Cloning Carnivorous Sundew (Drosera Capensis)

Sundews are amazing, they just are, they break away from the standard image of plants most of us have. They capture and break down prey for food which is an alien idea for most plants. They help show the rich diversity of plant live we share our planet with. And they are just fun to watch, you could look on YouTube right now and find many satisfying time lapses of Sundew eating.

This instructable was made out of my love of Sundews and to show how anyone can easily clone new Sundews at home with minimal supplies.

But before we begin I want to preface this with saying that I am cloning or propagating a Cape Sundew (Drosera capensis). The processes I use in this instructable should work for most Sundews but some types can't be cloned through these methods or need small changes to these methods. So, there is a lot of room for experimenting with cloning these plants try lots of different ways and have fun with it!

With that out of the way lets dive into this instructable.

Supplies

Scissors (or something like scissors)

Distilled water

Sundew Plant

Plant pot

Lighter

Small clear container

Carnivorous plant soil (You won't need much)

Step 1: Collecting Leaf Cuttings

The first step of course is getting leaf cuttings from your Sundew.

To begin flame sterilize scissors or other cutting tool with the lighter. Run the flame up and down the blades until it's at a good heat. There isn't any magic temperature or anything like that just heat the blades for a little, sterilizing the blades isn't a big step and in most cases won't hurt your cuttings if done wrong. Let your tool cool before moving on.

Next we want to select a few leaves, I usually pick older leaves. You can tell which leaves are older by how much dew they have (older leaves have less) and if the tip is turning brown. Take your scissors cut the leaves off, I usually try to get as close to the body of the plant as I can as I don't want to leave to much stem.

And now we should have some leaf cuttings that we can take into the next step.

Step 2: Preparing Leaf Cuttings

Now we are going to clean up the leaf cuttings we just got.

First I'm going to cut down the stem a bit more, as I find the stems don't propagate as fast. I will usually throwaway the stems but you can try to experiment with cloning from the stems.

Next step we are going to remove the brown part at the tip of the leaf, I find that if you leave that part on it will sometimes spread to the whole leaf cutting.

Final step is to cut the leaves into small pieces, most of the time I'll just cut them in half but you can cut them in any way. You could cut them into fourths or any number of different ways, and from my experiments the number of cuts you make is the number of plants you will get. So, if you cut it into fourths you could get four plants.

Alright now that we have our cuttings ready we can move to the next step.

Step 3: Adding Cuttings to Water

Now we are going to move the cuttings into a clear container. This container can be anything with my first propagation I just used a soda bottle. I've upgraded now and am using this nice little container I got from a hobby shop.

Now fill your container with enough distilled water so that it will cover the cuttings. For my container I fill it half way just to be safe.

Once you've added water to your container you can now put the cuttings in. After I put the cuttings in I'll put the lid on the container and give it a couple shakes, this is just to make sure the cuttings stay hydrated.

Your cuttings are now in a state where they can start to grow, YAY! Put the container in a warm spot that gets a good few hours of light a day or under a grow light.

After that we can move on to the longest step.

Step 4: Waiting

Now we must wait, there isn't any set time that your cuttings will start to grow. They can start growing from two weeks to two months or even longer. The key here is to have patience, don't throw out the cuttings thinking they have gone bad as long as the cuttings keep a nice green color and don't go black or brown they are still alive.

The first sign of growth will be very small bright green tendrils coming out of the cuts on your leaves.

Even after seeing this growth you'll want to leave the cutting in the container until you see what looks like a baby version of your Sundew, these are called plantlets.

Once the plantlets are at a good size or a size you are happy with you can move on to the next step.

Step 5: Moving Plantlets to Pot

Now we can move our plantlets into pots.

These plantlets are still at a very fragile state and need to be hydrated at all times there are two good ways to achieve this when moving into pots.

The first way is to make sure the soil in your pot stays very wet, you'll know when it's right if the top layer of soil reminds you of a swamp.

The second way is to keep water in with a lid of some kind. The pot I am using here came with a lid, but you can use any pot and then just wrap the top in plastic warp to keep in the water.

There are a two upsides and downsides to each option, for the first option the upside is that the Sundew is able to capture food as it isn't covered. The down side is that since it isn't closed you'll be losing water through evaporation, meaning you'll have to water more. The opposite is true for the second option, you won't lose as much water but you're plant won't be able to capture food as much and you may need to help it.

Both options do work well so it's up to you on which option to use.

Step 6: Conclusion

And that's it, you now know how to clone your Sundew. Just keep an eye on your baby plants and the last thing you need to figure out is what to do with all your new baby plants, you could sell them, give them away, or just keep them!

I really hope you enjoyed this instructable, this is my first ever instructable and it's about something I love, plants. I think this is a fun project and a good way to get people interested in how plant cloning or propagation works, this would be a fun project for kids, a biology class, or anyone really.

I am in no way shape or form an expert on plant propagation it's just a fun hobby and if I can do it I know anyone can. But anyway that's all I've got so, thank you for reading and I hope you learned something.