FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My sundews caught alot of ants, now there are alot of dead/digested ants on the leaves. Do i clear them or leave them there? Thanks

You can leave them there if the plant is outside. The ants will either be fully digested or if the ants where to big and the leaves curled over it may not be fully digested. The rain washes most eaten and uneaten food away.

If you have the plant indoors once the digestive process is complete you can carefully pick whatever is left off with tweezers as if it was not fully digested it may mold. With all of that said, I have never have a problem with mold inside and I do not pick leftover's off (knocks on wood ). I hope I have helped. The other more informative people will add to what information I have provied if I forgot to mention something.

I will check back after a while and see if you help more questions answered and to see the more experienced answers myself! Happy growing.

Thanks Randall! The ants were tiny and i am growing mine indoors. So i do not need to remove the dead ants?

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Just leave it. I've never found old prey to grow mold unless the humidity is very high or after the leaf dies back and droops down so it's touching the soil. Either way it won't harm the plant, though you can trim dead leaves so the plants look better (this is not really feasible for rosetted species though.)

In my experience, sundew leaves die rather quickly (thankfully, new ones also grow in quickly). So if you want to be safe, just wait until the leaf dies, then you can snip it off (and take the dead bugs with it).

I prefer to leave the leaves on, and as others have said, you most likely won't have a problem with the leftovers. But it's a middle ground if it helps.

Thanks guys!

I do the same, I leave them on until the leaf dies off. Then I remove the dead leaf with digested insects on it. By keeping them nicely trimmed, they look even better than with a bunch of dead leaves on the bottom.

IMO it's mostly D. binata leaves and other sort of spindly/soft-leafed ones that cycle through leaves quickly. But even in those cases, most sundews love bright light and good airflow so mold tends to be a pretty rare thing. In the end it's more of a cosmetic preference.

Well, I did notice a lot of molding on my Drosera capensis 'Alba' which were growing tightly together. Old leaf got soft and dropped to the ground, when it was old enough and those leaves made a layer of long fibre sphagnum like matter which did have some half digested insects still attached. there was some mold on them and a lot of springtails that were eating the mold and decaying plant matter. I actually thought about trying to grow the test carnivore plant in dead Drosera capensis leaves. I might try one day.