Carnivorous Plants

• Learn to Grow Carnivorous Plants
• Learn to Identify Carnivorous Plants
• Become an Expert, Follow a Passion, Build a Collection, Start a Nursery
• 100 hour, self paced course

These fascinating plants provide inspiration and fascination for the enthusiast. This course covers a wide range of cultivated carnivorous plant genera and species. 

Carnivorous plants are unique.  They don’t appeal to everyone; but they often capture the imagination of people who are not necessarily interested in other types of plants.

Lesson Structure

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction
   • Introduction to carnivorous plants
   • Recognising differences around the worls
   • Plant names
   • Monocotyledons and dicotyledons
   • Plant families
   • Classification of carnivorous plants
   • Review of plant families that carnivorous plants belong to
   • Types of trapping mechanisms
   • Resources and networking
   • Using a botanical key
   • Glossary
2. Culture
   • Introduction
   • Planting
   • Soils
   • Plant nutrition
   • Watering
   • Plant health
   • Compost making
3. Propagation and Container Growing.
   • Propagating carnivorous plants
   • Collecting from the wild
   • Methods of propagation
   • Tissue culture
4. Pitchers (Nepenthes) and Sundews (Drosera)
5. Other Important Groups - (e.g. Bladderworts).
6. Lesser Grown Varieties of Carnivorous Plants
7. Australian Droseras
8. Growing and Using Carnivorous Plants
   • -in containers, in the ground, as indoor plants.
9. Special Assignment

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Identify different carnivorous plants.
• Describe the cultural requirements for a range of different carnivorous plants
• Propagate a range of different carnivorous plants
• Discuss the identifying characteristics and cultural requirements of several species of both Sundews and Pitcher plants.
• Discuss the identifying characteristics and cultural requirements of several species of both Bladderworts and at least one other genus of Carnivorous plant.
• Describe the identifying characteristics and cultural requirements of several species of less commonly cultivated carnivorous plants.
• Describe the identification and culture of Australian Droseras in depth.
• Determine and describe appropriate ways of cultivating and displaying cultured carnivorous plants.
• Describe one group of carnivorous plants in depth.

Anyone who chooses to undertake this course is obviously interested in carnivorous plants; probably either as an amateur collector, a commercial grower or a naturalist.

Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or all of their nutrients by capturing and digesting small animals, such as insects.  Other terms used for carnivorous plants are a “carnivory” or a “carnivore”.   The mechanisms used to capture and digest animals are generally subtle; but not always.   Characteristics that are unique to carnivorous plants include:

• Attraction Mechanisms eg. Lures, odours, directional guides
• Trapping Mechanisms   eg. Sticky secretions that hold animals like fly paper, trap door like openings to digestive chambers.
• Digestive Mechanisms  eg. Secreted enzymes and absorption of digested material.

Dionaea musipula	Drosera capensis Red Form	Sarracenia psittacina x Red Veins	Nepenthes

What Do You Know about Drosera?

"Drosera" is a common genus of carnivorous plants occurring naturally throughout a wide part of the world. Droseras are particularly common in the southern hemisphere, including Australia.

Commonly known as "sundews" or "daily dews", there are approximately 100 species known.
Leaves are alternately arranged up the stem, or occasionally whorled in basal rosettes. Red to green coloured hairs have glands on the tips which carry a sticky substance which holds insects on the plant. These hairs are able to very slowly change direction to strengthen the plant's grip on a struggling insect. Flowers are small and either white, pink or purple; normally with 5 petals but occasionally 4 or 6 to 8.

Droseras can be propagated by root cuttings, seed or division.

Droseras from outside Australia are mainly plants from swampy areas. In Australia, this is different. Australian species occur in a wide variety of areas including very dry parts of South Western Australia where they very often die back to an underground rootstock over the hot dry summer to re emerge in autumn.

There are four main types of Drosera:
1. ROSETTE FORMING - Leaves form as a flat rosette (arranged in a circle around the stem at ground level), usually hugging the ground.
2. CLIMBERS - These attach themselves to other plants for support.
3. ERECT PLANTS - Upright stems stand on their own, though they may also have the ability to attach themselves to other plants.
4. FAN LEAVED - The leaf margins are obovate, reniform or flabellate and can roll inwards to form a more or less conical shape. These may have erect or semi erect stems not relying on nearby foliage for support.

FREQUENT QUESTIONS

Why Choose This Course

• Unique course materials (developed by our staff) and more current than some colleges (many reviewed annually); as a result, ACS graduates can be more up to date.
• We work hard to help you understand and remember it, develop an ability to apply it in the real world, and build networks with others who work in this field (It’s more than just serving up a collection of information –if all you want is information, buy a book; but if you want an education, that takes learning to a whole new level).
• Start whenever you want, study at your own pace, study anywhere
• Don’t waste time and money traveling classes
• We provide more choices–courses are written to allow you more options to focus on parts of the subject that are of more interest to you; a huge range of elective subjects are offered that don’t exist elsewhere.
• Tutors are accessible (more than elsewhere) – academics work in both the UK and Australia, 5 days a week, 16 hours a day. Answering emails and phone calls from students are top priority.
• We treat students as individuals –don’t get lost in a crowd. Our tutors communicate with you one to one.
• Extra help at no extra cost if needed. When you find something you cannot do, we help you through it or will provide another option.
• Support after you finish a course –We can advise about getting work, starting  business, writing a CV, etc. We can promote students and their businesses through our extensive profile on the internet. Graduates who ask will be helped.
• Support from a team of a dozen professional horticulturists, living in different parts of the UK, and in both temperate and tropical climate zones of Australia.

About ACS

ACS was started in 1979 by John Mason, who at the time was a gardening author, horticultural consultant and lecturer in horticulture at several colleges across Melbourne (in Australia).  Over the summer that year John discovered that there were thousands of applicants going to be turned away from horticulture courses at Burnley Horticultural College (now Melbourne University). There were simply too few courses being offered for the number of people wanting to study horticulture in Australia. This situation prompted a move to establish a correspondence course at Burnley; but after months of unsuccessful lobbying for support from government; John wrote a course, and with help from a colleague at Council of Adult Education, marketed it.

Standards were originally set in line with what were seen to be the standards of Australia's top horticultural college; and over the years, those standards have never been reduced. This makes our courses longer and more demanding than some other colleges; but it has also led to us building a credibility that stands tall in the horticulture industry across the world. 

In the early 1990's John started visiting the UK and becoming involved with the horticulture industry there. Around the mid 1990's ACS began offering RHS courses, and in 2003, John was formally recognised for his contribution to British Horticulture by being made a fellow of the Institute of Horticulture. ACS, as a school, established an office and staff in the UK in 2001, and has expanded considerably since then. Today it is formally affiliated with five other colleges in the UK (including Warwickshire College); all of who license and deliver ACS courses. 

A team of leading horticulturists work for the school's horticulture department, including 12 faculty members in both the UK and Australia

How You Study

• As soon as you enroll, we send an email to explain it all.
• We direct you to a short orientation video (downloadable over the internet) to watch, where our principal introduces you to how the course works, and how you can access all sorts of support services
• You are either given a code to access your course online, or sent out a CD or course materials through the mail (or by courier).
• Work through lessons one by one, each lesson typically having four parts:
  • An aim -which tells you what you should be achieving in the lesson
  • Reading -notes written and regularly revised by our academic staff
  • Set Task(s) -These are practicals, research or other experiential learning tasks that strengthen and add to what you have been reading
  • Assignment -By answering questions, submitting them to a tutor, then getting feedback from the tutor, you confirm that you are on the right track, but more than that, you are guided to consider what you have been studying in different ways, broadening your perspective and reinforcing what you are learning about
  • Other - Your work in a course rarely stops at just the above four parts. Different courses and different students will need further learning experiences. Your set task or assignment may lead to other things, interacting with tutors or people in industry, reviewing additional reference materials or something else. We treat every student as an individual and supplement their learning needs as the occasion requires.
• We provide access to and encourage you to use a range of supplementary services including an online student room, including online library; student bookshop, newsletters, social media etc.
• We provide a "student manual", that is a quick solution to most problems that might occur

Recognition

• ACS has a highly respected international profile: by employers and academics alike. People are more aware of us than many other distance education schools –just do a search for “horticulture distance education courses” and see what comes up on the internet; or search for ACS Distance education on Facebook or Linked in, and see how many connections we have compared to other colleges.
• Recognised by International Accreditation and Recognition Council
• ACS has been educating people around the world since 1979
• Over 100,000 have now studied ACS courses, across more than 150 countries
• Formal affiliations with colleges in five countries
• A faculty of over 40 internationally renowned academics –books written by our staff used by universities and colleges around the world.

Extra Books or Reference Materials

• The course provides you with everything that you need to complete it successfully.
• Assignments may ask you to look for extra information (eg. by contacting nurseries, visiting gardens or searching the internet), but our school's resources and tutors are always available as a back up. If you hit a "roadblock", we can quickly send you additional information or provide expert advice over the phone or email; to keep you moving in your studies.
• Some students choose to buy additional references, to take their learning beyond what is essential for the course. If a student wants to buy books, we operate an online bookshop offering ebooks written by staff at the school. Student discounts are available if you are studying with us. The range of e books available is being expanded rapidly, with at least one new ebook being written and published by our staff every month. See www.acsebook.com

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