FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I have several cape sundews (broad leaf) in a red pot. I live in Greece and my zone is propably 9b. In the summer I had them in a shaded spot with 2 hours of direct sun. I did this because the weather was too hot. It was up to 38°C for 2 months straight and I have heard that cape sundews don’t like temperatures above 30°C. Before 2 weeks I think, I put them with my other plants too and they all get 6 hours of direct sun. Then they almost stopped producing dew because they were acclimating. They also started producing redder traps but the grew slower. Now the problem is that they grow smaller traps and even slower. Also a lot of traps are starting to die and in some plants even the tips of the new growth are turning black. I also noticed that the newest of the growth in the same plants are a weird pinkish purplish colour. It may look to you that it is a mineral buildup problem but every time i checked the TDS it measured less than 20 ppm. I am watering from the top but try to not get water on the plants, only the soil. Some of the traps look like the got damaged by a pest but I can’t find any (I can spot spider mites very easy if there are any). My thought is that they probably start to form a hibernacula (I have heard that D.capensis can form one) because of the temperatures. Now in the day it can go up to 24°C and in the night it can go down to 12°C. In the next days it will get down to 9°C I think.

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Should I bring them inside?

Here's some feedback, but remember I'm still a rank newbie.

From what I've read, D. capensis will indeed form a hibernacula when temperatures drop down down to around 3C...so you're still well above that. I think it may simply be the new environment that they were moved to. It seems that they adapted to handle the heat pretty well (it can still be hot in the shade).

They may be responding negatively to the extra direct sun....maybe move them to where they will get less direct sunlight? Lots of your plants show the leaves curling inward...a plant response to too much light/heat and they're trying to conserve moisture...they can only pull water up through their roots so fast.

I vote to give it less direct sunlight. But, again, I'm a newbie.

I searched for D.capensis hibernacula and now I am almost sure that they are forming some because of the night temperatures getting as low as 10°C. Now will this mini greenhouse thing protect them from the cold or even raise the temperature at night?

Oh I just saw your reply. I will first put them in the place that they were before. If that doesn’t work then they probably form hibernacula. The thing is that the new leaves look like small hooks like that of a dormant drosera.

With more reading I'm even more convinced that your problem with the capes is too much sunlight...either intensity or duration/length of it. It appears that too much light for a plant causes excessive photosynthesis...kind of like us eating too much, it ain't healthy.

A couple of quotes from different places:

"One of the main reasons why a plant might be curling its leaves is simply because it’s been exposed to too much heat or light. While a plant needs both of these things to survive, different plant types will need different amounts. “Plants can get heat stress from being exposed to too much direct light or heat – to counteract this, they try to conserve moisture by curling up their leaves,” explains Richard Cheshire, Patch’s plant doctor." stylist.co.uk

"Light Conditions: Many plants like lots of sunlight, but some don’t, especially the tropical climate plants, which prefer sunlight indirectly. Exposing them to direct and excessive sunlight will cause rapid and increased photosynthesis. This will cause the old plant leaves to curl up and also cause the new leaves to have browner tips, a sign of unhealthiness." flourishingplants.com

In regards to the mini-greenhouse I'm not sure what to say. I would think it will help, somewhat, to protect the plants from cold. How cold does it get where you're at? The greenhouse itself won't raise the temperature at night but may help retain heat from the previous day, keeping the inside temperature from dropping too low. The pots filled with grow mix will act as a heatsink, storing solar energy that enters through the glass and strikes them, though plastic isn't the best at solar absorption. Maybe some flat rocks placed in the bottom to help absorb the solar radiation would help. If there is a bottom in the greenhouse maybe put something beneath it to help insulate the bottom and prevent transferring by conduction the heat in the rocks/pots to a colder surface beneath?

One thing to be sure of, though, is that the greenhouse doesn't overheat and kill the plants during times of sunshine.

Yeah probably the get too much sun. I saw a topic on reddit and it was a sunburnt D.capensis and it looks like mine but more severe. The old leaves are red with dead traps and the new growth has those weird red hook like leafs. I will put the pot to it’s original place tomorrow.

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This is crazy . Today a bird shoved a walnut inside the sphagnum of D.capensis! I think it was a bit rotten or mouldy and i saw some tiny black bugs too. One drosera got buried to but I fixed it. Will my plants be ok? I don’t want a fungus or bacteria infection or some kind of pests .

Most likely it will be fine.

FWIW, I kept my Capensis out in the AZ summer sun all day and they thrived. I did have to acclimate them before giving them a full day in the 90 °F heat. I noticed in one of the pics that a flower scape was brown and dead, you should cut it off. My experience with Capensis flowering is that the plants will do poorly until the flowering is complete or the stalk is removed. Afterwards they start growing new healthy leaves. My biggest Cape flowered twice this year and looked like it was going to die both times.

D. Capensis is a tropical sundew, and grows naturally around the equator, so it doesn’t ever go dormant, if the conditions are right for it. I’ve had Capensis go dormant due to cold weather before, and they die back to the roots, and regrow in spring. They also spread seeds like herpes, so beware of that and cut those flower stalks as soon as you see them.

Hmmm, I think D. capensis is native to South Africa....that's about 2,000 miles south of the equator, roughly about the same distance that Orlando, Florida, is north of the equator. I think it would be considered more of a subtropical sundew. Not that it really matters, just "OCD-Me"....carry on.