatic carnivorous plants in the world — gaudy pitcher plants, snapping Venus fly traps — and some of them share the bedroom plant stand with the sundew. Most come from habitats where the soil does not give up nutrients easily, bogs or swamps or hard caliche pan swales like the Mendocino Pygmy Forest, and a few insects a month can make the difference between survival and death from nutrient deficiency.
There are sundews native to California. Twenty years ago I walked the shore of a small lake near Mount Shasta and found whole rotten logs half submerged, their upper surfaces covered with red and dewy carnivores. Drosera rotundifolia they were, round-leaved sundews, and I watched a hairstreak still living, wrestling with one plant and getting itself snared by three more. No hope of rescue even were I inclined: I would have ripped its legs off at least in the attempt.
They are thirsty plants and I attend to their watering. A fly traps itself against our windows and I bring the sundew up, offer a last landing place. I empathize. I do. But we all have to eat.
Hey Chris! I just wanted to point out that CP are photosynthetic, they use insects as a source of nitrogen, which as you pointed out, is mostly absent from their environments. I noticed that the International Carnivorous Plant Society mailing address is 1564-A Fitzgerald Drive in Pinole, CA so you must be a neighbor to a CP enthusiast in case you are interested in joining a CP group.
After I lost Ranger, I offered his bed—a comfy folded-up sleeping bag—to Tito, but I couldn’t even FORCE Tito to lie on it. He appeared to know absolutely it was Ranger’s bed. I rolled it up and sealed it inside a plastic garbage bag.
A couple of years later, while moving, I came across the bag. I untied the twisty and looked inside. The smell of Ranger wafted up at me, bringing instant memories and a flood of tears.
Ten years later, I still have it in my closet. I should throw it away. But ... how?
No suggestions about the dogs’ stuff, but one for those who are considering carnivorous plants: the best thing we’ve found for keeping them alive is distilled water. Joe has a small collection on the front porch, each in a standard plant pot that sits in a bigger water-tight pot, in a couple inches of distilled (or “purified”) water. They’ve lived years longer than their predecessors who got tap water.
I put Bt anti-mosquito crumbs in the water, since it’s outdoors. Sometimes the squirrels drink from it. They seem healthy enough nevertheless.
We’re back in Berkeley, btw. More or less. Thanks to any and all for the supportive messages this week; that stuff really does matter.
I’ve had them on rainwater since adopting them, seeing as how I have a big supply from the wheelbarrow I left upright over the winter.
But that’s starting to grow algae, so I’ll have to get some distilled soon.
The guy I bought it from recommended choclate or cheese as an occasional snack in the book he wrote.
The water thing is about dissolved solids, so well water might be suspect.