Carnivorous Plants Take Root In Morganton

MORGANTON, N.C.,None — Most little boys grow up with a fascination for the supernatural, but one Burke County native took his passion to another level when he decided to stop reading about it and experience it.

David Mull, 59, a Morganton native, boasts an impressive collection of rare carnivorous plants and said his love of plants all came from a supernatural movie he saw as a child.

"It goes back to when I was very young and there was a movie called ‘Day of the Triffids' and during a meteor shower these seeds came, and they grew up and they killed people," Mull said. "And I saw that movie when I was about 10 or 11 and that fascinated me."

Mull said his fascination grew into respect when realized what these rare creatures were capable of.

"It just fascinated me that there were plants that had the capability of attracting, capturing, devouring and absorbing the nutrition from an insect," Mull said. "That is a fairly bizarre concept, and it's amazing how they all have different ways of capturing insects, you know, some are sticky and hold the insect, and some fall down in a trap and the Venus fly trap closes on them like a bear trap."

Mull said he made some mistakes as a youngster by trying to grow plants in the wrong environment.

"I had some collections when I was young, but I didn't know how to take care of the plants when I was young, and I kept them in my bedroom," Mull said. "Everybody does something stupid like that because when you're little you don't know any better. These plants, especially Venus fly traps and pitcher plants, need sunshine. They want sunshine all day long. Put them in your bedroom, and they are going to die."

Mull said he began collecting seriously about 20 years ago and now boasts an impressive collection that he grew from only seeds. He said he originally got started by trading with other collectors, but over time he has managed to grow most of his plants on his own. He cultivates different species of carnivorous plants, such as Venus fly traps, sundew plants and pitcher plants, just to name a few.

"Someone might have a plant I'd like to have, and I may have a plant they'd like to have, and we would swap, and that is how I go an awful lot of my collection now," Mull said. "Then I learned how to propagate or multiply them and it just got bigger."

He said plant propagation can be tricky for a new plant enthusiast but over time he got the hang of it by reading books and talking with other enthusiasts.

"Different plants have different ways of propagating them, but almost all of them reproduce by seeds," Mull said. "Even with the seeds it's different, but with all of the carnivorous plants I have to put the seeds on top of the ground, you don't bury them, because they don't have enough energy to push through the ground. All these things take a lot of time, so you can see why when you're first starting out you may not know how to do all of this."

Mull said pitcher plants were even more difficult to cultivate and grow because of the intensive process he has to go through with their seeds.

"The pitcher plant seeds have to be kept in the refrigerator in water all winter long because they have to stay cold," Mull said.

He said the seeds have to be kept cold during the winter so the seeds will know it is still winter out, and they don't need to sprout. He said sometimes the seeds will get "confused" and sprout too early, so he keeps them in the refrigerator until it's time for them to sprout and then he puts them out to bloom.

"I've heard all kinds of things, but I know how I do mine and that seems to work best," Mull said. "Plus bacteria and mold could attack them if they don't stay good and cold through the winter."

He said that with his collecting comes a lot of myths about what can be done with plants, how they can be collected and what they can be used for.

Mull said the myth about collecting plants was one that he found particularly aggravating because what he does actually helps increase the population of some endangered species of plants.

"One of the myths is that there is a difference between cultivation and on-site collecting, and I guess when people see my plants they think they were collected on site, but it is against the law to collect these plants in that manner," Mull said. "You can't go where these plants are growing and dig them up and collect them or sell them, because most of them are rare or endangered. The best thing in the world for these plants is to cultivate them and to raise them, which is what I do."

Mull said it is illegal to collect pitcher plants or Venus fly traps from the wild, but it is not illegal to raise them and cultivate them.

Another myth Mull said he was not fond of was that these carnivorous plants would help cut down on the insect population if you collect them. He says it has quite the opposite effect.

"Some people think that if you have a Venus fly trap or a pitcher plant that it will do something about the insect population around them, but they do not decrease the insect population," Mull said. "These plants have to have a wet environment. Insects love wet environments, mosquitoes love wet environments, so you are probably going to have more insects. They will catch a lot of mosquitoes and a lot of insects but they won't catch all of them."

Mull said the rate at which these plants catch insects would also make it almost impossible for them to actually help decrease the insect population around your home.

"People want to buy a Venus fly trap to put in their house to help get rid of their fly problem, but Venus fly traps, if they are real lucky, catch about one bug a week," Mull said. "Once that trap closes it'll take about a week before it can catch another insect. The reason why most people collect these is because they are fascinating, but if someone wants to get rid of their fly or insect problem they should probably find another way to do that."

Mull said carnivorous plants grow in soil that is poor in nutrients, and poor in nitrogen and have developed a way over the years to supplement their diet. He said a lot of the time people find it amusing to put things in the mouth of the Venus fly trap to watch it close, but according to him this is a very "stressful" thing for the plant.

"If you see a Venus fly trap in a greenhouse or in someone's collection, it's sitting there waiting to get a meal, and if you stick your finger in there and make it close you burn up a lot of its energy," Mull said. "The outside walls, the cell walls, of the trap grow instantly. When the cells grow it makes it close. And then to open up it does the opposite, the cell walls grow inside and make it open."

Mull said these types of plant need a lot of attention because of how much moisture they need regularly and the amount of sunlight they crave.

"If anyone obtains one, no matter where you get it, they need to be put in a pot and out in the sun because that's where they are going to be the happiest," Mull said. "These plants also have to stay pretty wet. They need to be sitting in water; they want their feet wet all the time."

He said leaving these plants out of water for even a day could cause them to parish, sometimes, he said, it could even less time.

"You shouldn't even take the plant out of the water for even a few minutes, because you might forget it and it'll die," Mull said. "I know someone who lost their whole collection like that. They had them in a pond and they took them all out of it, and they didn't get them back in on time and they lost their entire collection."

Mull said he had just recently discovered that Burke County has a species of sundew plant that grows and flourishes.

"There is one kind of sundew that I saw growing in Burke County called the Rotunda Folia and it's another plant that likes cold weather, it is mostly found in Canada, and it is really hard to keep that plant," Mull said. "I don't have any of those because of how hard it is to keep them but it is the only sundew or pitcher plant I've seen growing in Burke County."

Mull said tending to these types of plants is very time consuming, and he rarely leaves for any extended period of time because of how quickly they could parish without the proper attention.

"I don't leave my house for any length of time, but I guess if I decided to I'd have to have a babysitter," Mull said. "Because I could probably do enough to make sure they were OK for a little while but I wouldn't want to take the chance."

Mull said even though tending to the plants took a lot of work and time when he woke up in the morning and saw what he had made it made it all worth it.

"I love getting to see all of this spectacle everyday when I wake up," Mull said. "When I was little I never dreamed I'd have a collection like this. I saw pictures in books of these types of plants and I just wondered what it would be like to have plants like these, I never dreamed I'd even see some of these plants and now I raise them. It was a dream and now it's real."

WSOC