FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I've been meaning to ask this since last spring when my pot of different VFTs, with both red and green varieties was out in the cold one spring night and took frost damage. When all was said and done both the red ones died. The green ones took frost damage but all of them survived.

Anyone else notice this hopefully by accident?

I have noticed my red varieties turn more red and die back more in the winter and are more sluggish to come back in spring, which I attribute to them having less chlorophyll and less energy to work with. Don't know if that's actually why.

The red cultivar "Claytons Red Sunset" states in it's description that it will lose most, if not all of it's leaves during dormancy. Not sure whether or not this happens because it is simply a red flytrap. And even though it states this in the description, I have not personally experienced this with my Claytons Red Sunset. I think that red flytraps are more susceptible to damage when there is a rapid change in environmental conditions.That is, however, only based on my experience.

When a plant has to contribute that much energy to something, it's bound to have greater setbacks than a more vigorous green variety.

In my observations the red VFTs go into a deeper dormancy. They usually go dormant earlier and stay dormant for longer but I don't think it is because they require more than 3 months for dormancy. I think it is just because they need warmer temperatures to grow well and go dormant at higher temperatures than other green VFTs do.

I've also noticed that B52s tend to go dormant later, come out earlier, and often don't go into deep dormancies at all. Their traps often work and can digest prey over the whole Winter and their rhyzomes don't seem to swell as much either. It would seem they store less in their rhyzomes over Winter and keep more in their leaves compared to most other VFTs. It's almost like they go dormant like young VFTs do or VFTs recently out of tissue culture that are then made to go dormant instead of like older more mature VFTs.