Trapped: Carnivorous plant business opening in Half Moon Bay

Predatory Plants will celebrate a grand opening in late October — the shop will offer a variety of family-friendly activities and events from Oct. 26 to Nov. 4 — and Brown has big plans for the space and his business moving forward.

“Business is excellent and it’s been expanding incredibly quickly,” he said, adding that interest in carnivorous plants is also growing around the country, especially with young people.

Brown breeds the plants himself, mostly at a nursery in San Francisco, but increasingly he’ll be growing them behind his new Half Moon Bay store, where he has access to some 17,000 square feet of greenhouse space.

He currently employs four people full time and hires additional contractors seasonally to help out.

One of Brown’s top sellers is the cape sundew carnivorous plant, and he’ll sell thousands of them in a year. Those plants have brightly colored tentacles covered in a sticky substance that traps insects mostly. Once prey is stuck, those tentacles wrap around it and smother it within minutes.

Venus fly traps are also popular and have been cultivated longer than any carnivorous plant, he said. But the nepenthes — known as tropical pitcher plants — are Brown’s specialty, and he’s the largest producer of those plants from seed in the nation.

Nepenthes’ leaves — the trap — are pitcher-shaped vessels filled with digestive fluid. The trap has a lid on top that is coated in nectar, and prey usually enter the trap looking to eat that nectar. They then slip and fall and eventually drown in the digestive fluid. It’s almost impossible to escape because the interior of the pitcher is so slippery.

Whatever enters the trap eventually drowns, and nepenthes absorb nutrients from their prey through glands at the bottom of the pitcher.

Nepenthes typically eat insects and are especially skilled at catching hordes of ants, Brown said. They also sometimes consume mammals.

One of Brown’s nepenthes once caught a 9-inch rat and turned it into soup. The trap is also incredibly thick-skinned, ostensibly too thick for that rat to claw its way out.

The nepenthes are hard to breed, Brown said; they typically take four to 10 years to flower and he won’t be able to sell them for another two to three years after that.

“I’ve spent the last five years obsessively breeding and figuring out the process and I’m only now beginning to release the first crosses from five years ago,” he said.

Brown is strongly against cultivating carnivorous plants from the wild and said two species of napenthes have become extinct because of poaching. The plants are now protected and there are serious penalties for those who poach them.

Carnivorous plants can live indefinitely under the right conditions. Brown sells smaller ones for about $20 and, within a year or two, those same plants can grow so much that they triple in value.

“Even if you begin with entry-level plants, unlike coin or stamp collecting, if you are successful growing them, they accrue value. You could take a cutting of [a plant], grow that out, trade it to someone else for a plant you’re coveting and your collection just grew and it didn’t shrink,” he said. “It’s like if you’re into baseball cards and your baseball cards made more baseball cards over time. It’s a hobby that pays you.”

Brown bought his first carnivorous plants more than 20 years ago for a science fair project in middle school, in which he fed them tofu — they loved it — and he’s still selling descendants of those same plants today. Brown’s fascination for carnivorous plants has never wavered since then, and he’s remained focused on those plants specifically.

“It’s a narrow, but deep passion,” he said.

Brown launched his business in 2008, and left a lucrative job at Microsoft to start it.

Predatory Plants has relied almost entirely on online sales until he opened the Half Moon Bay location, which is currently open from Friday to Sunday, but hours will expand with the grand opening in October as will inventory.

The plan is to eventually set up permanent installations in the store offering a glimpse of these plants in their natural habitat and in a home, and an adjoining space will regularly host carnivorous plant-related classes.

Brown said upkeep for these plants is “pretty easy.” He advises customers to give them distilled water — salty water can kill them — and they also appreciate humid air and plenty of bright light. Most carnivorous plants emit almost no odors and if they do, it’s a pleasant smell, like roses, he said, though napenthes’ flowers smell like Fritos chips. Another common misconception is that people sometimes think these plants have died and throw them away when they’re just dormant — for about three months each year the plants appear dead, but are simply resting.

Brown and his staff are always happy to share their knowledge and passion for carnivorous plants with customers in person, and he’s posted plenty of informational videos on his website and social media for aspiring and experienced hobbyists alike.

“We like to use the Pokemon analogy — that they are these highly collectible charming, charismatic things with a lot of personality and they all look different and there’s this collector’s mentality where you gotta catch them all,” Brown said. “They’re so rewarding and incredibly complex and rare beautiful plants that you can just have.”

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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