FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I bought the plant three days ago. It was very small and looked droopy, it's also my very first flytrap, so I went ahead and researched the hell out of it. Bought distilled water, cut off all the decayed black traps and gave a full day of sunshine. Today and yesterday. It had more than 7 hours of sun for two days.
But today I noticed that some leaves turned a bit yellow-ish on the edges and two traps started to decay. I read somewhere that those might be the signs of sunburn. It's the middle of march, though, the sun still seems cold, I didn't expect the plant to get burned from it. Or could it be because in the store the plant wasn't getting so much sunlight and is just not used to it? Should I leave it in the sun tomorrow too? Or am I over thinking?

hi , how are you ? , for my experience and lookinf into to your plant , you have what ? 100% peat moss? if yes you maybe are giving to much water to the plant , if not , with this sun in march you cant have sun burns i think , it maybe is the normal cicle of the vft some traps die to give new ones
i think you can let the vft outdor taking lots of sun and see how she goes

sorry for my english

If it does get sunburn then it will lose its leaves but new ones will come back that are bigger and healthier.

The yellowing is most likely due to the change in environment more than anything. If you're going to get sunburn from sudden heat/sun intensity increase, it'll happen in 3 days or less. I'm not seeing sunburn. If this had been done in July/August, it might have been a different story. Always acclimate flytraps to new environments, especially when you have lots and lots of sunlight to offer (slowly increase sunlight exposure over the course of a week or two).

Bottom line is I see nothing to be concerned about.

Your plant went from (whereever it was) to outdoors in your humidity/temps/amount of sun with no time for slow acclimation. This just looks like the plant is working out its new environment and getting ready to shed a few old leaves.

Those yellowing leaves will die off in a week or so, but they'll get replaced by new ones. Growth will be very slow until the weather warms up to averaging 60's/70's ish.

For now:
- Don't let the pot freeze (I don't know weather this time of year in your area). If you see a cold snap coming (e.g. 0 Celsius or below, or freezing winds) I would bring it inside for the night, then put it back out in the morning.
- Ideally your soil would be cut 50% with either plain perlite or silica sand. Since you didn't do this, just keep an eye on the soil's wetness. Many people grow in 100% peat successfully, but it has a tendancy to stay wetter for longer than it should, and it compacts around the roots more readily, which flytraps don't appreciate. 100% peat is not going to kill the plant or make it grow terribly or anything; I'm just tossing out ideal soils since you seem to be the "research the best methods" type of person. If you do find perlite and decide you want to repot, do it ASAP (1:1 mix perlite:peat; yes it's a lot of perlite ). If you repot later, it won't hurt the plant, but it'll set it back a week or so as it re-acclimates again to new soil. Ideal repot time is early Spring.
- If you're giving 7 hours of direct sunlight per day, it's going to be able to handle wetter soil; but do try to keep it on the drier side, rather than wet all the time. Under no circumstances should the soil be allowed to dry out completely, however. Dry soil = dead flytrap very quickly. Err on the side of caution/moister soil until you get a feel for how that soil/pot size will retain water.

Other than that, keep doing what you're doing. Pot size looks fine from here. Deeper is better, but I've grown in 10cm deep pots before and they still grow fine. 15-20cm, or even 30cm for large flytraps, is best.

7 hours of sun per day is going to make for one robust little beast. Enjoy

Here's a quick read that I recommend, in addition to the research you've already done:
http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/rhizo ... tml#p44781

here take a look when i was new to vft , this one is a tipical vft with sun bruns , i let the plant in the same spot after a few weeks the plant give me new traps and no more sun bruns if you let yours in the sun she will recover but take time , if you dont want to get sun burns you need to put like 1h in the sun and the next day 2h like that she dont get sun bruns best luck with your plant mate

Thanks a lot for the helpful advice, everyone, I'll definitely stick around this site, it's awesome.
And I'll be a little bit more careful with sun, just in case. I'm hoping to keep my plant alive till summer, so I can see it catch bugs. The shop assistant already demonstrated by triggering a few traps with her finger, but it didn't look like the plant was comfortable with that..