Drosera Binata - The Octagon Web of Death and its New 🌸
This is one of my favorite carnivorous plants. It is inescapable for bugs when they fly between the branches. At the end of this post, I will present you with its new baby as well.
First off, its first flower opened today! I have never seen a white flower on this plant before. Just goes to show that you never know, do you?
They are very hard to photograph because of the branches spreading out as they unroll.
First they split and go in opposite directions. Then each from that split grows another pair that unrolls to a point. Then they begin to link together as their sticky tentacles join to the neighboring branches. That is why I call it a web of death.
I had a Binata Multifida a few years back that did one more round of splitting as each branch grew. That plant is the cover from one of my posts a few years back. I believe that one had a pink flower like the emoji I used for this post.
This photo shows the minefield that bugs have to navigate whenever they are near the Binata. In the morning, They have massive droplets of sticky digestive juices that attract insects and cause them to stick to the branches like fly paper. Then they are their until digested. You can see on most of these photos that when one branch is in focus, the others cannot be.
Here is the afternoon version of the same plant. You can see the flower high above the plant, so that only the smart insects are allowed the privilege of pollinating this beautiful plant.
Below and to the right, you see a little pot with a baby Binata in it. I will show you some shots of that little guy in a bit.
But first, let's see what Mama Binata had for lunch today.
As the droplets from morning shrink in the heat of the afternoon, the plant becomes more sticky. For catches like this, the plant has the capability to curl around its large prey so that more tentacles are in contact with it. That is more common with the flat leaf Droseras and it is not instant like the reaction of a Venus. It takes 24 hours for a leaf to curl around prey.
Let's look at her baby now
This little guy had a few bugs for lunch which means he will be growing much faster, the more he eats.
Here is a shot of this same little plant from a couple days ago in the morning.
That looks like a flower rising up on the right, but it is going to be a split when it opens. When they are young, they only split one time per riser.
This plant was so tiny when I repotted it that I thought it was only one.
I just dipped my lens into the two-inch-square pot out of curiosity, and look! There are two of them growing. This is news to me as I write the end of this post.
You can see new branches ready to unroll into more split bug catchers. Now I have three of my favorite plants. These will be separated this week. I may add that to my coming update.
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