FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

My Drosera aliciae has put up three flower stalks recently and all end up like this. Looks okay at the bottom and top, but it wilts in the middle. As soon as the defunct stalk is covered by a few leaves it sends up a new stalk and the same thing happens. You can see the previous wilted stalk along with the current stalk in the picture.

The plant seems healthy otherwise. Could it be that when I see a flower stalk I say, "Oh, maybe I should feed it some dried bloodworms." And then maybe feed it too much?

I’m not sure, but I have this theory. It’s the same reason why I do not fertilize my fruit trees after they flower. A tree makes flowers (and hence fruit) to reproduce. In fact, on some trees folks actually hurt the tree by cutting into the bark a bit to make the tree get under stress, to start producing flowers. Anyway, back to your question. If the plant has started to make a thing that is necessary to reproduce and you suddenly give it food, maybe it thinks it doesn’t need to reproduce (it is no longer in danger of “death” any time soon), so it takes all the energy it just got from the feeding, and abandons the flower stalk and uses the energy for growth instead. Just a theory.

That's about the only thing I can think of too. I cut off the curled up end and put it in some water in the hopes I might be able to at least get one plant out of it.

I have one and its doing the same thing, if you figure it out let me know i want to make some cape crosses. My guess was my window could be to dry/hot.

optique wrote:I have one and its doing the same thing, if you figure it out let me know i want to make some cape crosses. My guess was my window could be to dry/hot.

That could have something to do with it. That particular plant is in an east window which gets pretty hot until about noon.

After several more aborted flower stalks, I think it's finally going to keep one. It's curving upward! But now there's these octopus/squid-looking appendages coming from the center of the plant. At least one looks like another flower stalk, others might be false vivipary?

Not sure if anyone had the same idea as me (it's probably not viable), but here it goes:

The plant looks healthy, but the flowers turn out like crap. My theory is that the genetics in the plant keep it from reproducing, as this is probably a seed grown plant coming from a gene pool of millions of possibilities. This one might've exhibited a rare mutation.

Yes, it's definitely a seed grown plant. The seeds were from my 15+ year-old stash when I sowed them. I am currently nursing its sibling back to health, so someday when/if it makes flowers I'll see if it does the same thing.