DEADLY Carnivorous Plants! (World's Most Spectacular Plants episode 3 of 14)

carnivorous plants seem to defy all laws of nature they are plants that eat animals often with leaves that move in surprising ways most carnivorous plants gobble up insects but the very largest can kill shrews mice and even rats these deadly plants are my passion I've spent 10 years climbing hundreds of mountains to study them in the world and to search for new species and even after all these years I still find carnivorous plants amazing they evolved to eat animals so they can survive in extreme habitats where few other plants can grow from the misty jungles of Asia to the summit's of Venezuela's lost worlds all of these habitats have one thing in common they're starved of nutrients by preying on animals carnivorous plants gain an advantage over regular plants and so can flourish in these marginal areas where they have little competition by far the most famous carnivorous plant is Venus flytrap we will dedicate a whole world's most spectacular plants video to this extraordinary plant alone in this film we'll concentrate on the species of carnivorous plants that are a little less well known but just as amazing carnivorous plants are not difficult to grow but most have very specific requirements which you need to understand and get right in order to grow them successfully some of the biggest and most spectacular and actually easiest of all carnivorous plants are these guys these are sarracenia or pitcher plants that occur from North America particularly from the southern USA and they occur in a rainbow of color forms and varieties and different variations and all shapes and sizes there are seven species in total several of which form trumpet-shaped leaves so this group is often known as the trumpet pitcher plant it's these amazing structures are not flowers but leaves they're known as pitchers hence why these plants are called pitcher plants and they have a very clever way to capture and kill and eat insects the inside of the pitcher here at the mouth at the top has lots of glands that secrete honey sweet nectar and insects can smell their nectar and either climb up the outside of the pitcher or land on this very colorful lid they then try and get at the nectar but the whole mouth area is really really really slippery so they slide and fall all the way down inside the trap all the way to the bottom once they're inside is very very hard for them to escape the inside of the pitcher is waxy and at the bottom it has downwards pointing hairs and so the trap bugs can't escape they eventually die and are digested by the enzymes the plant secretes and that's how this carnivorous plant gets its meal in the wild trumpet pitcher plants grow in peat bogs exposed to very high levels of sunlight in cultivation they also need to receive several hours of direct sunlight each day their roots are very sensitive the chemicals in tap water can poison them so it's best to give them rain water and they require nutrient poor soil such as sphagnum peat mixed with horticultural sand or perlite the trumpet pitcher plants are actually really cold tolerant most species can survive Frost's and even freezing and in many parts of the temperate world like here in England you can make fantastic bog gardens with them or growing outside trumpet pitcher plants are really easy to propagate as each plant grows it forms a rhizome and along the length of the rhizome little buds develop and these eventually grow off as separate growth points that form branches on the rhizome it's very very easy to separate the divisions of the rhizome which can then be potted up as individual plants so let's go through that process the plants will actually get to a certain size where you need to take them out of that pot and repot them anyway because the rhizomes will eventually creep over the sides of the pots but just very we just move out all the soil from the roots this is best done by the way in in early summer which will get the plant to recuperate over the rest of the growing season right now I'm down to the rhizome which you can see here and there's a growth point right there those can be potted up like that and it's best to push the base of the rhizome right back to the BET in the back of the pot like that and there you have a freshly potted pitcher plant and you can treat it exactly as you would an adult specimen it'll grow absolutely fine the trumpet pitcher plants have a cousin that also grows in North America this plant is called darlingtonia californica or the Cobra Lily because it's hollow leaves are shaped like a striking Cobra this plant has a complex trapping process insects enter its leaves and a trips by see-through windows and then fall down into the depths of the leaves cobra lilies are really good fun to grow in captivity they have very similar growing requirements as the trumpet pitcher plants however there is one difference they definitely like temperatures they're a little bit cooler if you give them over 30 degrees C in summer that can really set the plants back the pitchers can wither an extreme case if they get really hot then the actual the actual plants can die and particularly the roots need to be kept cool and often people do that by pouring water and letting that trickle down through the pots during the day so it's best to start with the trumpet pitcher plants if you succeed with them and want to try something a little more unusual then you can give the Cobra Lily ago the biggest group of pitcher plants and Nepenthes known as tropical pitcher plants they originate mainly from Asia and around 170 species have been discovered so far they're deadly traps are really diverse and come in all shapes and colors the tropical pitcher plants have more specific requirements than many of the other groups of carnivorous plants you can grow some species on your windowsill but most either need a terrarium or a specialist Nepenthes greenhouse such as this one behind me let's go have a look check it out it's like a like a little rainforest in here it's so beautiful okay you'll notice looking around there's many significant differences with the growing conditions of other carnivorous plants Nepenthes in captivity generally don't do so well in direct sunlight they're like a bit more shaded conditions dappled shade is absolutely great for them with slight shading twenty thirty forty percent shading over the greenhouse is perfect you'll also notice that these Nepenthes are not standing in water these plants also need rain water they must have very new low nutrient water but they mustn't stand in water because that can cause their roots to rot that can kill the plant they like substrate that is very very loose and open and airy that allows the roots to grow through it but it's not too dense and they need very high levels of humidity if the immediate is too low they won't develop their pitches properly they won't grow very happily and of course most important of all they must never get freezing temperatures these are tropical plants if you give them sub-zero temperatures and it freezes they'll just die it they'll be stone dead completely and utterly gone but if you can meet these criteria and provide the conditions they require they'll actually grow quite vigorously and surprisingly quickly in some species look at this one back here at the back this is a hybrid independently strung carter hybrid and just look at the size of these pictures as knocking on what 40 centimeters I'd guess it can be absolutely stunning [Music] if you don't have a greenhouse or terrarium there are many smaller carnivorous plants that are ideal for a windowsill especially sticky leaved insect eating plants among the easiest to grow are drosera also known as Sun juice they grow across the globe and range from tiny species a few millimeters across to giants that stand one meter or more tall some form towers made up from dead foliage while others climbed through surrounding vegetation many have breathtaking blooms and pinguicula known as Butterworth's another easy to grow group of sticky leaf carnivorous plants and they also may have beautiful flowers as colorful as orchids Sandhya's and Butterworth's catch their prey in the same way they have glistening droplets of glue on tentacles that insects get stuck to many species of sundews and Butterworth's are very easy to grow and will thrive on a windowsill or on a conservatory if given strong light rain water and a peat based soil low in nutrients there are many other groups of carniverous plants each with their own lethal methods of trapping prey such as the marsh pitcher plants the Elba new pitcher plant and bladderworts many of these have more complex growing requirements but once you master the basics of cultivating carnivorous plants then these are well worth a try so carnivorous plants there's hundreds of types to choose from not only are they spectacular interesting plants to grow at home but they'll even gobble up some of your flies so good luck and happy growing [Music]

Channel: Redfern Natural History Productions

Views: 209,132

Rating: 4.8277678 out of 5

Keywords: carnivorous, plant, plants, carnivorous plant, insectivorous plant, insectivorous, insect eating plant, insect-eating plant, insect eating, insect-eating, venus's fly trap, venus fly trap, venus's, venus, Dionaea, sundew, Drosera, butterwort, Pinguicula, pitcher plant, Sarracenia, Nepenthes, Darlingtonia, Cobra lily, cobra, lily, Stewart McPherson, Stewart, McPherson, World's Most Spectacular Plants, Spectacular Plants

Id: Z08FhT3-cJc

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2019