Expert: Sarracenia Northwest - 11/30/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hi! Is it normal for a venus flytrap to close all it's traps by itself when entering dormancy?

ANSWER: Hi Victor,

Depending on temperatures, the traps can be partially or totally closed.  When it's cold they tend to trigger very slowly, or not at all.  In a day or two we will have our December podcast out, and you can see what our flytraps look like this time of year in the Pacific Northwest.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hey! My venus flytraps are in my cool garage that has temperatures from 20-45 egress and gets some indirect sunlight. The traps from my smaller venus flytrap have all been closed for more than a week and I'm pretty sure they didn't catch anything. The traps of my bigger plant are all opened. When closed a trap with a toothpick it closed in one second but I had to trigger 5 hairs before it closed. What do you make of all this?

Answer
Hi Victor,

Here's my take on this situation.  Over the years of teaching people to grow carnivorous plants (around 20 years now) I've found a strange thing that happens that doesn't tend to happen with other types of gardening.  Because these plants capture insects for their fertilizer, people tend to what to treat them like animals, kind of like having a pet lizard.  This also leads to people having very unrealistic expectations of their plants, expectations they would never have of other kinds of plants.  I remember one time I had a lady return a Nepenthes sanguinea to me because it didn't catch enough ants in the house.  I told her it was a good sugar-ant catcher, but in her view it didn't catch enough, so it wasn't any good.  This is a little like someone buying a flowering plant at a garden center, and the salesperson says it has a pretty flower, but the person returns it because it wasn't pretty enough.  You don't hear of that happening much.

I say all this Victor, because you're doing a little of this now with your Venus flytrap.  Venus Flytraps are North American natives and really shouldn't be growing or active this time of year.  Your expecting your plant to behave like it's summer, but the plant is dormant.  Would you go outside this time of year and smack a Cherry tree on the trunk and say, "Why don't you have cherries?  Your a Cherry tree aren't you?"  That's kind of what's happening to your Venus Flytrap.  Cherry trees aren't supposed to have fruit in the winter, and Venus Flytraps are not supposed to be growing in the winter either.  

Just let your plant rest, check it every so often to make sure you don't have mold issues, and keep the soil just damp.  When spring arrives, make sure it has a decent sized pot, a nice sunny spot outside, and you'll be amazed at what it really can do.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com