FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I came back to a wilted, black-tinged plant that she most certainly did NOT water while I was gone. I quickly gave Maria Von Trap some distilled water and it perked back up in a few hours. However, as you can see, she's still looking unhappy. The trap that she caught a spider in also is still closed after almost a month.

I'm not sure what to do. I know you can cut off black traps, but these are only tinged black, so what can I do? She gets a lot of sun and I use distilled water, but her biggest traps are now sad-looking and no longer functioning. Any suggestions?

first thing i noticed is how low in the pot you have the plant. i would have the rhizome at a level just below the top lip of the pot. but thats not whats causing it to wilt but i do recommend raising the plant and adding more soil, the roots will grow long and straight down so it would give the roots more room to grow. but don't do it now. its not healthy enough to re pot. it actually seems like it was given hard water and maybe has mineral burn. but maybe thats also a sign of dry soil.

Alex2893 wrote:first thing i noticed is how low in the pot you have the plant. i would have the rhizome at a level just below the top lip of the pot. but thats not whats causing it to wilt but i do recommend raising the plant and adding more soil, the roots will grow long and straight down so it would give the roots more room to grow. but don't do it now. its not healthy enough to re pot. it actually seems like it was given hard water and maybe has mineral burn. but maybe thats also a sign of dry soil.

Yes, I think it's just dry soil. I have a big jug of distilled water near the windowsill and made it pretty clear to her that she only use that kind of water. I was gone for only a week, but it HAS been hot as Hades here (like...over 100F on some days), so I'm not sure if that has something to do with it.

And thank you for the potting advice! I've been planning to relocate it at some point because it's still in the container I bought it in. I'll make sure that it's higher up/has more soil if it lives through this.

EDIT: Didn't mean to send this to you as a PM. <_>

Also--do you think the plant will recover? If so, how can I tell when it'd be healthy enough to re-pot?

These things are super hearty. It will come back with might !!!
Just keep the soil moist and if the temp gets above 90 degrees give it shade during the hottest part of the day. If it was me id just repot it now and it will be fine. Might shock it for a week or two but it will grow like crazy after that. i got a sick unhealthy typical from home depot 2 months ago with 2 green leafs 3 dead leafs and now it has about 20 medium size very healthy traps.

Ah, that sucks! Well, at least it looks in an ok state even through it went through all that torture. It'll be back in good health in no time.

Like Alex said, maybe add more media into the pot or simply pick up the whole contents of the pot and put them in a larger one, simply dropping the VFT with the media still surrounding its roots in there. That way it won't suffer shock and it'll have a lot of extra media that retains moisture and keeps it happy and well. That is what I did with some of mine a while ago:



They were later repotted into a bigger container. You can kinda see the old media around some of the plants. They just kept on growing like nothing happened. Good luck!

Good answers up there, just thought I'd add-- Since you live in Chapel Hill, even with these really hot temps we're getting I'd still recommend putting that plant outside in full sun (acclimation needed first of course-- read about that here http://www.flytrapcare.com/hardening-of ... -fly-traps

I doubt the ability of any windowsill to provide the adequate amount of light for Dionaea. (Especially if that orchid cactus and your jade plant are doing well there - those guys HATE direct light!) Keep it outside if that's possible, Venus flytraps are native to your state - there's very little excuse not to.

this is what my home depot plant looked like when i got it on may 5th

20150505_230000 by Alex Littig, on Flickr

This is what it looks like today.

20150622_220240 by Alex Littig, on Flickr

another really bad home depot plant on may 13th
20150513_090903 by Alex Littig, on Flickr

and today it look like this

20150622_220249 by Alex Littig, on Flickr

if a plant that bad can turn around yours will even faster

Cut the black traps off, i remove them all because i do not want them to promote rot on my plants. The plant should come back.

At this point, it'll probably be harder for the plant to die.
Just do what is said above. Dont do anything stupid and you will have a healthy plant