Description
Dionaea muscipula “Shir Khan” is a beautiful cultivar selected by Mathias Maier of Green Jaws. Is an upright plant with a slender stalk. Its traps have a wavy and irregular edge, and its teeth are short, stubby, and curved.
Description:
- Climate: temperate
- Life-cycle: perennial (Winter dormancy)
- Shape: erect
- Leaves: green, thin
- Traps: wavy and irregular edge
- Teeth: short, stubby, and curved
Additional info:
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Care instructions
How we grow Dionaea muscipula?
In-vitro plants are acclimated in a Grow Chamber with controlled temperatures and humidity. This indoor setup ensure an easy adaptation to extra-vitro condition, guaranteeing the best conditions for plants in this delicate stage. After this first step the plant is bringed outside, under direct sunlight with the classic tray system as watering method and so, keeping always some amount of water in the tray. As with the most of carnivorous plant we use distilled water (produced by a reverse osmosis system.) or rain water. All plants available at the Diflora shop have been acclimatised for at least 3 months.
Lighting:
Full sun all year round! It is possible to shade slightly in the warmer summer months to avoid excessive temperatures that may stunt the plant’s growth.
Watering:
Dionaea muscipula likes stagnant water (3-4 cm of distilled water always in the saucer) even in winter and if it freezes. This serves to faithfully imitate the natural environment in which they live.
It is important to use only distilled water or alternatively all waters that have an extremely low mineral salt content. For example all condensation water (air conditioner, dehumidifier) or rainwater. The conductivity of the water must have a value of less than 50 micro-siemens.
Substrate:
Dionaea does not tolerate nutrients. We avoid peats with neutral pH or nitrogen fertilisers, which are often found in potting soils for acidophilic plants. The peat must be pure, the Dionaea substrate we recommend is 50% pure acid sphagnum peat and 50% perlite.
Seasonaly and temperature:
Dionaea muscipula is a carnivorous plant from temperate climate, it’s grown outside all year long, under direct sunlight both in winter and in summer. The plant starts to sprout out from late March, early April and continue to grow until late October when the cold temperature become more and more strong. When fall comes Dionaea muscipula produce a rosette of smaller dimension then the previous vegetative leaves with the aim of protect itself from freeze, exposing as less surface as it can to the below zero temperatures of winter. This resting period is called “dormancy”: the central part of the rosette stay alive while all the rest turns brown and seems to be dead. BUT IT’S NOT DEAD! It’s the normal seasonal adaptation of a Venus Fly Trap that goes in dormancy until the first warmy days of spring.
Additional info:
For more cultivation information visit our care guides or use our plant care support by writing to ilpigliamosche@diflora.it
Source
Diflora started the in-vitro propagation of this Dionaea muscipula from plant parts that comes from very experienced european growers. Micropropagation allows the preservation of the mother plant genome avoiding contamination and genetic variation caused by traditional pollination followed by seeds production.
Trapping technique
Dionaea muscipula is a carnivorous plant that has a snap trap mechanism to catch prey: the trap is no less then a modified leaf with 2 lobes that produces sugar-like substances to attract insects.
The trap snaps when the prey lands on its surface. Every trap shows three trigger hairs in each lobe that act as a mechanical sensor of the insects that is moving on the plants. When two trigger hairs are stimulated simultaneously the trap close trapping the pray.
This “two touches” system has evolved to reduce the possibility that the plants loose energy closing the trap without a reason, for example stimulated by a drop of water or by something else that could not be digested. The closure of the trap is mediated by an extremely fast changes on water potential from the inner to the outer layer of the lobe.
The closure mechanism is also very fast and leaves are able to close themselves when stimulated in less then a second. In this first step the trap is not completely closed and the outer cilia (or hairs) of the leaves help to create a cage in which the insects are trapped.
This first and not complete closure serve as a second control step to avoid false prey (as, for example, a drop of rain or casual leaves shaken by the wind). If an insects is really trapped then the trigger hairs will be stimulated continuously and the trap closes completely and starts to produce digestive enzyme.
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