FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi, I had a heat wave lasting for a week here in NJ, the Drosera Rotundifolia seedlings look fine and why are my adult Drosera Rotundifoila plants slowing down and most do not have dewy leaves? I had temps in the 90s during the day and upper 70s at night.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You just hit the nail on the head, the heat.
The seedlings, while maybe more delicate, have a smaller surface area for transpiration vs root structure for water uptake. Their roots are larger in ratio to their leaves than an adult plant, so they can replace the moisture that is evaporating from their leaves faster due to this. Where your pics show them as kept nice and wet, because you're taking such good care of them, this is easily accomplished.
With the adult plants, because of the smaller root system as compared to leaves, there is a smaller ratio of root vs leaf. They're choosing to temporarily shut down carnivory and focus solely on photosynthesis until better conditions come around. They don't produce boogers, so they won't catch bugs and be forced to create and secrete the digestive enzymes. Growth will also stall as a result of less moisture available; it's been allocated to preserving the existing cells.
As they have experienced these environmental fluctuations in the wild for billions and billions of years (maybe only thousands of years, I got carried away), they evolved ways to get past them. A temporary slowdown, maybe missing a few bits of supplemental nutrition, maybe even dying back to the surface and having to regrow after the harsh time passes. That's still better than possibly dying altogether.

These are the ones with a few open leaves.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk