FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

So, I am very new to gardening (like, this is my first season), especially carnivorous plants, but, I want to grow a pink sundew (Drosera capillaris) because I live in central Arkansas and my property has a bug problem and pink sundew's native population is dropping. I know that they can grow in Arkansas, but they grow in glass land, I have an old growth forest, there are a few clearings, so there are places for complete and direct sunlight. The ground is rocky and a lot of the clearings are clay (I can't get the pH because I am 11 miles away right now and I don't have pH testing tools) Is this possible? Or should I plant it in a pot outside and let it's seeds try to make it work? Also, since I want them to get a foothold here, how many should I plant? Is one enough?

They won't grow in nutrient rich soil and, believe it or not, clay is very nutrient rich. Plus, for bug control, you'd need thousands and thousands of plants.
Your idea won't work, sorry.

That's fine. There is a reason I was asking.

Bugs are the foundation of the ecosystem. Killing them off en masse is hurting ecosystems worldwide- they aren't meant to be absent from any area. Unless the bugs are a harmful invasive (nonnative!) species, they're meant to be there, and you're better off working with them than trying to get rid of them. If there is a harmfully large amount of a native insect species, that means something is out of whack, and fixing that something will fix your problem. It's rather likely, though, that you don't have a bug problem any more than your forests have a tree problem or the grasslands have a grass problem.

A pot of sundews does make nice fungus gnat control in a batch of houseplants, though, or in a greenhouse if the pot is big enough. In small-scale, where it won't do any harm to kill off the bugs, they're great for catching flying things.

Why D. capillaris? D. brevifolia is the sundew species native to your area. There's probably a reason D. capillaris doesn't grow up there and introducing non-native species is rarely a good idea.

nimbulan wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 11:27 pm Why D. capillaris? D. brevifolia is the sundew species native to your area. There's probably a reason D. capillaris doesn't grow up there and introducing non-native species is rarely a good idea.

A site called 'only in Arkansas' told me it was native, there is a reason why I decided to ask before I even started looking for where to get the plants. I'll look into brevifolia instead, thank you ^-^

Fishkeeper wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 9:55 pm Bugs are the foundation of the ecosystem. Killing them off en masse is hurting ecosystems worldwide- they aren't meant to be absent from any area. Unless the bugs are a harmful invasive (nonnative!) species, they're meant to be there, and you're better off working with them than trying to get rid of them. If there is a harmfully large amount of a native insect species, that means something is out of whack, and fixing that something will fix your problem. It's rather likely, though, that you don't have a bug problem any more than your forests have a tree problem or the grasslands have a grass problem.

A pot of sundews does make nice fungus gnat control in a batch of houseplants, though, or in a greenhouse if the pot is big enough. In small-scale, where it won't do any harm to kill off the bugs, they're great for catching flying things.

I don't want to kill even most of them, but, they are getting out of control. There is a property a few acres away that added a man made pond and that land is now abandoned so there is unnatural unmanaged breeding zone for mosquitoes, and because of some other neighbors, the frog population is decreasing (they are cutting down trees, letting their dogs run free, consistently building something, etc.). Used to see 5 a month (during the wet season), now I see 2 a year (of course, I moved away a year and a half ago, who knows the actual population now). My main plan is to find some wild caught cajun chorus frogs, grey tree frogs, and fowler's toad, release them on to the property, and make some ideal housing for them, because I have seen them in the area, but I need to figure out the legality of that. I lived on that land for 20 years, I can tell when the bug population is getting too high. But, I am planning on getting the forestry service to take a look before I do anything. I just like to gather information so I don't jump the gun.

Moving amphibians around is a very bad idea. That's part of how chytrid spreads, and chytrid wipes out many amphibian populations it touches. I'm also not sure that those species will eat a lot of mosquitos- they generally prefer crawling insects. Encouraging native frogs and toads is a good idea, but best done by providing ideal habitat and waiting for them to arrive, and also trying to figure out where they went in the first place. Just dogs wouldn't do it. I'd be worried about pollution of some sort, or the aforementioned chytrid.

A pond not being maintained by humans should find itself in a natural state on its own, eventually, unless something is rather badly wrong. You could look into buying and releasing native mosquito-eating fish of some sort, to cut the larvae off.

Fishkeeper wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:16 pm Moving amphibians around is a very bad idea. That's part of how chytrid spreads, and chytrid wipes out many amphibian populations it touches. I'm also not sure that those species will eat a lot of mosquitos- they generally prefer crawling insects. Encouraging native frogs and toads is a good idea, but best done by providing ideal habitat and waiting for them to arrive, and also trying to figure out where they went in the first place. Just dogs wouldn't do it. I'd be worried about pollution of some sort, or the aforementioned chytrid.

A pond not being maintained by humans should find itself in a natural state on its own, eventually, unless something is rather badly wrong. You could look into buying and releasing native mosquito-eating fish of some sort, to cut the larvae off.

Okay, thanks for the info. I don't have access to the pound sadly, while it was being cared for there were catfish, although I don't know what type, hopefully they can survive on insects, otherwise those guys are either dead or dying. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a illness effecting the frogs, honestly, I forgot that they could get sick. So what I am learning is, don't even make plans without the forestry service, because I clearly don't know as much as I thought I did.

Catfish won't eat mosquito larvae as the larvae are too small, but yes, they live on insects, small fish, and other small prey. That's what they do in the wild, after all. If the pond was artificially overstocked for fishing purposes, most of that will have died off by now, in favor of a population that can sustain itself.

You might ask the forestry service if they can do something about the pond. They'll likely know what the best fish to add to eat mosquito larvae would be. They may also be able to tell you if they're aware of any illnesses or pollutants affecting the local amphibians, or even send someone out who's an expert in frogs and can try to figure out the problem. Amphibians are what are referred to as indicator species- they're often the first to die off from pollutants, so absence of them can mean something is badly wrong.

Humanity as a species is only beginning to scratch the surface of how ecosystems work. It's a web of enormous, beautiful, near-incomprehensible complexity, including on a microbial level (true topsoil, for example, is a living network of bacteria and fungi centuries in the making, not something the garden center can sell), and even an expert would struggle to predict what impact adding or removing a species might have, unless they've already seen that species added or removed in a similar environment elsewhere. Hopefully the folks at your local forestry service are good at their jobs and will already be familiar with what your land might need.

Your idea of more habitat for native frogs and toads is definitely a good one. That's a good bet for any sort of wildlife and any attempts to get the local ecosystem back in proper order; habitat. Places to hide, good, clean water, as many native plants and as few nonnative plants as you can manage. Have any reasonably large rocks you've removed from somewhere? Pile them up in a heap full of crevices near some clean water (by "clean" I mean "not poisonous or polluted", not "clear and free of algae or mud"- tadpoles love algae), and you should have all the amphibians you could ever want once they find the place and multiply.
Leaving dead trees in place, whether standing or fallen, is often also a good idea, as rotting trees provide habitat for a large number of species. Woodpeckers, owls, and other cavity-nesters in standing dead trees, snakes and other beneficial reptiles (and amphibians!) in fallen dead ones, beneficial insects in both. That's a sort of mini-habitat that gets neglected a lot, with people hauling away dead trees before they can rot and be worked back into the soil.

Fishkeeper wrote:Catfish won't eat mosquito larvae as the larvae are too small, but yes, they live on insects, small fish, and other small prey. That's what they do in the wild, after all. If the pond was artificially overstocked for fishing purposes, most of that will have died off by now, in favor of a population that can sustain itself.

You might ask the forestry service if they can do something about the pond. They'll likely know what the best fish to add to eat mosquito larvae would be. They may also be able to tell you if they're aware of any illnesses or pollutants affecting the local amphibians, or even send someone out who's an expert in frogs and can try to figure out the problem. Amphibians are what are referred to as indicator species- they're often the first to die off from pollutants, so absence of them can mean something is badly wrong.

Humanity as a species is only beginning to scratch the surface of how ecosystems work. It's a web of enormous, beautiful, near-incomprehensible complexity, including on a microbial level (true topsoil, for example, is a living network of bacteria and fungi centuries in the making, not something the garden center can sell), and even an expert would struggle to predict what impact adding or removing a species might have, unless they've already seen that species added or removed in a similar environment elsewhere. Hopefully the folks at your local forestry service are good at their jobs and will already be familiar with what your land might need.

Your idea of more habitat for native frogs and toads is definitely a good one. That's a good bet for any sort of wildlife and any attempts to get the local ecosystem back in proper order; habitat. Places to hide, good, clean water, as many native plants and as few nonnative plants as you can manage. Have any reasonably large rocks you've removed from somewhere? Pile them up in a heap full of crevices near some clean water (by "clean" I mean "not poisonous or polluted", not "clear and free of algae or mud"- tadpoles love algae), and you should have all the amphibians you could ever want once they find the place and multiply.
Leaving dead trees in place, whether standing or fallen, is often also a good idea, as rotting trees provide habitat for a large number of species. Woodpeckers, owls, and other cavity-nesters in standing dead trees, snakes and other beneficial reptiles (and amphibians!) in fallen dead ones, beneficial insects in both. That's a sort of mini-habitat that gets neglected a lot, with people hauling away dead trees before they can rot and be worked back into the soil.

And that’s all I’ve been catching with little fish. It’s fair to say that saltwater catfish will eat anything, people around here kill them, hardhead catfish to be exact, they’ll eat anything and they are all over the bay around me, they have become a real problem in the run off’s, the bay, anywhere where there is nothing but mud on the surface area underneath the water. I have even encountered them in the matagorda river, but to be completely honest there is mud there too. Texas has its good fishing seasons, AND it’s worst, but that doesn’t stop me from fishing!

I also know that redfish, black drum, shark, trout; "sand trout and spotted sea trout" have random run through’s, it’s not a consistent pattern where the fishing will be great during the same time of month every year, my neighbor still doesn’t want to believe me, that’s probably why he doesn’t catch anything worth eating. I have realized catfish aren’t in the bay, both gaftop and hardhead catfish are gone for the cooler months, while trout are all over the place at night under our green light, redfish usually bite in the morning as soon as the sun comes up, all the way until it is right about noon, they love mullet in the very cold months. I’ve also used a brand of bait called Fish bites, you cut em’ into small bite size pieces (they’ll come in a plastic package either labeled under shrimp or crab, and they include 2 colored strips) and I’ve caught black drum that people around me think it’ll take a lot longer to bring in, usually around the 20-38 inch mark. I’ve also caught a lot of trout, shark with these little bite sized baits.


I get that I was really off topic, I just thought I would share…


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