FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

3 green.
3 red
This should do the trick

I’d say so!


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a lot more involved than my simple setup that is for sure! ours is just in a 10x20 slapped on a table on a covered porch, no idea how its gonna do there but I guess time will tell! all that lovely moss!!

Updated pics

Loving it!

Wow. That is a TON of moss.

This is a very quick species identification with a high amount of uncertainty. I can refine my certainty if you could share the PAR light intensity at the surface of the moss heads. It also helps of you know where in the wild the sphagnum originated from, what is the PPM of the water, how fast does the sphagnum grow under these conditions, how does it respond to mild fertilizer applications, how does it respond to a 400PPFD light intensity or higher?

My high uncertainty identification is that the green species looks like sphagnum palustre. A common, fast growing green species. It grows faster with a very dilute infrequent application of fertilizer. Each stem is capable of growing upright without leaning on nearby stems or walls. However, if you triple the light intensity and hit that green moss with 400PPFD and it turns orange or red colored, then it is some other species. If mild fertilizer application causes it to grow slower, grow deformed leaves and branches, then it is not palustre.

The red moss looks like sphagnum russowii. That species tends to have a reddish center and glassy extremities and it grows fast. If mild fertilizer application increases its growth rate, that further suggests russowii. However if mild fertilizer application slows growth and 400PPFD light turns it a solid deep purple, and in general it is a slow grower, then it may be rubellum.

gimme some time to give you more accurate info.

MOST of that moss is from Virginia. (Meadowview Biologic)

looking great! are you producing to sell? it looks like candy.

What do you have for the bottom layer? I'm looking to start my own culture but I don't know if I should just throw the heads in a bucket or plant them on a layer of LFS.

I am thinking of selling. Depending on what i got in the spring.


Honestly. I preach this enough already about them. But i got most of the moss from Meadowview Biologic.

Its worth it guys. You CANT beat it. Plus i got about 20 hitchikers. 1 vft. Drosera. Pine trees. And my favorite.

Spagnum moss crickets. Only found in the moss. There tine and red. Neat little things.

But yea ill sell some in spring when i harvest.

Live sphagnum is amazing looking. Almost alien, because they are living fossils. A recent scientific discovery shows that sphagnum is as much as 600 million years old. The oldest fossils of land plants are recently discovered fossils of sphagnum:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/ab ... 086/686242

Sphagnum was likely one of the first land plants, and clearly the most successful of the first plants to crawl onto land. Why do so many plants grow so well in the dead remains of sphagnum (both long fiber sphagnum and peat)? Likely because other plants evolved to grow well in the dead remains of sphagnum that had piled up over the surface of the earth over millions of years.

Many carnivorous plants likely evolved into carnivores because live sphagnum is a nutrient black hole. Live sphagnum rapidly soaks up nutrients used by plants, fungi, and bacteria... and sphagnum quickly converts these nutrients into acid. In other words, sphagnum engages in a sort of chemical terraforming that transforms its environment into a nutrient poor, moist, and acidic place. For millions of years this prevented other lifeforms from growing in sphagnum’s environment, but eventually some plants evolved adaptations to allow them to remain healthy in such an environment by obtaining their nutrients by eating animals.

What lights are you using?

Leathal_Traps wrote:What lights are you using?

Straight t5 HO's

Cotton candy
Tootsie roll!