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What got you into carnivorous plants?

Wolfn

Agent of Chaos
What got you into the wonderful world of Flesh-eating plants?


For me: I was in elementry school (5th grade back in 2000) and I saw Little Shop of Horrors. I then started looking for carnivorous plants for sale. First I would check out Home Depot and such, and I finally found a place that had some for sale. My first ever CP that I bought was a butterwort. It wasn't a Venus Fly Trap, so I kept looking and bought a Venus Fly Trap. They unfortunately died when I went to summer camp, but I went to buy more. I've been collecting them ever since.



What's your story?
 
What got me into it was when I was younger, I had bought a Venus Fly Trap, only to have it die. I was thinking about that, and did a Google search on Carnivorous Plants. I then found out about Nepenthes, did some research, and bought a Ventricosa. Then, soon after I rescued a fly trap from a local nursery. Soon after I bought a Cape Sundew (pictured in my avatar) from California Carnivores. All plants bought during my revived interest in Carnivorous Plants are currently flourishing!
 
College Professor 8 years ago
 
I have an uncle who is an old hippie botanist. As i was growing up he always had weird plants to show me growing in cookie jars, old empty aquariums and other glass vessels. One day he showed me a Nepenthes ventricosa and I totally lost my mind. It sent me on a quest to grow and own every species. i got close, for a while I had about 70 different Neps and three huge grow chambers but now I have none. Just an anole in a terrarium full of ferns and aroids. :(

Someday I will move from my condo and have a greenhouse or at least a whole room dedicated to growing Neps and other exotic plants again.
 
When I was like 5 or 6 I got some VFT and Sarr seeds or something. I stratified them and planted them. I think some sprouted. They died. A few years later I got a VFT and didn't know how to water it right and teased it with toothpicks. It died. A few more years later I got this big plastic thing with a dome on top, in it was some Sarrs, Darlingtonia, and VFT. I am surprised at how long they all survived, because they were in a sealed dome that had so much condensation I couldn't see through it. One day I took off the top to feel the soil for wetness and it was very hot. They died. Now a few years later, this spring, my mom came home and told me she had a "special surprise" in the car. I went to the car and in the cupholder was a plastic cylinder with a VFT in it. I screamed and jumped around. I am older and smarter now, so I stayed up all night doing research and learned how to take care of it. The VFT was actually four plants, which to this day are in my mini bog.
 
Nepfreak. He was growing before me and I saw some of his and gradually became addicted.
 
when i bought a VFT in 99cent store and didnt want it to die.
 
i was talking to a friend about having owned a venus flytrap as a kid. We were on our way to Lowe's to pickup some straps and I found out they had carnivorous plants and I bought the 3 in 1 big death cubes. I got home started researching, ended up here and basically just started collecting them, since March of this year, I believe I'm up to something like 39 different types of carnivorous plants. its been fun :)

~b
 
my family. specifically, my grandma! :)

one christmas, they got me a small little gh (4x4x4) and two cps, a S. 'Scarlette Bell' and a N. ventricosa. The belle was from lowes and the nep from an online nursery, and the nep is now ~2 feet long (after quite a few choppings) and flowered (and has been a father) many times. Im hoping when my grandma moves into her retirement home with my granpa, i can give them a cultivar, or at least a hybrid, i made with the plant they gave me and will subsequently name after them. Full circle kinda thing. :D
 
  • #10
What got you into the wonderful world of Flesh-eating plants?
What's your story?

Flesh Eating? Ok well you let me know when CPs become "FLESH" eating, thats the day i will go and plant all my CPs down by the swamp down the road from my house. I got into CPs aloooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago but had other things going on back then and didnt keep any. Finaly as yrs went by I had gottin sick and discusted with the way this toilet bowl of a planet is falling apart do to human stupidity and neglagence and all the wildlife and plants "LIVING" were being distroyed and or cruely treated, what this planet once had as mother nature intended is now extinct or nearly extinct, on the endangerd species list or in HIGH threat of being distroyed. We as hobbiests, care givers, growers, pour all our heart and soul into keeping not only plant/flower/tree natures jewels of the world life but also animal life as well "ALIVE" and "EXSISTING" for one day knowing we just might have to take back to the wild and in high hopes replace and re-establish what once was in its natural habitat, hoping what was once natural and pure will be given a new start in life. I got sick of seeing CPs and other plants in stores not being cared for, stashed in a dark corner, not waterd, stuffed in tiny plastic cubes or containers of some sort. Why? Lack of knowladge of the person in charge of carring for them, the store out just for a buck, who knows but i had to do something even knowing taking the CPs i did was gona do nothing more than generate more profit for them inturn to get more and start the whole chain reaction all over again. I no longer get CPs from stores except one i saved from Lowes. I grow my own and also trade for something i would love to grow, i have purchased from respectful CP growers as well. Watching life come fourth from a seed is breath taking and watching growth from a leaf pulling or cutting spring up is heart stoping, knowing well someday i just might contribute putting back the plant life that has been taken away from the wild. I came to TF few yrs back not only with questions of my own and wanting to learn, but also to share my CPs and everything about them. I have learned massive amounts and many many folks here have greatly helped me along the way, i am forever respectful and thankful to them..:hug: :hail:
 
  • #11
CP's are the "think outside the box" type of hobby. They baffled most people who were given the little kits, back before the Internet. We have all killed them, due to using tap water, keeping them covered, feeding them hamburger, or not providing enough light. I killed a lot of VFT's and pitcher plants through the years... but back in 2003 I saw an array of VFT's at my local Home Depot and just couldn't pass up another try. But this time I vowed to keep it alive for more than a few months. So I found books at Borders and Barnes & Noble and then I learned that I was doing just about everything wrong. I bought more plants at Lowes, but wanted to know what I was buying, genus and species name. The books were helpful but the pictures weren't terribly conclusive. Too many pitcher plants and butterworts and sundews looked way too much alike. So I began doing an Internet search to hone down on what I had.That led me to stumble upon a few discussion forums for CP's. I had no idea that discussion forums even existed, much less for carnivorous plants. There were people from all over the world bringing their collective knowledge and I really got a good education from them.
 
  • #12
When I was about 8 my mom came home with one... from that point on I was hooked. They are absolutely fascinating to me.
 
  • #13
Discount Plant Shelf at Lowes...I just can't pass up a discount especially when you can buy for $2.50 a cube of 3 carnivorous plants. Ohh they sucked me into something that day :)
 
  • #14
Orchids. I just de-flasked some Fdk. After Darks from Fred Clarke. I was starting to have problems with the sphagnum gnats since these seedlings like a ton of water. I went to Lowe's and bought two Pings and a Sundew. I just got some better soil mix from Flytrapshop.com and I am ready for more. I have some seeds (Thanks again JB-Orchidguy) that I will plant today and put in the refrigerator. I am also waiting on some D. capensis seeds (Thanks Nepfreak) that I am waiting to arrive.

I guess I am addicted to CP's and orchids now. ???
 
  • #15
Buying a VFT death cube.
 
  • #16
Had to do a research paper in an evolution of plants class, so I chose CPs and started to get into them. That's what got me in....med school is about to take me out (at least temporarily for a few years). I am in class 9 hours a day and read about 6 hours per day after that, so I don't have an hour and a half to kill twice a week watering them. I'm probably just going to liquidate all but 20 or so :(. I realllllly need to cut down my collection.
 
  • #17
I stumbled across large retail nursery in northern calif one day and thot what weird plants the next time I went back they had more appeal to me. then I was hooked. This was 9 or 10 years ago.
it was shortly after peter's book The Savage Garden came out because I have one of the first printings.
OOPs am I allowed to say the name of that book on this forum
 
  • #18
I've always had a love of living things. When I was a kid back in the early 80's, my grandmother gave me a couple of VFTs (this is the same grandmother from the deaf side of the family where I picked up sign language and my career as an interpreter). It was a downward spiral from there.

Our house now has a dog, two cats, a parrot, a koi pond, an aquarium, and 10 honeybee hives not to mention the ton of carnivorous and non-carnivorous plants. We really need to buy some acreage.
 
  • #19
My first introduction to CP was in the school library where I found a book about how to care for them. I ordered a flytrap bulb from out of the back of a comic book and promptly killed it. Back then any and all growing instructions were just horrible. Even the instructions in the library book were wrong. Something that I wouldn't discover until some years later thanks to an online nursery and their ebook. After that first failed attempt it was off to another nursery that offered mail-order service, a 'Crystal-lite Greenhouse' and various CP kits to plant it with, and growing instructions that still stank I figured that these plants were just finicky and hard to grow yet I pressed on. Several tries later (I am persistant if nothing else) I have several mini-bogs out on the back patio and two terrariums with neps and cephs. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat at night thinking about all the Cp that I killed because no one back in those days were providing the proper growing instructions.
 
  • #20
carnivorous plants got me into them. I got a bunch on Christmas.
 
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