I am not sure where it came from, but some of my carnivorous plants have been invaded by stinging nettle. You really don't want to touch this or pull on it while weeding. It feels as if you had been burned if you do. Here's an up close shot of it.
Backing away, we have the drosera wintering well, even with a little baby next to it.
Normally one would not think that other plants that need nutrition from the soil would grow at all in moss, which has no nutrition.
We also have. Chanca Piedra growing on the left and a stinging nettle toward the back of this planter.
Here is another Drosera that has a couple of nettle plants growing in its moss.
If anyone is curious as to why I don't post much in the wintertime - down here in South America, it's because the plants don't look as nice as they do in the summer.
The pitcher plant, this one anyway, it's wintering quite nicely with its latest pictures being the bright green ones and the ones that it had through summer are the ones with the red veins.
It too has been invaded by a lot of weeds.
I pulled the weeds out because I wanted to show you a couple more things that are happening inside this pot.
This is the difference between a brand new one and one that's been alive for eight months or so. The darker one is the older one.
And down at the base of this plant, we have a couple baby pitchers coming up.
That little guy is going to be tough to separated from his mom because you don't want to destroy the larger plant for the sake of the little one. Either way, the plants are stronger when the weather gets warm and they recover from stress more easily when there are lots of bugs to eat.
And the last one I want to feature for today is the largest of my Venus fly-traps, which has some moss growing up around it. Many of the traps have turned black, which is normal when they get old, but she still has four active traps and some babies trying to come up near the center bulb.
This trap ate last week and is about to open back up.
The situation is about the same for the recently repotted (second largest) Venus that I have.
As I said many times before, these plants are mostly dormant during the winter as our temperatures get into the mid-50s Fahrenheit and they are not as pretty in the cold, but they still have their charm and are functional at reducing the bug population on the patio.
Let me know if you want more updates on the plants during winter. Onions, cabbage and kale grow healthy year around.
