Expert: Christopher Littrell - 7/6/2007

Question
I was given a Venus Fly trap as a gift. my daughter got the thing from wall-mart 2 days a go. I have taken the lid off have not change the pot but what I did do was used an old large pickle gar as a make shift terrarium with gravel on the bottom with the pot on top the lid I keep off I did this for two reasons 1 I have cats and I did not want them eating it. 2 I thought it needed more humidity Now the problem is I used tap water that I let stand for 6 hours in a plastic bucket. the plant it self is not in the water it is sitting on the wet gravel have I doomed this poor thing or can I save it? It has some black on some of the leaves just and it came that way I do not play with it but I do move it from out doors to in doors at night. Help please?

Answer
Hello James,

The first thing to do is to dispel the myths about carnivorous plant care that even I heard when I first started off.

1.  Venus Flytraps do not really need high humidity, I keep mine in normal pots in open air and they do just fine. A terrarium is one of the worst places to put a Venus Flytrap as it increases the chances that mold and root infections will take hold and the plant cannot receive the full sun that it needs to survive.

2.  Setting tap water out for any time at all really does not do anything to increase the safety of the water for use with carnivorous plants, if anything, it increases the danger of using it as the mineral content that is harmful to the plant will not evaporate with the chlorine. The parts per million of calcium and magnesium particles (if over 100 particularly) and other salts are what kill carnivorous plants over several weeks as it builds up in the soil and changes the Ph from the acidic environment the plants need. Always use distilled, reverse osmosis, or fresh rain water that has no mineral content or salts added.

Here are some pointers to caring for a Venus Flytrap:

When you first get a Flytrap from a none specialist like a hardware store, they are kept in less than satisfactory conditions. They are in low light and have humidity domes. The plant is weak and half dead to begin with due to those very conditions.

1.  Humidity adaptation. Venus Flytraps should be adapted to low humidity when you get them in humidity domes. You can do this by punching 4-6 1/4 inch holes in the plastic dome every 3 days until the dome is full of holes and does not hold humidity after 2 weeks, then just take it off. The plant will grow stronger leaves and be less likely to rot or succumb to mold.

2.  Good light. Venus Flytraps are more like outside garden plants than inside tropicals. A Venus Flytrap is actually distantly related to cabbage, spinach, and magnolias, all outside plants that need high intensity sunlight. When you are slowly adapting the plant to low humidity, you can place it in a window that gets indirect or morning sun to keep it from overheating. Once the dome is off, place the plant in successively more intensely lit windows each week, like a strong direct morning sun window one week, an all day sun window the next, then outside on a sunny patio if at all possible. Venus Flytraps grown indoors often succumb to weakening as they are not getting enough light, which is why they die shortly after being bought from a hardware store.

3.  If you watered the plant with tap water, you will need to repot the entire thing to get rid of the damaged soil now. I am not sure if we can save the plant, but it is always worth a try. You will need a 50/50 mix of pure perlite and dry sphagnum peat moss sold in bales of Canadian premium type. Make sure that nothing like fertilizer has been added to the ingredients as those will rot the roots of Venus Flytraps. Mix up the soil and dampen it with mineral free water, then repot the plant into a 5 inch pot with a water tray that provides an inch of water under the pot, no gravel needed. Venus Flytraps are bog plants from North Carolina, so get plenty of water, but like their roots just over the water line, never waterlogged, but always moist. When you repot the plant, wash all the old mineral laden soil off the roots with distilled water.

Once you have done those things, if the plant is able to be saved, it should come back to life in a few weeks. If the rhizome like root bulb is still creamy white or reddish in color and firm, it might live. Brown or black bulbs that are soft or moldy are dying or dead.

One other tip. Plants do not like being moved around too much. Plants need a stable environment that they can slowly get used to over several weeks. The shock of moving around constantly will eventually sicken and even kill some plants.

So far as the cats, I believe there are some products that are foul smelling to cats, so you could use those near the plant to keep the cats away. You could also make a kind of plant cage like a bird cage, out of chicken wire as a small enclosure to keep mammals away from your plants while still allowing them access to light, water, and insects.

If this Flytrap dies, do not despair, everyone looses a Flytrap at one time or another, particularly when first starting off with little experience. They really are just like other plants in that the first considerations are light, water, and proper soil mix. For carnivorous plants of virtually all types those soil considerations are the difference in that fertilized or mineral laden soil will kill them. Carnivorous plants adapted to low nutrient soil, so their roots are unable to handle bacterial action, their leaves are where they absorb nutrients from insects they catch.

I hope your plant recovers,

Christopher