posted 10 years ago
Lovely pictures and videos.
Here are some brainstorms on how to use these plants:
- There's the obvious step of using them instead of flypaper in sensitive areas, like milking stalls or outdoor dining areas.
- The pitchers tend to fall over when they get too full - either of bugs or of water. Sort of an instant-mulching process. If you have a lot of flies, you may need multiple plantings and a place to take the full pitchers.
- The Oregon native cobra plants require fairly cold water, and can thrive in low-nutrient boggy soils. Not as easy to cultivate indoors, or on a sunny kitchen windowsill, as you might hope.
In the edges of their range, they may be a great indicator plant for year-round springs or bogs.
(Be careful about altering their terrain to take advantage of that water, because some species are endangered, and also it's easy to block up springs with careless alterations.)
- The water-collecting pitchers might be an interesting addition to rainforest living-roof systems, to slow down and distribute rainfall. They could also make good water-collection systems except that they tend to grow where water is so abundant that collecting it is sort of beside the point.
- The water-collecting pitchers seem like a highly effective natural funnel. Do we need to funnel anything with a small-to-medium, disposable funnel, and we don't care if it gets some nectar or digestive acids in it?
Maybe a pee-separator or ladies' standup outdoor toilet?
(CHECK the plant data for dangerous chemistry first - these plants have some wicked evolutionary talents.)
- Many other plants have similar hairy leaves like hawkweed, even violets. These plants can be good first colonizers of nitrogen-deprived areas either due to topsoil removal/erosion, or due to leaching of nutrients in very rainy areas. Some of these plants, like violets, are also edible. Hairy leaves and insect-attracting abilities could be good traits to consider in planting alongside legumes for first-stage recovery of poor soils.
- It could be fun to try combinations of pitcher-plants and mushrooms that tend to serve as breeding grounds for insects.
- Their translucent light-windows are very cool. I wonder about using them to grow algae, or mimicking that thin cellular 'window' for our own dwellings and greenhouses.
-Erica