FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

We are having a VFT growing competition for our team at work and i Hoped by joining here - the great members would give me a quick 101 on the care and maximum growth (the prize is for greatest # of heads) for these wonderful plants. It is obviously a team building exercise and should be great fun. I will of course be reading the information within this forum in great details but any starter tips would be great !

I am from North London originally but now work in North Carolina, USA where I believe the plant is actually native.

thanks in advance - Stephen

Welcome to FTC Stephen!
You should read the basic care guides on the main websitehereto get a basic understanding of what they need.
There are many other carnivorous plants as well other than the VFT such as drosera, sarracenias, cephalotus, nepenthes, pinguicula, aldrovanda, utricularia, drosophyllum, byblis, heliamphora and others which are just as interesting as VFTs!
I personally think the competition should be: 'how long it can be kept alive', or 'how healthy it is' by the deadline of the comepetition and such. I say this because (EG.) no matter how much care on lighting each group gives, (eg. one group grows it in light which is required for plants but the other just puts it in shade) in the end, one group's will be very sick and unhealthy while the other's will be very healthy but the unhealthier one might have grown much more traps than the healthier one which is quite unfair.
Also, remember, VFT's are still plants and their leaves and traps will die off naturally. Another thing is that since the plants each group is given are probably different, (genetics and such) and not cloned plants, one group's VFT might grow much faster than others.

There are many other factors which contribute to this list of 'equality' between each team/groups other than the ones I mentioned above.

And again, welcome to FTC!

Welcome:D

Welcome!

stephen44 wrote:the prize is for greatest # of heads

Cool! Choose a plant that usually grows a lot of traps

That's an interesting competition. Although it usually takes a year or more, many Venus Flytraps can produce 16 to over a dozen separate active leaves in succession even though the older traps might die (each replaced often by more than one trap during the growing season). Good luck!

how is the trap atm?