FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

If you have a pond in your garden, you could try putting some Aldrovanda vesiculosa (waterwheel plant) in it. It's the aquatic version of the VFT .
It can survive in an aquarium too, but you'll have to add living Daphnias (water fleas) as food then.

Niels,
I have seen those water wheel things a little while doing some research and they look quite neat. They eat and looks like a VFT in water?? That really neat. I have this image of years down the road, when I get out of college n get a steady career going that I'll gave this huge green house, almost biodome type of thing with a pond n all sorts of neat carnivorous and non carnivorous plants in it. But that is a longggggg ways down the road.

vanillaXtiffy,
Java fern?? never heard of it. What does it look like? Is it like a lily pad or like an underwater plant?

lozone31 wrote:They eat and looks like a VFT in water??

Kinda. Look here for the Wiki article on Aldrovanda.

oh weird. they look very cool. can you get any colors on them like VFT?

I'm not 100% sure, but i think they're evergreen and lack the ability to produce red pigments.
In VFTs, the red pigments have as main function attracting bugs, and side function protection against photoinhibition.

In water, cause it's an aquatic plant, the bugs residing there might be attracted better by green colors than red, and the effect of photoinhibition is less strong in water, since a part of the UV radiation energy is already absorbed by the water.

I think aldrovanda does not have an advantage by creating red pigments from a physiological point of view, and because green plant parts are better in doing photosynthesis than red parts, i think there was an evolutionary pressure on aldrovandas that might have had red pigments before.

O wow. Thank you neils for the very thorough answer.

niels,
do you know how the plant gets it pigment to get red. is it the soil that it is in that allows it to get red, or is it the sun exposure that triggers the plant to produce it?
I am wondering this cause i do very much like the red pigment on the inside of a vft trap and want to be able to get it to be that nice bright pink color.

Anthocyanins in plants are actually stress-related molecules.
The synthesis gets triggered by abundant sunlight because they act as a kind of "sunscreen" for the plant.
However, evolution and natural selection made VFTs express anthocyanin at lower than usual light levels, because plants with higher anthocyanin concentrations seemed to be superior in attracting and catching prey over green plants.

If you want to 'tune' the shade of red, I'd suggest you keep some plants in different lighting environments [VFT cultivar, time period of illumination and intensity of illumination are your 3 variables here] and see what kind of red you like most.

NZL wrote:Anthocyanins in plants are actually stress-related molecules.
The synthesis gets triggered by abundant sunlight because they act as a kind of "sunscreen" for the plant.

Like suntan in humans.

Steve_D wrote:

NZL wrote:Anthocyanins in plants are actually stress-related molecules.
The synthesis gets triggered by abundant sunlight because they act as a kind of "sunscreen" for the plant.

Like suntan in humans.

Melanin to be exact

i gotcha. thank you neils. I will give it a go. but you dont think that the pigment could be absorbed through the soil like how flamingos are pink because of the food that they eat? it is just that type of pigment is reaction to the sun/evolutionary pressure?

lozone31 wrote:i gotcha. thank you neils. I will give it a go. but you dont think that the pigment could be absorbed through the soil like how flamingos are pink because of the food that they eat? it is just that type of pigment is reaction to the sun/evolutionary pressure?

Anthocyanin production is independent of the soil in which they're planted.
One of the big differences between the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom is that plants have the ability to synthesize a wide range of complex molecules from simple building blocks, whereas the animal kingdom can only build a few complex molecules from simple building blocks.
Animals obtain most of their complex molecules from eating plants or other animals that eat plants or other animals that eat animals that eat plants, etc etc, and then use the complex molecules as a starting point and add/delete/modify small details so the molecules can be used in their own metabolism.

oh aight, that makes since. darn.

NZL wrote:Anthocyanin production is independent of the soil in which they're planted.

I have to correct myself here:
For Carnivore Plants, it is independent of the soil in which they're planted. It might play a roll for non-carnivorous plants.
Now you might think that for Carnivore Plants it depends on their bug diet, but that's not exactly true. Bugs are digested and reduced to simple building blocks, common to all bugs...

However, lozone, if you want to perform the experiment, you could add a 4th variable: No bugs / No feeding but able to do wild catches / feeding.
The amount of bugs might be related to coloration..

I think i might just do that experiment. Do you think the type of bug matters? Would normal houseflys be prey of choice?