In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Learn more about the project and see all the 365 Nature posts.
Yesterday I stopped in at a plant nursery to pick up some more gravel to create our third wetland in a bottle and while I browsed around, I encountered a small selection of carnivorous plants. Having been thinking about aquatic life and plants I stopped to look. At one point I had a sundew plant, but I didn’t do well with it and it died. I decided to try my hand again and I bought four different plants. After returning home I cleaned out a water container I had outside and put some bricks inside. I placed the new plants on top of the bricks and filled the water up to mid-level of the plant containers. Enough to wet the roots, but not the leaves. My daughter noticed a lady beetle inside one of the larger pitcher plants and a bumble bee in another.
Today we looked inside the pitcher plants and the lady beetle, which yesterday was moving, was no longer trying to escape and had fallen to the bottom of the tube. In the other plant, the tube was clogged with insects. In addition to the bumble bee was a syrphid fly and a tiny insect I didn’t know.
