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Exploring a thousand-square-foot greenhouse with rare carnivorous plants
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Sep 3, 2024
Join Jeremiah Harris in his Colorado Springs greenhouse, home to rare carnivorous plants like Nepenthes and a record-breaking Venus fly trap, the "alien."
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Hello everyone, I am Jeremiah Harris
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Welcome to my little slice of paradise. This is my thousand
square foot greenhouse here in Colorado Springs, Colorado
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Here on this side, I have all the American pitcher plants. So these come
from Florida, Georgia, deep South area, and they get relatively tall
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Some will be over three feet. Then as we walk down
here, we have some really interesting Venus fly traps
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Some of these have some great color.
We'll get some pretty good size traps
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And then as we continue on down,
this is my tropical plant section
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All of these plants come from
Southeast Asia to Madagascar and India
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They are called Nepenthes or tropical pitcher
plants, and they produce these amazing carnivorous
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pitchers that are actually able to eat
small mammals, some of them in the wild
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As we walk on down, my favorite plant ever
since I was about five years old is this one
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It is called Nepenthes Rajah. So Rajah means king, and it
is the largest of all carnivorous plants, and in the wild
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can hold over two liters of water and
have been known to trap small rodents
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Up here, we have some more species
of Nepenthes hanging in the rafters
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Most of them are vining carnivorous plants,
so they produce a tendril here that will wrap
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around something, and it'll use that to help
support this very large leaf that is actually
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a pitcher. And the pitcher is filled with
digestive enzymes that the plant produces itself
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So let's see, right like that. So that in the wild would be
filled with bugs and insects and all sorts of organisms for
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this plant to use to help it grow. And then as we continue on
down here, we have the brand new world record breaking Venus
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flytrap alien. So the world record breaking trap
is this one right here at 61 millimeters, and that
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is the largest Venus flytrap in the world. So I have been growing
this alien cultivar of Venus flytrap for around eight years now
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Usually from seed, it takes about three to seven
years to get a massive or mature Venus flytrap
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This one I repot every single year, usually
in January or February, get some fresh soil
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around it, make sure that the rhizome looks really
healthy, and put it in a new and bigger pot
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I divide off some of the little smaller pups
that have been produced around the base of
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the trap, and that causes the plant to use all
of its energy to produce just some massive traps
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