FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Now, I know how to get red traps, bright light and proper care would do it but after a while, i noticed even after putting them into the hot sun they are still not scarlet red, yes my cultivars are capable of turning scarlet red except for the alien cultivar which I'm not too worried about but the typical, red dragons etc, I live in a tropical area, malaysia and in a rainy town so I tend to move my plants when it's raining to prevent damages from the regular heavy rain but when they don't rain it gets hot and sunny which is ideal for venus flytrap but about a few month, there's not even a tint of red! I'm thinking about growing them with a grow light.

So do they not go through dormancy where you are? Up here in the PNW it is still winter time and they are all in dormancy. My red ones, even while in garage show a hint of reddish on them but are still mostly green.

They don't get dormancy quite frequent and these venus flytrap are 4 years old, I'm guessing they do a small dormancy period because in December or when it's snowy for the rest of the world it do tend to get chilly at night, my town I kid you not, it always rains all the damn time it's so frequent that everyone calls this town a rain town, it rains a lot during December and get cold until Feb, which is where the hot sunny weather comes in but it still rains, growing cps on my area tend to get a little challenging

After few months they get a tint of red it's light red and it never go into deep red, quite disappointing to grow cp in these area, I'm the type of grower to see the beauty and not for the insect catching part, haish..

When I say "few month" I mean like way above 3 month

Flytrapsbest wrote: ↑Thu Feb 01, 2024 12:04 pm my town I kid you not, it always rains all the damn time it's so frequent that everyone calls this town a rain town, it rains a lot during December and get cold until Feb, which is where the hot sunny weather comes in but it still rains, growing cps on my area tend to get a little challenging

Trust me. I get it. Our summers, on average do not start until mid July. We get rain close to 9 months out of the year. Last year I started all my plants under lights and then transferred them outside. That almost killed a bunch of them due to lack of sunshine. (Well, that and bad soil)!!

I understand your pain,I have been growing them outdoors for years and I own a lot of cp, I'm just disappointed that the cp never get red and all, humidity high in my area too, tend to get up to 80 percent, atleast the morning sun is always not cloudy and clear, they get some 5 hours of morning sun daily if they are lucky 4 hours of afternoon sun.

Humidity doesn't really affect the color much. To really get them to color up, I have to keep them under bright lights for an extended photoperiod and feed them regularly. Feeding definitely helps the to color up.

Hm, will definitely try regularly feeding, thank you.

Flytrapsbest wrote: ↑Fri Feb 02, 2024 1:39 am Hm, will definitely try regularly feeding, thank you.

Hmm, me too. I never realized this.

I have a theory. It isn't scientific, but it seems to correlate to the facts that I know. It seems that the plants produce anthocyanin, the red pigment, in an effort to reduce the amount of photosynthesis that they perform to produce sugars. Very bright lights cause high sugar production. Low temperatures prevent sugar production and plants go red to stop from wasting energy. Well fed plants don't need to photosynthesize as much and turn red.

Like I said, that's my theory and I have not actual data to back it up.

Nice theory
Will update in 2 month