Carnivorous Plant Pollinating
& Seed Collecting

Pollinating Carnivorous Plants Pollinating most of the carnivorous plants is fairly easy. Many sundews and venus flytraps can self pollinate. Its best to transfer pollen from one plant to another though. Sarracenia and Nepenthes can be a bit trickier and will be covered in their own sections in time. Nepenthes have male and female plants. Sarracenia are designed different and generally do not pollinate without help. To pollinate you simply need to get pollen to the stigma. Pollen is generally held up on filaments and is easy to locate, being yellow powder and all. Gently brush the anther with a toothpick or small modelers paint brush to pick up some pollen, or collect it off a leaf. Deposit the pollen on the stigma. Its best to use pollen from different plants, but not mandatory for those that self seed. Most carnivorous plant flowers look like the ones below, so far as design goes. For self pollinating flowers you can use something that vibrates and touch it to the flower after it closes for the last time. I tap my forceps against something and use them, tuning forks are ideal. This makes self pollinating a little easier until you get good at doing it by hand. Pollen is yellow and generally held up on filaments like shown here. Often it can be seen as a yellow powder laying on the leaf. On petaled flowers like this the stigma is in the center of the flower. Usually seen as a small green hump if the style is not present.

If you don't see the small green lump (stigma) then the stigma is probably held up in the air on a style. If a style is present it will be sticking up from the center, the stigma on top. The style is generally larger in diameter than the filaments. Filaments generally do not come up from the center. You must deposit the pollen onto the stigma. Several carnivorous plants do not have a style.

This is a Byblis flower. They are tiny, around 1/4" in diameter. The stigma is present on the end of the style. Most stigmas on styles look about the same. Click the flower for a bigger/clearer pic. See the byblis flower section for more info on byblis specific pollination and flower part labeling.

Most seeds take a few weeks to develop after the flower closes. I generally wait until the stem dies about an inch past the first flower, generally 2 - 4 weeks, or more. Once the flowers and enough stem have dried clip the stalk from the plant. Cut off the excess stalk and drop them into a labeled zip lock bag with a small piece of paper towel. Leave open for air movement and they can sit like this for a few days until your ready. You can use green flower stalks to produce more plants in propagation chambers, cut into 1 or 2 inch sections.

Small paper envelopes are available at jewelers for next to nothing. Your welcome to use my paper envelope pattern to make your own seed envelopes if you like. I print them on 65lb paper but anything works. You can gain access to the pattern by Clicking Here For Seed Envelope Patter. A new window will open, print it right from the web or right click and choose save image as, make sure you print it in landscape or it wont fit. Once your done close the window and you will be right back here. Lightly score the dotted lines to make folding easier. I generally use Elmers Glue on the back and bottom and rubber cement on the top. Tape would work just as well.

Tear off a strip of aluminum foil approximately 3" wide. Fold in half length ways, and then again. Cut it into roughly 1 1/2" long pieces. This is what you are going to wrap the seeds in before placing them in the envelopes.

Now open the foil back up. We're going to drop the seed onto the foil and use the old crease marks to fold it back when were done. Your method here doesn't much matter, you just want them sealed and easy to get back into. Some people use waxed paper instead of aluminum foil, I prefer the foil.

Once you have everything made and/or gathered up grab a bag of seeds. You only want to work with one type of seed at a time. Keep the rest put up somewhere else. Place a stalk on the plate. Cut a few of the flowers off and place the rest back in the bag. Always work over the plate so you can see and claim any loose seed. I use a new plate for each plant type. At the very least wipe the plate down well with a dry paper towel when switching.

This is the pristin way, not the easy way. Use one pair of tweezers or your fingers to hold the dried out flower petals. Use the other pair to remove the lower first set of leaves (sepal) as shown. The seed pod is buried on the end your plucking these leaves from, try not to crush it.

I've gotten fairly good at this, you should work over the foil to catch stray seed until you are. You will end up with some dried flower mixed in with the seed though. Pick the big pieces out. Once you get good at extracting the seed pod you can work over the plate and break the pod on the foil.

The objective is to peal everything away from the seed pod without damaging the pod. I generally pinch the tippy top of the petals between my fingers. Then use the tweezers to push up on the bottom of the flower. As you push up the petals bulge, spreading out and loosening them up some. Use the tweezers and separate some of the petals away from the rest and pluck em out. If the pod has already cracked open your going to loose seed everywhere so pay attention.

Keep working on holding and plucking petals until you get down to the seed pod.

Once you have the pod the hard parts over. The pod is not very big, but can usually be seen when you spread the petals like described above. It's generally black and shaped like what's in the picture. The one shown is approximately 4 times larger than actual size.

Place the pod on the foil and gently squeeze it with the tweezers. It may try to fly away, it's best to help hold in place with the second pair. You should see several seeds fall out of it. After cracking it open I generally break it in half and tap each side upside down. Depending on the type of plant the seeds may be extremely small, some slightly larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Most carnivorous plant seeds are black and numerous. If you had good seed set one flower can produce 25+ seed, sometimes over 100 depending on the species.

Seed from 1 - 5 flowers can be placed in each foil packet. Sandwich the seed in by folding the foil in half using the old crease line. Pinch the ends closed and tap the bottom on the plate a couple of times. You want to knock most of the seed down to the fold. Fold the foil in half length ways again and then fold the ends over. So the end result looks like this.

Now just drop the foil packet with your carnivorous plant seeds into the paper envelope. Make sure you write on the envelope what the seeds are and when you placed them in there. Carnivorous plant seeds can be stored in these envelopes in the refrigerator for a year or more. Nepenthes seed are the exception, they do not store well and must be sowed as soon as possible.

As a general rule plants that have a winter dormancy produce seeds that need stratification. You can learn more about stratification in the Propagation section under the appropriate species.

For an easy method you can try this, but its not a pristine way to gather seeds. You can shake the bag up you originally placed them in once the flowers are totally dry. The seeds will fall free but so will other dried parts, and you wont get all the seed. Neithers really an issue though, most often. Then you can remove the big stuff and dump the seeds where you want them.

I've started using small clear containers with lids easy to modify, works great. I place the flowers in them and leave them open until everything is good and crispy. Then I simply tap/bang the sides and watch the seed drop free. I modified the cap by putting a small hole on one side so I can pour the seeds out and leave most of the stuff I don't want. Fast and easy, simply pour into the foil packets. Pictured is D. Capensis flowers with hundreds of thousands of seeds on the bottom.

click for bigger pic

This method works great for sundew flowers. Flytraps, Byblis and any of the other larger producing seed pods are harder to do like this. You must wait until the pod dries enough to crack open and even then you will not get all of them. But they are bigger and easier to work with so it shouldn't be a problem. The main thing is just waiting long enough, you want the pod to crack on its own.

Seed sowing info is located on the species propagation pages. Simply click on propagation in the links at the top of the page then click the button that represents the plant your working with.