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Funny thing...

I put a S. purpurea in my daughters windowsill terrarium about 5 weeks ago.  about a week after I put it in there, I noticed this kind of nasty milkish brown looking stuff in one of the pitchers.  I asked her about it, and she told me she threw a hunk of choclate into one of the pitchers.  I told her that if she couldn't find it crawling or flying around outside than not to feed it to her plant.  I asked her when the last time she saw a hershey bar crawling around outside was.  In the last 4 weeks since puting that hunk of choclate in the pitcher the thing has had this huge growth spurt and produced 7 new large pitchers.
 
Cool! I might have to try that with one of my Purps as well.
 
Chocolate on occasion is very welcomed by cps. I've fed my dews chocolate and they drip with "drool".
 
my dews started to mold when i put a piece of chocolate on them.. it was just a crumb..

oh well

i'll try it with my sarracenia this summer. do you know how it will work with sarracenia that produce their own enzymes?
 
Even Darwin in his experiments discovered that CPs do not have enzymes to digest fats and oils. Any level of feeding that involves significant levels of fats is likely to result in the food going bad and mouldy - causing possible damage to the plant. Chocolate is also high in sugar and the osmotic pressure this creates will cause the plant to drool - this does not mean it is digesting the sugar, it means that the sugar is dragging the water out of the plant (even banana does this - i've tried it).
If in doubt - don't, but there are good alternatives such as diluted fat free milk or dried fish food.

BR
Chris
 
It would seem to me that it is just the right time of year for Spring growth to happen. My Sarracenia are producing vigorous growth and new larger leaves now too.
 
I'm sure your right Pingman, it just seemed a bit more vigorous than usual. Maybe next spring I will experiment with some plants of approximately the same age and size and see if there is any noticeable difference in growth.
 
BTW, CactusChris, I thought S. purpurea was a non enzyme producer and relied on bacteria to breakdown food. It's possible that the bacteria had a hayday with the choclate and produced a nutrient rich slury for the plant to absorb. Just a thought.
 
Chris, I use a drop or two of regular whole milk once a month for all my plants except my VFTs, and it works great.
 
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