Question
Hello again Christopher,

I dropped by the garden centre today and found that they have a few different species of carnivorous plants on sale since its mid summer over here in New Zealand at the moment.

As you know, my conservatory is very warm in the day with bright sunlight with a max temp of 120 F at its hottest. Can you please advise me which carnivorous plant below is best suited for a warm environment and prefer bright sunlight for about 5 hours a day.

- Darlingtonia Cobra Plant
- Drosera Regia (King Sundew)
- Drosera Binata
- Drosera Rotundfolia

Once you have chosen the preferred plant for my home environment, could you also advise me the amount of water they require, etc.

And as for the Droseras, will the insects on its leaves be consumed or do their carcass just stay there till the leaves die off?

Thank you for your assistance once again.

Cheers,
Eugene

Answer
Hello Eugene,

Of those plants, none are really suited to the kind of heat you have in your conservatory. The Darlingtonia californica and Drosera regia in particular need special care and die off rather quickly in high levels of heat if their roots are not kept rather cool. The Drosera binata and Drosera rotundifolia are the more heat resistant plants of the four, however; neither can resist 120 degree heat levels for long. At the most, they could resist heat levels of about 90-100 degrees. All of those plants like high levels of water. Drosera prefer about the same as Venus Flytraps, 1/4 the pot in water, while Darlingtonia need a rather specialized watering system. Darlingtonia like running water and can succumb to root infections if left in standing water. A drip system, for cool water to run through, with a separate water tray to catch runoff water, without allowing the pot to actually sit in the water catch, is often the preferred method of keeping Darlingtonia alive for longer than a couple months. Darlingtonia are native to Oregon where they live near stream beds and often have running, cool water from mountain ice runoff constantly washing over their roots.

There are no carnivorous plants that I know of that could withstand temperatures over 110 degrees for long. The Venus Flytrap and the Sarracenias are the most heat tolerant and  can only resist heat of up to 110 degrees if they have plenty of water and only for a few hours at a time.

Insects are never totally consumed by any carnivorous plant. There will always be a carapace left behind in Venus Flytraps, Sarracenias, and Droseras. Drosera dew attracts and causes insects to trap themselves, then the tentacles slowly bend to grip the insect as an added trapping motion and to push the stuck insect into the leaf surface. The insect suffocates in the dew eventually and then the glands on the tentacles produce digestive enzymes that break down the proteins so that bacterial action can quickly convert it into nitrogen that the leaf surface absorbs. The digestive enzymes cannot break down the chitin in insect carapaces nor can they break down fats.

Christopher