Venus flytrap care
The world of carnivorous plants consists of exotic flesh-eating plants that will peak anyone’s curiosity. The large family of 645 registered species are grown all over the world in diverse environments and come in different shapes and sizes. They are the Startrekkers of the earth. They grow where no other plant can grow. Carnivorous plants grow where nutrients are very low and therefore have evolved into flesh eating plants consuming insects and other animals for their food supply. Each species has a unique way of attracting and trapping its victims.
Venus fly trap (Dionaea muscipula) is one the popular snap trap species from this large family. This intriguing novelty grows only in the boggy coastal areas of North and South. Carolina and yet it is known all over the world. This plant grows in a rosette form and develops snap traps that get 1-1 1/2 inch long with sharp teeth and bristle sensor hairs inside each trap. In the spring it sends out a flower stalk with a cluster of small white flowers.
Emerging flower heads should be pinched off to conserve energy for plant growth.
Care
In order to grow a Venus Fly trap you must know what kind of environment it requires. It does well in an open terrarium where humidity and moisture can be controlled.
It needs wet, acidic (ph 3.9-4.8) soil, humid air (min 50%) and temperatures ranging from 55-80F degrees. Plant the tuberous perennial in 50% peat and sand or 100% sphagnum moss. Be sure to always keep the plant moist and never let it dry out. You can flood or soak the soil but then drain it so it doesn’t get water logged. When watering, use distilled or clean rainwater. Keep it in 1/2 day full sun and 50% shade in spring to fall with increased shade in summer. Don’t need to fertilize, for the most part they will feed themselves.
How the traps feed
The traps have 6 sensor hairs inside. If 1 hair is touched twice or 2 hairs are touched simultaneously the trap starts to partially close to determine if the object is edible. As the insect struggles to free itself more hairs are triggered causing the trap squeezes tighter then closing all the way releasing acidic enzymes to digest the insect. This process can take 5-12 days. If the trap is triggered by something else then it will reopen within 12 hours. Each trap can take 2-3 insects and then dies. Dying leaves and traps are part of the growing cycle and should be trimmed off.
Winter dormancy
VFT requires a 3-4 month dormant period. It should be dusted with a fungicide, wrapped in slightly moist spagnum moss and stored in a plastic bag. Keep it at 45-50F degrees. At this time it may loose all its leaves and die back. Trim any blackened foliage to avoid disease. Bring it out in March/April and repot in fresh meduim mix, place it in a bright light, humid area and water.
Be sure your Vft has been propagated vegetatively from clump division, leaf cuttings, tissue culture or started from seed and not removed from the wild as this species is threatened by extinction.
http://hortchat.com/info/how-to-choose-a-venus-flytrap-plant-to-buy
i cut one of my stems off thinking it was dying n have several small stems growing around it. Did i mess ip by cutting the stem n do the ones growing around the plant turn into traps?
I have a baby b 52 vft and recently when it was outside soaking up some sun a squirrel came up and started poking at it, it was ok for a few days but then I noticed a lot of the leaves started turning black but there are still some nice healthy ones there and I’m still a novice to growing vft’s as I have a total of 4 all together I’m very worried that my baby might die please help!!!
trap dying after feeding
My planets are dieting right after thay ate some thing like a ant fly ladybug red
Aphids or fungus gnats
Hi there, I’ve had my VFT for about 3 years. It has been very healthy (has divided into 9 plants) till now. I have noticed some of the trap ‘tips’ that clasp together when trap shuts are curling. On one particular plant the curling is so bad that it is very deformed and the traps are curling as well. Any ideas? Also, the peat soil has an infestation of minute white ‘hopper’ like insects. How will I get rid of these. Thanks a lot.
My husband brought home a VFT about a week ago. This morning my 8month old son crawled to the kitchen window ledge and ate one of the heads? Can this hurt him? I haven’t been able to find any info on whether it will make him sick…..
hello,ive got 3 venus fly traps,2 sundews and a pitcher plant all in the same enclosed globe terrarium.saw almost a cloud form in it in 2 days.my questions are how often should i open the terrarium for fresh oxigen?all those plants ok to be in the same terrarium?and a flower about 8 inches of stalk with 1 flower of the 6 buds is starting to blume.they say to cut it off with 2-4 inches.guess im beyond that point.can i still cut it?are the seeds that can be replanted the buds or do they come off the plant itself?thank you..look forward to getting some answers as i did not see them from the q&a listed.
I just bout a vft and it looks healthy, but it is not eating or closing shut when touched. What does this mean? Is it too young to be closing shut?
Feeding
Just got a venus fly trap. I was wondering how will feeding the plant kill it as it said in one of the coments above. The box that mine came in said that I could feed it. I would like to be educated on this matter. Thank you.
3 things, when my vft died i saw white splotches on the dead ones, and 2 i see small black bugs that are not in my house but on my fly trap. and 3 you said that it takes about 5-12 days to digest the fly but my vft has been closed for 2 1/2 weeks what do i do and is there a way to tell if they ate a fly or not?
i recently got my fly trap ~and i always kill plants how do i keep it a live~its snows and becaomes – degrees here very often and its dying i think what do i do?~~its outside is becoming a light transparent yellow seeing the inside and the tips r dying help
my venus fly trap already grow a flower and i am 10 years old
i just got my first vft today.it is small,it came in a pot with a cover on it, i took the cover off of it and filled the cover with tap water that has been sitting out for a week this is what i water all my plants with. the directions said to give it a lot of light but not full sun on here it said at least 4 hrs full sun what should i do?also i plan to keep the plant inside ,you say not to feed the plant, but if there is no flies in the house how will the plant eat?should i put it outside so it can eat?it is over 90 degrees here right now being it is summer.tomorrow it will be 100 to 105.isn’t this to hot for it to be outside?
Aphids
my VTF has aphids that I am treating, but it also seems to have little blister like bubbles forming on the leafe stalks. Might this be a fungus or a result of the aphid infestation? If it’s a sickness, any reccomendations on what product to get from the store for treatment? Thanks!!
so is ok or not to take out the plastic liner to give it more room to grow?
our vft when we first bought it was healthy with the head of the plant had a nice pinkish tinge to it. Now however it is fully extended and is completely green with no pink tinge to it. Otherwise it seems to be doing fine. Is this normal.
Do not feed your traps, they will get enough food on their own, one bug a month is good. Put them outside in full sun sitting in a tray of distilled water and let them do their thing. Hand feeding kills the trap and they only close three times and then the trap dies. Your taking energy from the plant everytime it closes. Research flytrap care at cobraplant.com, let the plant feed itself your killing it.
I just bought a venus fly trap. It is very small, when will it start eating. I have had it for four days and nothing?
yah i just bought a fly trap at a museum and its mouth will not close fully when i try 2 feed it. is there something wrong wiith that?
Traps turn black
Hello I have a VFT and have seen some rather large but not bigger than the trap leaves spiders go be eaten by my traps but after a couple of days of digestion my traps leaves start turning black and dry from the outside why is this happening?
Hi,
Having read the previous posts/replies, i think it’s too late for my VFT but I thought it was worth a post anyway.
The plant has been doing really well for 7-9months since getting it and when it started to produce it’s first flowering stem I was really happy.
However, yesterday the plant would not close on a pasisng fly so I wondered if a floweriing plant didn’t trap things that might be pollinating it, which lead me to this form, and I now see that it cold be the end of the road for my VFT afterall – is there anything that can be done to save it or is it time to get another one?
D
Venus fly trap dormancy
i bought my vft a couple of months ago and it was doing alright, until the start of december, when the leaves started dying leaving only 3-4 traps left. at first i thought it was becoming dormant like it should do in the winter, but it kept growing new shoots, which were tiny(1.5cm leaf and 0.3cm head) and only had 2 full sized traps. i fed it once, and it was closed for about a day, then re-opened, leaving a totally untouched, but very dead fly, i checked and the insect was totally intact and wasn’t hollow, so it hadn’t been digested, since then it has kept growing tiny new shoots and moss has growing in the surrounding soil. just yesterday i found a blue lump in the soil, when i viewed it under a microscope(about 30x magnification) i saw 4-5 tiny white worm-like creatures crawling around it. what the hell is happening to my plant??!!!!?!?!?!?!!!
and btw, tara, those little green plants in the soil are probably some species of moss.
I got my VFT around 6 months ago and it has been healthy and thriving. However, lately I’ve been noticing some little (like .5 cm) green plants on the surrounding soil. Any ideas of what these are?
Dormancy
hello there, so When you grow Venus flytraps in the winter, i dont get the part about dusting it with fungicide?
thanks for the detailed info on VTF! we just bought a fly trap, yet to find the name. it has long tubular leafs standing vertical, with one flap at the top tip.
it actually sounds like you may have a saracenia (american picture plant)
I just bought a VFT, it’s small and looks young, i’d like to re-plant it to give it more room to grow but should i wait to re-plant until next spring since it’s already August?
hello, i am in the army deployed to baghdad, iraq and i have just got my 1st vft and i read the above QanA but nothing really was asked or said on my area or temp situation. 1st off it took 11 days for my plant to get here from michigan. then once it arrived two plants looked ok and were tall and green and one was small and black and one other one was small and green. my vft i believe is a starter one it is in a small square plastic case two inch wide by 4inch tall with a plastic top on it. can you give me some info on how to take care of it with me being in baghdad. also there is a thin plastic liner that is in the case with a half inch hole in the middle were the plants are growing thru should i take that out to give the plants more room or is it there for a reason. also it gets to be about 100-110 in the shade here. thank you for your help.
What should I do if my plant leaves are turning black?
i have flytraps, i live in southern cali. and have them in full sun and set in a bog enviorment, i use reverse osmosis treated water and fill a try on the bottom of the pot, when the tray is about dry i fill it back up, i don’t feed it i let it catch its own bugs and it is doing great no problems,
When I purchased my VFT from a local garden store, it came with a little tab in the soil that told me to water it frequently with distilled water & give it plenty of sunlight. So I’ve been watering it every day with a half a dixie cup of distilled water and letting it sit on a windowsill that gets plenty of sunlight. Several websites confirm this is good treatment, but some, like this one, suggest it should only be watered once a week, and not necessarily sit in direct sunlight. One morning I forgot to water the VFT, and when I came home the soil seemed disturbingly dry, which would seem to suggest it does need to be watered every day. I don’t know. The spoke it came with also suggests feeding it powdered milk if it’s not eating flies. Now, this is the time of year we start getting fruit flies in the house. I’ve sat there and watched fruit flies crawl into the traps, stay there for a good 30 seconds, and leave without triggering the feeding mechanism. Are they simply too small to trigger the hairs?
In other news, I went to water the plant this morning to discover that my cat had gotten up there somehow and eaten several of the traps. There are still about three remaining, although one of them looks ready to go black & die. Should I be worried about my cat? Should I be worried about the plant? There are two shoots that look ready to grow new heads, so I’m hoping it will regenerate itself. Oy vey.
Okay I bought my Venus flytrap about 6 days ago, and it has been doing great! It is eating a ladybug right now, and I have trimmed it, gave it plenty of water, and kept it under a light because it has been rainy down here, and there has been no sunlight. But I have comed worried about the humidity! I have nothing to put over it to have humidity, and I was wanting to know if just watering it good everyday will do fine? And I keep it inside, and hand feed it often, is handfeeding it ok, as long as the trap shuts by itself?
Thanks, Aaron
okay today i found the food for the venus fly trap i put it in the mouth and it won’t close i don’t get why it dosen’t it can you help me!
how can you tell if the Venus flytrap has a disease? please answer my question because i have mine and i want to take good care of it please?!
I’m in the same situation as courtney.. is there any other remedy of ridding my VFT of the whitefly infestation?. ive had it for nearly 3 years and a few months ago it just died off completely and keeps throwing up stems every few weeks. I know you would say it is dormant.. but it hasnt died off in previous winters for some reason.
i have 1 vft growing under the soil.. is that normal
I have been growing both venus flytraps and pitcher plants and have a large infestation of whiteflies on the pitcher plants and some on the flytraps. I have tried using isopropyl alcohol, but the plants are very sensitive to it and it caused damage where it touched the plant. How else could the whiteflies be controlled on carnivorous plants?
Two weeks ago I brought my fly trap out of winter dormancy after three months of being in the refrigerator and have just noticed some small bluish gray bugs walking around on the top of the soil. They really don�t look like aphids and seem to have no interest in the plant at all. Should I be worried? The plant is still growing back its first new traps of the year and I don’t want to stress the fragile plant by doing anything unnecessary. This is an indoor plant and I did not see them last year. Thanks
My VFT was doing well this past fall, when it has plenty of flies to feed on. We once saw it with 4 at a time and it started going down hill from there. Maybe it used too much energy? Now it is early spring and for several months now it grows a new shoot every week or two, but a “mouth” never develops – therefore it cannot eat (even though there are no flies now anyway). Should I be doing something different to help it grow or is this normal? Do they need to be repotted? Mine is in a tiny 2.5″ pot. Also, can we water it with tap water we have left sitting in a cup for a few days to allow the chlorine to vaporize?
a few days after eating, my fly trap leaf will start turning black starting from where fly is and extending to the rest of leaf. I cut away the leaf.
I recently bought a venus fly trap and some of the leaves are turning black. Is this a disease or are the leaves just old and dying? Alison
My Venus Flytrap is flowering and know I’ve learned that it will almost certainly kill it, but it’s producing new traps and seems healthy, so is it still in danger or is it possible that it will survive?
Also, I think of buying another one on the internet, but is it legal to ship plants from America to Europe and is it healthy for the plant?
- Camille
i have had a VFT for years, it gave me heaps of flowers and seeds, i never cut off the flowers, and never died from it!
having flowers for a plant is part of its natural process, i don’t know why it should be avoided! if your plant is healthy, you can keep the flowers.