FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I just received both a Pink Venus and Big Mouth from FlyTrapStore.Com. As usual they more then meet my expectations. The Pink Venus was a mature plant and it's a monster. Nice and healthy with lots of beautiful traps and a large rhizome ! The Big Mouth was ordered as a young plant, but to my surprise it's quite large and extremely healthy. A beautiful specimen. As usual the speed of delivery from you guys is amazing !

I'm a little confused though. Matt or Steve if you see this post, maybe you can respond. This is the 4th Big Mouth VFT that I've purchased through FlyTrapStore. The other 3 were a beautiful shade of green with a reddish hue and bright red traps. This Big Mouth is completely green inside and out. This plant is absolutely gorgeous. And a beautiful contrast to my other Big Mouths. I couldn't be more pleased. ( My wife thinks it's the prettiest VFT in my large collection ). Do you think that the plant will stay this color or redden up like my other Big Mouths ?

DTDream18 wrote:The Big Mouth was ordered as a young plant, but to my surprise it's quite large and extremely healthy. A beautiful specimen. As usual the speed of delivery from you guys is amazing !

Thanks for the nice feedback!

DTDream18 wrote:I'm a little confused though. Matt or Steve if you see this post, maybe you can respond. This is the 4th Big Mouth VFT that I've purchased through FlyTrapStore. The other 3 were a beautiful shade of green with a reddish hue and bright red traps. This Big Mouth is completely green inside and out. This plant is absolutely gorgeous. And a beautiful contrast to my other Big Mouths. I couldn't be more pleased. ( My wife thinks it's the prettiest VFT in my large collection ). Do you think that the plant will stay this color or redden up like my other Big Mouths ?

I believe that the other 3 Big Mouths that you ordered came from me here in Oregon and your most recent plant came from Steve. Steve's plants tend to not color up as much as my plants here do. My guess is that next growing season, all 4 of the Big Mouths will look the same once they come out of dormancy and are all growing in the same conditions where you grow them.

I'm sure that Matt's right. Once all of your Big Mouth plants spend a whole year with you, they will all look pretty much the same. Your latest Big Mouth came from my Flytrap Store greenhouse in New Mexico instead of Matt's up in Oregon. In my growing conditions, with so much good food (billions of dairy flies), the traps on my plants rarely stay open long enough to color up well in the sun before they either catch their first meal or the traps are tripped by some insect (usually a fly).

Therefore, although my plants are healthy and very well fed, they don't tend to color up as much as those in Matt's greenhouse. Hungry Flytraps often produce more color than well-fed ones, perhaps working harder to attract insects. Matt's location in Oregon is blessed with far fewer flies than those here in eastern New Mexico, where they are at almost plague proportions.

Color in a trap seems to be related to how long the trap stays open once it opens the first time, and how much sunlight it is exposed to during that time. However, opinion varies from grower to grower and the whole subject of color in Venus Flytraps remains a little mysterious.

Glad the plant arrived safely. I hope it grows well for you.

Steve