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While watering my plants today, I had a sudden epiphany. (First I need to give some background info to make everything make sense.)

Honestly, my drosera collection is nothing to boast of, lol. (About 20 aliciae, drosera 'Marston Dragon', drosera dichotoma 'giant', a lot of capensis, some tracyi cuttings, a lot of spatulata, and a lone drosera admirabilis.) Despite this, I am a fan of resarching about things I never will have.

Now that we have that covered, I would say that I like research quite a bit.

However, the real story goes back several weeks. While I was researching global warming and the effect of CO2 on plant growth, I learned some interesting things. Many studies concluded that it would be positive if all other factors remained constant (less pollution, no temp increase, etc.). Also, in order for the plants utilize the CO2, they need proportional increases in nutrients and sunlight. With all of these conditions met, plants grow quicker than plants w/o this boost.

So, how does this correlate with drosera? Back to my sudden "epiphany"...

About 12-15 months ago I acquired two drosera aliciae. Since then, they have done well for me. While growing them, I noticed several intriguing observations. They stayed red and small (less capacity for photosynthesis) for me when unfed and immediately turned green and large (must more capcity for photosynthesis) when fed a few insescts. Of course, this may be common and well-disseminated information. (growsundews.com notes this extensively) The real linkage here is between this observation and the experiments on global warming.

If the plants get their nutrients, will they not need more sunlight? After all, they have a larger capacity for growth and also excess nutrients to expand on. Feeding bugs to cps possibly has secondary effects besides just the nutrient boost. After feeding, what used to be sufficient light now is just adequate light. By feeding CPs, we might be giving them an advantage on other areas as well. This is my hypothesis for why drosera turn large and green after being fed.

I do recall reading an article that nepenthes leaf respiration increases after the nepenthes are fed bugs but idk. Not too sure whether this has been posted about before, but I don't recall ever seeing it. If I have made any mistakes, please correct me and remember to post your own opinion. I would like to hear more ideas on this topic. :boogie:

-S21
 
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