- If I was a bug, I would be
in my literal version of hell because I'm in a human
sized pitcher plant, which would've been slowly digesting me over the course of three days. Fortunately, pitcher plants
tend to be a little bit smaller, and they're not even the only
way that carnivorous plants obtain nutrients to help themselves grow. So in this video, you're gonna
learn all about the secrets of carnivorous plants, how to care for them properly
without killing them, and how they can make
you a better gardener. So it's a beautiful gloomy day. It's very foggy, very humid in here at the San Diego Botanic Garden. And I see the man I'm trying to talk to. Ari Novy, CEO. - Hey Kevin. - I almost slipped right there. It, it's so foggy. - Don't sue us.
- I will not sue. I'm just in awe of the setup here. But before we dive into some of these environments
you guys have crafted, the question has to be asked, and it's something I wondered
even when I was in like maybe first grade, why would
a plant become carnivorous? It makes no sense. - It, yeah, it's weird, but
it's actually super simple. These plants all evolved in places where they have very poor
ability to get nitrogen and every gardener knows, nitrogen, that's one of the big ones... - That we want.
- That we want. And you know, these plants have to come up with creative ways to get nitrogen out of the ecosystem that they're in. And they've all figured
out how to eat bugs. - Okay, so, so that brings you to the next obvious question is,
I see this right here. This must be a facsimile of the type of environment that that they're in. And, and what is that environment like? Why would there not be nitrogen
in something like this? - So one of the environments
where nitrogen is lacking are eastern freshwater
bogs in the United States. And so what we've created here, even though we're in arid
San Diego on top of concrete, is a facsimile of an eastern bog. And what we see here
are a lot of different sarracenia pitcher plant hybrids, and in some cases some straight species. And these are native to the eastern and southern United States. And they are able to grow
in these high acidity bogs where the acid conditions of the water, as well as a few other conditions, mean that even though nitrogen is there, it is not available to the plant. - Right. We actually talked
about this a long time ago in epic gardening when I
was in my hydroponic phase, because you're controlling
the pH of your water in that situation. And if you go too low or too high, you get that nutrient lockout. And these plants are effectively
just in an environment where they're locked out of what may be available in nitrogen. Maybe not, but if it was like
you said, they can't get it. And so I know we have a couple
other examples over here. - Yes. So we're over
here at a smaller exhibit and this Ari is where we have I guess the three major categories
of ways a plant can trap, which would be the sticky trap, the one we talked about with the pitchers. There's two different major types there. And then of course the Venus fly trap. But I think what's drawing my eye is this little guy right here, which is a good example
of the sticky trap. - Yep. So this is a sundew. And what this guy is doing here is that he's got all these hairs and they have these sweet
but really sticky kind of, you know, dew on the outsides. And an insect will get attracted
to this and gets stuck. I mean, it's almost just like fly paper. And then this plant can
then exude digestive enzymes and digest that plant without ever ever pulling it any further than that. - It doesn't like need to
enclose it much like, you know, if you were to fall on a pitcher, it's enclosed in some fashion and a snapshot obviously
would do the same thing. - Right. - It can sort of digest
it where it stands. - Yep. Some of the, some of the sundews, they actually do have the ability to kind of curl in a little bit and- - And like wrap it.
- And close a little bit, but some of 'em don't, right? - But how would they get the, the, they're basically
sort of sucking the juice outta the planet or the, the insect and getting the nitrogen
from the proteins. - Right. Right, right. - How would a sticky trap plant actually get that into the
tissue of the plant itself? - So they're just exuding
these digestive enzymes- - Yeah. - That are able to break
down the nitrogen containing proteins within the insect. And then they're, now they just become simple nitrogen containing components. And plants, you know,
really can absorb them. Like, just like we know, we
can fall spray on a leaf- - So it'll fall down. - It just comes into the
plant and the plant is set up. It's got the architecture to absorb. - Wow. - You know, simple nitrogen components like nitrate and ammonium. - [Kevin] If you're
trying to grow a sundew, what are you trying to do from a, like the classical care
techniques like soil, you know, fertilizer. 'Cause you did mention that
carnivorous plants are only carnivorous when they
don't have enough nitrogen. Like they don't technically
need to eat the insects if you're fertilizing. - That's right. - Which I did not know. - That's right. Most carnivorous plants, I think all of 'em actually, they are perfectly capable
of, of uptaking nitrogen just like every other plant
does through their roots, even foliarly. But they have developed
the carnivorey in response to being in an environment where they don't have access- - [Kevin] Yeah. - [Ari] To the, that nitrogen. So if you're keeping it as a house plant, first of all you need to understand what, what ecosystem this plant comes from. Sundews come from the exact same ecosystem as the sarasinia pitcher plants. Right. So these are fresh water bogs- - Bogs. - Bogs. Yep. So they
want very high humidity, ambient humidity. - [Kevin] Yeah. - And they wanna be wet all the time. - Yeah. - They can handle standing water, but you need to be careful
about, you know, sort of, you know, fungus and rotting. - Sure. - And they want a very high
hummusy kind of a soil. Right. It's, it's a rotted degraded soil. And if you have that, they're fine. If you deliver them every once in a while, a tiny bit of nitrogen fertilizer, just like you would any other plant, they'll, they'll be okay. And they won't need to eat insects. But if there's insects around, they will eat them. - All the better. - Yeah. - Maybe the most important thing is they need really clean water. So we often recommend using distilled water to water these things. And you oftentimes need them
in something that's going to keep the relative humidity high. Which may even mean, you know, giving them a top. - Like terrarium style approach. Or like for me, I could perhaps
do this in a greenhouse. - Yes. - As long as I watched out
for maybe my high temps. - Exactly. - [Kevin] Cool. Well that's your sundew. Or your sticky trap plant. But we do have our favorite, or at least my favorite, the pitchers, which I believe you have an
entire wall of over there. - We got tons of them. - Let's take a look. So the thing that I noticed
Ari the first time I ever came up here was you just have a wall of these pitcher plants
and you always have. - [Ari] These are great pitcher plants. These actually came to us. These were confiscated at the border. - [Kevin] Yeah. - [Ari] And we are a plant rescue center under a treaty called the CITES treaty. - [Kevin] Yeah. - [Ari] Which prevents
the movement of, you know, rare animals and plants. And so when Customs and Border Patrol and US Fish and Wildlife
Services gets involved, they have illegally transported plants. In some situations they will
reach out to us as experts to maintain those plants in perpetuity. - Yeah. - And that's how these pitcher
plants came to our facility. - So you sort of have like
a jail lockup of plants that you'll care for. - Yeah.
- Indefinitely, effectively. - Exactly. And we'd like to think
it's nice, you know? - Yeah. - It's like, it's more like a resort. - So yeah. This is the nepenthes. We have the sarasinia
that were in the bog, but we have these awesome
examples of the nepenthes, which I think most people, that's what they think
the pitcher plant is. That's what they most
closely associate with. - Yep. - But different continent of evolution, same sort of solution. - [Ari] Exactly. Yeah. So these come from
tropical Southeast Asia. - Yeah. - You know, Indonesia, the,
the Malaysian Archipelago and they're, you know,
epithetic up in the trees, you know, tropical plants. Whereas those sarasinia pitchers, they're on the ground bog,
temperate, North American plants. But same solution to that same problem. Both of those places
have limited nitrogen. - That's fascinating.
- So different plants... created similar solutions. - It's actually really
wild to think about that because in the bog, no nitrogen
'cause of lockout perhaps or low nitrogen content in general. - Yes. - Up in the air next to the tree. Obviously no soil to really draw it from. But then still coming up
with the same solution, which of course is this
pitfall style trap. And, and the thing that I noticed perhaps for the first time even today, was that you've got this
leaf and I never connected that actually the pitchers
come off the leaf. They have this weird sort
of tendrilly looking thing and then it just turns
into a pitcher at the end. I don't think I've ever seen something with like two more
structures after the leaf. - It's very unusual. The, the technically
speaking the pitcher here is a modified leaf structure. - Yeah. - So you have a bud way
back here by the stem. - Yeah. - [Ari] And then this whole
thing is the leaf organ that's capable of producing
that tendril to pitcher. - [Kevin] And then it is
exuding some sort of liquid from the bottom I think here. Right? Or through the tissue. - Yep. - Filling it up, which we'll open this one up in just a second here. And then both the sort of scent of that and then the visual appeal I suppose is what causes something to come in. - Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly
right. It's fascinating. And you know, they have
so many adaptations that make it so that
the insect is attracted and then gets caught and you know, from the colors to some little
hairs to slippery surfaces. - Yeah.
- To attractive smells. And then once they get into
that liquid that's exuded by the plant, it's got
these digestive enzymes, the insect gets caught, it dies, digested, and the nitrogen comes out and is absorbed by the plant. - Because there's, I mean you're right, like even it's to the smallest degree. 'cause you have this little
sort of tightening right here. It's wide here, it's tight
here, it's wide again here, big base, maybe a lot of
surface area to digest. And then up here, oops. Can't get out. - Yep. - And you were even mentioning
in this tighter zone on the interior, if you look, sometimes there's these little
sort of pieces coming out, almost like, kinda like
going back over a like, don't reverse your car on the tires thing. - You just can't get back out. - Yeah. They're often sort
of angled a little down. Just all these little things that, that make it so that that
insect's gonna go in there and get trapped. - So should we open this one up? - Yeah, let's do it. - Okay. So what's the best way? Oh, oh, you know what, one more thing before we do that, this little, what would be the function? I know that we saw down here, there's a couple that have yet to open. - Yep. - So, that's basically the
top popping off, right? - That's, that's right. So this is the pitcher as it's forming, you know, from that bud off of the leaf. And so it's gotta control
its internal environment until it's ready to digest. - So it's kind of like I'm
closed for business, boom. - It's cracking a beer. - Opens up. And now I'm ready. - Yeah. And then it sort of
turns into this nice little, little flap. - Yeah.
- Really fascinating. Okay. So how should we open this?
Just kind of rip it open? - Yeah, just rip it down. Yeah. - You wanna do the honors? - Sure. My pleasure. - Right. So you'll see there's, there's this liquid right in the bottom. Right. And this is not rainfall, right? This is actively liquid
that's being exuded by- - [Kevin] Yeah. We're in a
greenhouse, it can't even rain. - [Ari] Nope. And then this plant has
been collecting ants. Look, I mean, look how
many ants are in there. - [Kevin] That's, that's incredible. - [Ari] These are all getting digested. They, it won't digest their exoskeletons, which are made of chitin, but everything else will liquefy and all that nitrogen will
get sucked up into the plant. - Almost like a constantly
applied foliar feed. Right. Because as soon as it
gets into that solution, it's just smacking right
into the plant tissue. - Exactly. - Going straight into the, - Into the plant.
- A nice slow release. Yeah. Nitrogen on the, on the,
on the foliar tissue. - So when it comes to care of
nepenthes, I have sarasinia, But if I'm wanting to care
for pitchers, which I do, what do I need to keep in mind? - So, you know, unlike the sarasinias, these come from tropical rainforests and instead of being rooted in the ground as terrestrial plants,
these are epiphytes. They're growing up on trees
in the tropical rainforest, very similar to orchids. And in fact we have been cultivating, humans have been cultivating
tropical sarasinia as houseplants since, you
know, the Victorian age. They were status symbols along
with orchids at that time. - Hmm. - They want a lot of the same
conditions that orchids want. Right. They're gonna be
in an orchid type media. They're gonna be, you know,
attached to barks, you know, you know, things that are like a tree. They want, you know, good ambient humidity and they don't want a lot of
fertilization or anything else. They're gonna grow slow
and they're gonna kind of take care of themselves if you get the humidity situation correct. - Yeah. It really seems like
with a lot of these plants, it's getting the humidity and
the moisture conditions right. For these sort of esoteric
odder, odder ones. And we're actually going
to the least odd one or the most familiar one, certainly one that I
tried to grow when I was in maybe like third or fourth grade Ari, and then I killed it. - Yep.
- Within maybe a week. And that would be of
course the Venus fly trap. So here we are, Ari, in my third grade child's
dream garden right here. This is what I would've loved. - Yeah. I mean these are
just the most amazing plants. I felt the same way as a kid. I mean, these plants just hang out and they wait for flies to go in there. And they have this amazing
mechanism of these hairs. And if a fly or other insect
triggers multiple hairs, it snaps rapidly. Which is an amazing adaptation
to get at that nitrogen that is locked up in these flying insects. - Yeah' cause they'll, they'll
basically become a pitcher at that point in time. Right. 'Cause it's fully enclosed and then they excrete some
sort of liquid to digest and then they'll open back up. And I think the question, and something I wondered
even as a kid is like, how would it know that it needs to close? And then the second followup would be how would it close if it knew
it needed to close? Right? So there are trigger hairs all throughout the interior of these plants. And if, if the insect comes and can trigger multiples
of them, it closes rapidly. - It closes quickly.
- Yeah. And you see those really
cool kind of like, you know, lashes almost on the edge of them. - Yeah. - That means, means that
even a relatively small, you know, movement gets that insect stuck. - Right. Oh, that's a good point. So if, if it did not have the lashes, you could fly out reasonably quick. But if, let me, let me
trigger this big one here. So I'll hit one hair, nothing happens. Oh, there we go. I hit the second one. So it didn't need to close. I would say less than
a couple milliseconds. At least the two lashes met. - [Ari] Exactly. - [Kevin] Because it's actually
not fully, fully closed. - No. It'll, it'll kind of, you know, it has a one initial quick close. - Yeah. - That gets those lashes there. So that- - And then it like constricts. - Now it's gonna constrict. - Now it's gonna, and then it eventually, as it feels that insect struggling, it'll start to release
those digestive enzymes. And this isn't a feature
unique to the Venus fly trap. 'Cause there's in fact
there's something else in this greenhouse that has this function. - That's right. So we
call when plants can move as a result of touch. - Yeah.
- Thigmotropism. - Okay. - And that's, that's in
some other plants too that we can take a look at. - Let's go look. So here we are at a plant, I actually have grown
from seed, so a little, little cred on my name here, but this is the mimosa pudica
or the sensitive plant, or the tickle me plant, I guess
is what some people call it. And the way I remember it, Ari, is if you sort of pinch
the end here, there you go. And you can do it faster, but to me that's very
satisfying to watch that happen. - These are amazing. Yeah. And just like the Venus fly trap, although for a different purpose, this plant is translating
a sensory impulse into a relatively rapid movement of closure. - So why is this one doing this? What, what would be the purpose? I can't quite figure it out myself. - Well the idea is anti herbivory, right? - Yeah. - So that if there's an insect
on there that's big enough that's starting to munch on that plant, it feels that and it closes, and that kind of scares the insect off. - Oh. - Maybe even a larger animal that we can think of as grazing. I mean, once you, once you close this off, there doesn't look like
there's a lot left. And if you're like a,
if you can imagine a, a larger animal moving through
a a, a shrub of this, ah, it just all of a sudden gets small. - [Kevin] Interesting. Let's help myself back in third grade, but also everyone watching, how would I best care for these? This is a really interesting setup. Just straight outta the gate. - Yeah. We really wanted
to be able to show the, the live Venus fly traps next
to this awesome sculpture and you know, the, these
grow in the same kind of bogs as the sarasinias and the sundews, right? So they want really
clean water again, right? So distilled water,
gotta be really careful, especially here in San
Diego if you've got, you know, kind of high
salty, you know, water, and they really want that
ambient humidity as well. The soils can never dry out. We didn't want to cover them with glass, put 'em in a terrarium, because we wanted them
a little more visible. But we're using all this great moss, which we wet down every day to make sure that this local environment
microclimate stays very humid. - Okay. So basically if I wanted
to replicate this at home, I could effectively mimic this, put some moss on or something
that's moisture attentive, but only water it with distilled. Which honestly with my sarasinia, which is in the epic greenhouse right now, I'm sprinkling from whatever we have water hooked up from the city. So probably not long for this world. You know, you gotta, you gotta be careful. Rain water's great too. - Yeah. - I mean the tricky thing
was distilled water is you're giving it no nutrient. So over time that will
catch up with you too. So you have to find a, the balance. Rainwater's probably best. - Okay.
- If you have it. You know, again, here in San Diego, - Not easy to-
- We don't get a lot of rain. - But distilled water's
a good place to start. And I, I think for beginners,
completely enclosed is best. - Just go terrarium. - Yep.
- Okay. Most forgiving. So much to know about carnivorous plants, absolutely fascinating. But I think that through
line for me as just mostly an edibles gardener is study the plant, study where the plant came from, look at the plant, observe it, and then that will help you
infer how to care for it. And you can use that not
only with carnivorous, which I'm probably gonna build
a carnivorous terrarium now, but with all the other things you grow. So thanks for having us, Ari. Really appreciate it. Thanks to you guys for watching. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
