FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I'm experimenting with active yeast, the type you use for baking homemade bread.
I buy SAF yeast in one pound bags. ( I bake my own bread, about a loaf per week)
It comes in tiny pellets, about the size of a Drosera dewdrop.
I use a damp needle to pick up one pellet and put it on a tentacle.
Then I add a droplet of water to activate it and start the capture/digestion process.
The tentacles and leaf reacts as if it were a captured bug.
So far, I have not seen any ill effects.

Good growing,
Mike

Come to think of it, yeasts do have a cell wall made of chitin (same protein composition of insect cytoskeleton). Nevertheless, they could work. But i was wondering, if the mucilage is sugary, and the yeast can ferment it, it will make the fluids acidic.

I wanted to work on a project on pitcher plants before. My hypothesis is, the enzymes alone will digest insects slower. If the pH gets lower, that could increase the activity of enzymes to digest insects further. Colonial insects such as ants or termites grow yeast farms in their mounds, they can be carriers of yeast. Just a thought. I will be needing a lab to experiment on that though. Hahahaha


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we use a lot of Nutritional Yeast in our household...but for eating.