Bug Plant

Native to the western coast of South Africa. Very difficult to germinate and grow because it requires special treatment of the seed and o...Read Morence it germinates, it will require lots of bright direct sun and lower humidity levels all while not allowing the potting medium to ever dry out. Never fertilize this plant. If one is very attentive to details, one can have success with this plant.

I pulled this information from a web site as it was most interesting and well written. The author is Siegfried Hartmeyer.
The writing below is excerpted from the International Carnivorous Plant Society's website.

"Is Roridula Carnivorous?
Roridula is a South African genus containing two shrubby species which bear stalked glands that produce an effective India rubber-containing glue. The carnivorous status of species in Roridula has been debated ever since Charles Darwin first suggested they were carnivores (1875). Work by Marloth (1910) and Lloyd (1935) countered Darwin’s conclusions because the sticky shrublets do not have the sessile glands that produce proteolytic enzymes and which absorb nutrients (as does Drosophyllum). Roridula was repeatedly shown to be unable to produce own digesting enzymes, so it was theorized that these plants (that have the strongest glue of all the insect-trappers) only benefited from the captured prey when nutrients from the decaying prey washed into the soil. Capsid bugs (Miridae) which live on the plants were postulated as representing another loss to the plant because, astonishingly, they freely move on the plant and steal the immobilized insects. Furthermore, some species of spiders use their webs to avoid the plant’s glue and feed upon the Capsid bugs and arthropods stuck to the plant. But in spite of all this, Darwin's theory remained popular and Roridula continues to be grown by carnivorous plant enthusiasts...This is documented in my first English-language video (1994), in which I suggested it was an example of a true symbiosis. I soon became involved in the heated discussion regarding the carnivorous status of Roridula. I maintained that Roridula is a true carnivorous plant even though it does not have enzymes that can dissolve its captured prey. I think the nutrition is not absorbed via soil fertilization but much more effectively through the predigested feces of its Pameridea partners. I think the definition of true carnivorous plants (that is, trapping of prey, digestion of prey by proteolytic enzymes, and absorbing the nutrients) should include the passive digestion by true symbiosis, as long as the nutrients are absorbed."

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