Insect catching principle: The leaves are covered with glandular hairs, which can secrete mucus and stick to insects. Both glandular hairs and leaves have the ability to move. When the prey is caught, all the glandular hairs beside the prey will bend to suppress the prey, and finally even the leaves will bend, which will not only prevent the prey from escaping, but also allow more glandular hairs to contact the prey for more effective digestion.
We will introduce the maintenance methods of sundew in several directions:
Lighting: swamp plants, the original environment is not covered by tall plants, like the sun. When cultivated at home, it can be fully sunny in spring, autumn and winter, and should be shaded by 50% in summer or placed on indoor windowsill. Or use 18W energy-saving lamp tube to carry out artificial illumination cultivation at a distance of more than 20cm from plants, and the illumination time is 12 hours/day.
Moisture: Try to use soft water such as pure water and rainwater. Pot immersion method (called "waist water method" in Hong Kong and Taiwan) is adopted to create a small environment similar to the original place. The specific method is to put this pot of sundew in a tray or glass jar, add water to the depth of 1-3cm, and replenish water regularly.
Matrix: fine peat without fertilizer: granular materials (perlite, gravel, etc. ) are 1: 1 or pure water moss, and the substrate should be replaced once a year in spring.
Temperature: growing season 15℃-35℃, winter hibernation must be controlled at around 10℃. However, according to years of maintenance experience, not dormancy has no obvious effect on the normal growth in the coming year.
Feeding: Please don't force them to eat too much, they will prey on themselves. Can only be fed to arthropods (small insects, spiders, etc. ) on 2 leaves at most.
Fertilization: The roots of insect-eating plants are extremely intolerant to salt, and direct application of fertilizer into the substrate will lead to plant death, so low-concentration liquid fertilizer should be sprayed on the leaves. If commercial foliage plant fertilizer is used, it can be applied at the recommended concentration of 1/5 and sprayed once every two weeks in the growing season.
Don't overemphasize humidity. It is wrong to spray water on plants too often. Pot planting can provide enough humidity. Moreover, if the water flow is too strong, it will wash away the mucus of the sundew, so that the glands inside will be directly exposed to the air, which will lead to the dry death of the glands, which will reduce or lose the insect catching ability of the leaves, thus accelerating the aging of the leaves. Friends in the south must take shelter from the wind if they want to plant in the open field.
If you buy seeds, please plant them as follows:
Seeds are black, only bigger than dust. Don't open the package easily. Please make sure there is no wind and no cold before opening it! Or it will be blown away! Ha ha! ￥! %? %! ? )
Substrate preparation: it is suggested that the substrate should be carefully treated water moss. According to some insect friends, sowing with live water moss has unexpected effect on improving germination rate; Mix the substrate to be used in a slightly larger container, and then add a little water to wet it for later use.
Preparation of flowerpot before sowing: Fill the flowerpot with the substrate, put it into a glass jar or basin filled with purified water, let the substrate absorb enough water until the surface is wet, and then spray the surface with a spray bottle (mist spray).
Sowing: Carefully unpack the seeds and spread the seeds evenly on the surface of the substrate (if it sticks to the wrapping paper, you can tear a piece of paper and scrape it off). Don't cover the soil.
Spray water: wet the surface with a spray bottle, and spray carefully with a spray nozzle set to prevent the seeds from being washed away.
Put the flowerpot with seeds together with the glass jar or basin on the inner side of the sunny windowsill. If it is a basin, add a plastic cover with an opening at the top to keep it moist. Pay attention to replenish water in time. Generally, it germinates in about 30 days (20 degrees). Under excellent conditions, it can germinate in about 15 days.
When you grow up, if it is too dense, you can transplant it with soil to avoid damaging the roots.
These elves from wetlands are not as tough as they look, but a very fragile population. Their homes are shrinking rapidly because of people's greed, and their wild brothers are dug away because of their beautiful appearance-almost all wetland insect-eating plants are on the verge of extinction. Protecting and expanding their living space is the return of human beings to nature. Please be kind to them and give insect-eating plants a small home!
Please take good care of insect-eating plants and the wetlands on which they live. I wish you and your plants health! In addition, since insect-eating plants are mostly exotic species, if you breed too much or are unwilling to plant them after purchase, please share them with insect friends who are willing to plant them, or inactivate them. Please don't let them go wild, so as not to destroy the local ecological environment.