Expert: Christopher Littrell - 8/20/2007

Question
Mr. Littrell,
   I bought a Red Dragon type of Venus Flytrap from Sarracenia Northwest,
and when i went on a vacation, i came back to see it in a very sad state (it
rained more than i thought, and got water logged, but that isnt important) it
was a close call, but it has started to recover. Now, my question is which
would do more harm, letting it go into dormancy and rest for the winter, or
take it inside for a month or so, to let it build up strength, then try and tease
it into dormancy by putting it by a cold window or something. It lost all its
traps, and like i said, its only just making them now, and we have maybe a
month before the plants will start thinking about shutting down.

Answer
Hello Carl,

Sorry to hear about your Red Dragon. I am glad to hear that it is recovering.

Either method would work, however, since winter is coming, it would likely do less harm to just leave the plant where it is and let nature take it's course. It will probably recover well enough in a month so long as root rot was not occurring. Since new leaves are growing in, that seems to indicate that the plant merely needed oxygen, so the waterlogging was keeping it's roots from breathing.

If you did bring it indoors and simulate dormancy, you would have to deal with keeping the plant from going dormant by supplementing window light with florescent light for at least 12 hours a day and slowly reducing the photoperiod of artificial light by an hour a week when you wanted to simulate fall. The problem with this method, as I can attest to since I actually have to grow my Flytraps indoors for now till I get a better setup, is that they will actually be weaker and slower growing than outdoors plants. I would even go so far as to say that your Red Dragon, even after waterlogging, is probably a lot healthier than my Flytraps right now simply because it gets full sun.

Best bet is just to keep it outdoors where it is and see what happens. I would bet that your Red Dragon will surprise us with how resiliant it is.

Keep up the good care for your Red Dragon,

Christopher