Harvest time!

Are you thinking about harvesting fruits or veggies? Not this time, I was harvesting the seeds from my carnivorous plants! My small humble pot of sundews (Drosera burmanni & Drosera intermedia) produced lots of seed pods the last few weeks. There would be easily hundreds of seeds I have collected!

Specks of dust or seeds?

Do you wonder how sundew seeds look like? The seeds are literally the size of dust specks! And yes, dust specks! They are black in colour and so tiny that a sneeze from you will send the seeds flying all over the place and cannot be recovered.

Each seed pod can contain 50-80 seeds!                        Two week old seedlings

Carnivorous plants are generally slow growing plants. Their seeds can take 4-6 weeks to germinate and so small that you think these  are green moss! Only after a week or so before they start growing dewy leaves. They will take around 6-9 months to grow big enough to flower.

Sundews Flowers!!

Droseras or commonly known as sundews are famous for their glittering leafs which attract and trap insects. The tiny hairs on the leaves produce a drop of sweet but sticky nectar. Any insects caught on it either die from suffocation or exhaustion. The hairs, which are equipped with digestive glands will digest and absorb the nutrients from the prey. See how fascinating Nature can be!

 

Besides their leaves, their flowers are equally beautiful! They attract insects to it, not this time not for eating but for pollination. The flowers are sent high up away from the leaves so that the pollinating insects will not be trapped by the carnivorous leaves. The flowers open in the morning and fade away within a few hours.

Green fruits are formed and they are very small, so you can imagine how small the seeds will be! The fruits will mature in a week’s time and gradually turn brown. The fruits will then split open and the fine seeds will be dispersed away by the wind.

Harvesting the seeds can be tricky though. The seeds are like dirt and they get blown away easily. I have to check the fruits daily and remove them into a zip lock bag once they start to turn brown. Seeds can then be harvested by shaking the zip lock bag and you can find black specks all over the bag and those are seeds!