Human Blood Nutritious For My Plants?

[w22]

Using a Lancet, would it be nutritional for my Venus Flytrap's?

[Alexis]

It should be. But a lot less nutrition than a whole insect or small vertebrate.

[w22]

COol! TY. ;D

[prized]

Why does you should do that? Try with something else like reptiles food, or fish food (with just 1 or 2 water drop)... Human blood would be the last experiment in my opinion But i think you could also avoid it..

[taz6122]

Hmmm, must be a cutter!

[Myles]

eek! spare ur blood n grow some fruitflies

[peterhewitt]

Mar 10, 2011 21:25:00 GMT w22 said:

Using a Lancet, would it be nutritional for my Venus Flytrap's?

Urea is a nitrogen source found in blood, before filtering from the kidneys. If your Kidneys are functioning properly, there should be very low levels of Urea in the blood. So, If you are healthy your blood will have no positive effect on any carnivorous plant.
If you were Kieth Richards, I'd say go right ahead!

BTW Urea is frequently used as a fertilizer and an additive to fertilizers. The source...... Horse Pee!!

[Apoplast]

peterhewitt - While I agree that blood is likely a less than ideal source of nutrients for CP's, I suspect it is not low N content that is the issue. Certainly Dionaea is capable of acquiring N from protein sources, of which blood is a rich source. Similar to urea, in organic production blood meal is used as a fertilizer (though in this case microbial action is required to generate the enzymes to convert the protein into useable forms for plant uptake).

On the topic of urea, it is true urea is the main N-containing waste compound in mammal "pee". But, this is certainly not the primary source for the urea used in agriculture. Urea was one of the first bio-molecules synthesized from inorganic precursors. The urea in agricultural fertilizers is just another fine product brought to you by the petrochemical industry.

[peterhewitt]

Since I live in Africa, Mammal Urea is still used in many agricultural practices, because it is free. Rural locals rarely purchase fertilizer products. I am also Aware that Dionaea can Synthesize Nitrogen from a protein source, but they most likely lack the mechanisms to accomplish this on a large scale. My plants frequently catch small lizards, some of them quite small enough for a Dionaea trap, but they always rot quite quickly. It looks to me like the plants are simply unable to deal with this much protein.

[Apoplast]

Well that certainly sounds like a more sustainable source of urea. And I can imagine an elephant provides a lot of it.

[krakatoa]

OK - I have to weigh in on this one - years ago (many, many years ago) when I was out working on my plants, I gashed my finger open pretty bad moving 2x4's for staging and I looked over, saw my pot of flytraps, looked down at my bloody finger, and thought 'what the hell' and stuck my finger in the largest trap, making sure there was blood inside of it, there was, it closed, I washed up and thought nothing of it - the next day, the trap was wide open and black from dried up blood ( no additional stimuli to keep trap closed )- later on I noticed it had caught something, and when it opened back up, there was a fat fly carcass in there, and with the exception of blood that dried on the outside of the trap - the inside was clean! There was NO big difference in growth, however, I'm glad the fly in question didn't get away with my DNA....way too Cronenberg for me!