Venus Fly Traps!

Welcome to FlyTrapCare.com, your ultimate destination for all things related to Venus Fly Traps, or Dionaea muscipula. Read through the articles here to learn how best to care for your Venus Fly Trap. Join the Forum and ask any questions you have or help others grow their Flytraps! Once you join the forum, don't forget to check out the Carnivorous Plant Community and upload your avatar image and update your profile.

The Venus Fly Trap, Dionaea muscipula, is a carnivorous plant native to the bogs and swamplands of North and South Carolina. It preys on insects with its uniquely shaped terminal portion of its leaves. The leaf has two primary regions: a broad flat typical leaf-like region called the leaf-base that is capable of carrying out photosynthesis and grows out of the ground, and the trapping mechanism, called the leaf-blade or lamina, at the end of the leaf that is composed of two lobes with hinged together by a midrib.  Each trap usually has between two and five "trigger hairs" on each lobe with three trigger hairs on each lobe being normal. The edge of the trap is lined with teeth or finger-like cilia that lace together when the trap shuts. The leaf-base and leaf-blade (trap) are joined together by what is referred to as the petiole.

Venus Fly Traps need three basic things to flourish:

• Light
• Water
• Media (soil)

 Please read the above linked-to articles in detail.  If you provide each of these three things in the proper way, you will have a healthy, happy Venus Fly Trap as you see below in the photo.  Below the photo is a brief summary of the care needs of a Venus fly trap.

Give Venus fly traps as much light as you can. Full direct sunlight at least four hours a day is best, though Venus fly traps can flourish under strong artificial lighting as well. Water them with "pure" water (low in mineral content), either distilled, rain water, or other water that has a low concentration of dissolved solids. Plant them in a proper mix of nutrient poor medium. Most people use peat, sphagnum moss, sand and perlite in some combination.  Long fiber sphagnum moss works well for Venus fly trap soil too.

If possible, keep the ambient humidity high, though this is not critical. Venus Fly Traps can thrive in low humidity. Just be sure to keep their soil damp at all times when the humidity is low.

If you are growing your plant in less than ideal conditions, or you just want the biggest traps possible, it's best to not let them flower. Try to cut the flower stalk off as soon as you notice it. Flowering robs the plant of precious energy that it could otherwise use to make itself larger or produce better leafs and traps. Also, as a flytrap grows, it will often form little offshoots with a second rosette or multiple rosettes of leaves. These offshoots will eventually form their own root systems. When you go to repot your venus fly trap you can gently pry the rosettes apart and have separate Venus fly traps. If you cut the flower off, the Venus flytrap will be more likely to divide and form separate rosettes through the growing season due to the fact it can put more energy into growing.