FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

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Yes

Why does this happen?

There's an substance in many leaves known as carotene. Carotene is a kind of "chlorophyll helper." That's because carotene absorbs sunlight energy like chlorophyll, but instead of keeping that energy and conducting photosynthesis with it, it passes its energy on to chlorophyll which then uses that energy to perform photosynthesis. Carotene is known technically as an "accessory absorber." Carotene holds up much better under sunlight than chlorophyll, so often in the fall when chlorophyll disappears from leaves, carotene is left behind. Since carotene absorbs blue-green and blue light in sunlight, the light it reflects back to our eyes from leaves in which the chlorophyll has disappeared is yellow. U should google to find your answer.

Ok, but her leaves are red

Besides chlorophyll and carotene, there's yet another pigment, or class of pigments, occurring in many leaves, called anthocyanins. However, these pigments are not important because they capture sunlight energy. Anthocyanins are formed when sugars and certain proteins interact in the juice inside plant cells. Despite anthocyanins playing no part in photosynthesis, they are themselves not formed unless sunlight is present. Since anthocyanins absorb blue, blue-green, and green light, the color they reflect to our eyes is red

Oooooooh, I get it now! Thanks!

Bascially, just showing you "Im healthy" in retard terms lol

Lol! Well, that's good to hear. It makes me sad to see mine so green ...well, I'll go tell Fallon.

Red coloration is controlled by a lot of things (different potting soils, pH levels of the soil, amount of light, and kind of light) and it's primarily genetic, but I don't think it is a hard and fast indication of overall plant health. Just because a plant is red doesn't mean it's healthy.

There is Drosera spatulata (tokaiensis is a spatulata x rotundifolia hybrid) that's very red in coloration due to genetics. It was registered as a cultivar:
http://www.carnivorousplants.org/cpn/Sp ... 52_55.html

I didn't know there was so much information to find out about the occurrence of red.

theres nothing to worry about..when droseras are exposed to the sun they have to adapt as they are suddenly exposed to stronger light and UVB ..these are 2 major factors inducing the formation of anthocyanin in the leaves . their rôle is to protect the plant from photoinhibition and photolysis of the chlorophyll when the light intensity is too high compared to its previous situation. it takes a few days for the drosera to adapt and then despite its new colour the photosynthesis resume and reach its optimal rate.

Why is it that the red color can fade back to green when the plant is catching lots of food? I have the same plant, and it was red for a while. Once warm weather hit and the gnats and other bugs came back, the color started to fade. There was no change in light. If anything, it got more. Those are related, right? I thought I'd read that somewhere.

Matt wrote:Red coloration is controlled by a lot of things (different potting soils, pH levels of the soil, amount of light, and kind of light) and it's primarily genetic, but I don't think it is a hard and fast indication of overall plant health. Just because a plant is red doesn't mean it's healthy.

There is Drosera spatulata (tokaiensis is a spatulata x rotundifolia hybrid) that's very red in coloration due to genetics. It was registered as a cultivar:
http://www.carnivorousplants.org/cpn/Sp ... 52_55.html

true. my Venusta turned really red from a "sunburn" cause it got too hot and the plant didn't like it. since I've moved her inside under the lights she's finally putting out new leaves that are normal colored lol...