- Tue Apr 08, 2014 4:53 pm
#199809
The last few guys are totally correct.
The goal from each plant is to grow that flower as large as possible, as quickly as possible, and reproduce. But, producing a flower stalk requires a ton of energy. I'd even venture to say that it requires around 20 average sized traps worth of energy. Plants just don't store enough energy to produce giant traps and a flower stalk..... This is also why it is hard to find plants in the wild that are really old. They are usually medium aged and growing in clumps of medium sized plants. They grow for 2-3 years, flower, die back, and then babies form from the left over energy in the rhizome via natural divisions.... We didn't learn about snipping the stalk to grow them larger until we started cultivating them.
Now, most bugs caught by a venus in the wild are small. There just aren't a lot of huge bugs in the wilds of NC (eastern Hercules beetle is the largest, but far too big for a VFT)... So, if 90% of your diet consists of bugs that fit perfectly in a 1 inch trap. Why would you grow a 2 inch trap? A bigger trap doesn't automatically mean more food. But, it does automatically mean more energy used. Bigger traps require more energy to grow, more energy to close, open, and more digestive juices to fill the entire trap for digestion (regardless of the bug size). Now, a venus flytrap doesn't want to die. So, they will make smaller traps and even halt all other growth all together in order to produce the stalk. But, they will die if they only have the energy to flower.
I'd say the biggest fault with that logic is automatically assuming that a bigger trap is always going to result in a bigger catch and a higher energy intake.
All plants you have seen with huge traps and stalks were either A) not really that large. B) the traps were there prior to the stalk growing.
Think of it as simple math (these numbers are random and not correct).
the value is equal to energy.
A healthy adult plant has energy equal to 35 parts of energy.
to grow stalks it costs a minimum of 20
to grow traps they costs 1-3 depending on the size of the trap.
Average plants grow 5-7 traps per Rosetta. So if you have already wasted 50-60% of your entire energy on the flower, are you going to waste all the rest of your energy on the off chance you might snag some extra large food, but if not you die? No, you're going to attempt to stay alive. So, flowering gets priority over traps.... But, luckily, we have found a cheat to this system by snipping the stalk.
TL;DR no, plants don't produce larger traps for flowering or during flowering. Producing huge traps almost always equals energy wasted... This is why most plants don't grow huge traps and why B52 and DC XL are considered rare and highly sought after.