Expert: Christopher Littrell - 6/30/2007

Question
hi Christopher
i am 15 and i live in Spain and I'm thinking of buying a typical Dionaea muscipula.
The temperature in summer is about:
85 Fahrenheit to 95 Fahrenheit.
And in winter about:
50 Fahrenheit to 70 Fahrenheit.
do you think this is a good climate to grow a Dionaea muscipula?
and i don't know how to say peat,moss,or sphagnum in Spanish the current pot is quite small so i want to change pot.
Could you help me find out??
thank you for your time
kind regards
Daiman

Answer
Hello Daiman,

The summer temperatures sound perfect. In winter, you will want to try to keep the plant close to the low 50s and even cooler in the 45 degree range if possible to make sure that it has a good deep dormancy. Venus Flytraps can go into a light dormancy in temperatures around 50-60 degrees, but constant temperature shifts might make the plant wake up early and expend energy flowering at the wrong time of year. Changing the pot would be a good idea if the pot is under 4 inches and the plant is making traps almost an inch long. Their roots usually go down about 4-5 inches, but some have gone down a whole foot, so a 5-6 inch pot would be good to give them room to grow. Just keep a water tray with no more than an inch of distilled, rain, or reverse osmosis water under the pot and keep the plant in a sunny place so it can get strong sunlight and watch it grow. Make sure none of the soil ingredients you use have any fertilizer in them or they will harm the plant. Their roots cannot take fertilizer anymore as they adapted to eat insects for fertilizer.

You can go to this webpage for a list of English-Spanish translations of different types of moss:

http://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=moss

I hope this helps you out. If you have any further questions, I and the other experts here will be happy to help you out.

Christopher