FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Today, I walked into a grocery store and oddly found a container that said, quote humorously, "The hungry venus fly trap!" In some ominous font. Despite the rather funny presentation I actually was quite intrigued at how these guys work, and decided to buy one. I've had experience with several plants, but no carnivorous plants, let alone a fly trap. I did some basic research, but I'm wondering what beginners tips anyone has.

Thanks!
-GT

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That's a nice looking plant. Here is a link with some pointers on care to get you familiar with the needs of your new VFT
rhizome-t4375-10.html#p44781

hollyhock wrote:That's a nice looking plant. Here is a link with some pointers on care to get you familiar with the needs of your new VFT
rhizome-t4375-10.html#p44781

Thanks for the reference! One question, in your opinion is the pot it's currently in too short? I see a root stem coming out of one of the drainage holes. Also, theres a bright red stem with a black tip coming out of the very middle of the plant. I've found no real info about this, and its thicker and looks different than the other emerging stems. What could this be?

Thanks once again!
-GT

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Yes, the pot is a little short. VFT's grow long tap roots so a 6 inch deep pot is about the minimum depth. The stem with black tip is a dying flower stalk, looks like it was cut before the supplier sent them out. Nice find, these are more colorful than most grocery store VFT's. I've been looking to get one myself for a while.

that is a great looking plant there too!!

Glitch...

That's a very nice lookin' plant, there!

2 pieces of advice from a newbie:

1) Read a lot to learn about these plants; and this forum contains most of the VFT expertise on this planet.

2) **WARNING**: This hobby is very addictive.

Cheers!

/Apgar

Re: the red stalk with a black tip emerging from the center of the plant, if I'm seeing it in your photo, it is likely a flower stalk. The black tip would make it a dead flower stalk. Anything that turns black on these plants is dead BUT REMEMBER to only cut off that portion that is black, anything that is green IS your plants friend don't chop it off.
These are pretty nice plants for the price, I came home with one yesterday, it cost $5. I did re-pot when I got home using a plastic pot roughly twice as tall as the one it came in, with drain holes in the bottom. I used long grain sphagnum dampened with RODI water for media having been very careful removing the roots from the old media. The new moss very lightly wrapped around the roots and loosely put into the pot. The newly potted plant was place in a tray of more RODI water about 1/2" deep. Currently it is on a shelf under a Kingbo LED plant grow light that also has indirect southern exposure sunlight. The lights are on for 14 hours each day. I'm not totally sold on the full sun method for these plants, even though that is the norm. I've watched far more expensive VFT cultivars basically fry in the "full sun", get chewed on by birds and not really produce as many new traps as they did under T5 florescent. This is my current opinion and may be subject to change.
Now didn't you get way more info than you were looking for? The big thing is to read up and take some of what you read with a grain of salt.

My number one recommendation for a beginner in growing Venus flytraps would be to give it lots of light. It will be more vigorous, it's traps will be bigger and more vibrant, and it will be an overall healthy plant. A good 4 to 6 hours of direct sunlight will do. If your window isn't bright enough, I would grow it outside if your climate isn't predominantly hot and dry. Of course, that's not the only requirement, but it's still really important. Other requirements would be to give it pure water, like distilled or RO water. I would not recommend bottled water because it still contains minerals that will kill your plant. So far I would advise against re-potting it. It can stress it out immensely and it's better to focus on it's basic requirements. I hope your plant can thrive in your conditions, it looks very nice for a store bought plant and it would be a shame to kill it.

GlitchTown wrote:Today, I walked into a grocery store and oddly found a container that said, quote humorously, "The hungry venus fly trap!" In some ominous font. Despite the rather funny presentation I actually was quite intrigued at how these guys work, and decided to buy one. I've had experience with several plants, but no carnivorous plants, let alone a fly trap. I did some basic research, but I'm wondering what beginners tips anyone has.

Thanks!
-GT

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

That's a really good looking fly trap. Score

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Im a newbie as well and bought mine from of all places Walmart. Mine looks the same and was curious as to the variety or specific name of the plant. Cheers!

Anything bought without a label showing the parent (s) should be considered 'typicals' and treated as such. I know I have some specific species in a few bogs, but since I didn't get a label with them they are a 'typical' VFT or 'typical' sarracenia...

Jeeper wrote:but since I didn't get a label with them they are a 'typical' VFT or 'typical' sarracenia...

I wouldn't use the term "typical sarracenia". The reason the term "typical VFT" exists is because the plant comes from a monotypic genus, that being Dionaea. A name was given to all members of the species that weren't registered cultivars or specific clones. The term "typical" for Venus Flytraps essentially means "any normal-ish Venus Flytrap that is approximant what the plant originally looked like in the wild". For Sarracenia however, there are multiple different species for the genus, so there is no one specific way that every individual plant in the genus normally looks like in the wild. So the term "typical Sarracenia" doesn't make much sense. If there was only one species in the genus Sarracenia, then using the term "typical" for any normal looking member of that species would work. If that makes and sense.

_-SphagnumFromHell-_ wrote:

Jeeper wrote:but since I didn't get a label with them they are a 'typical' VFT or 'typical' sarracenia...

I wouldn't use the term "typical sarracenia". The reason the term "typical VFT" exists is because the plant comes from a monotypic genus, that being Dionaea. A name was given to all members of the species that weren't registered cultivars or specific clones. The term "typical" for Venus Flytraps essentially means "any normal-ish Venus Flytrap that is approximant what the plant originally looked like in the wild". For Sarracenia however, there are multiple different species for the genus, so there is no one specific way that every individual plant in the genus normally looks like in the wild. So the term "typical Sarracenia" doesn't make much sense. If there was only one species in the genus Sarracenia, then using the term "typical" for any normal looking member of that species would work. If that makes and sense.

Yes that makes sense. I received some Sarracenia without any tags and they are referred to as NOID. I have posted pictures of the plants and asked people to help me out with the identification. Some characteristics are definitely the same with particular types. Although with all the possible crosses and hybrids a definite answer about the absolute identification is probably impossible. So they must remain NOID. If you recognize that it looks like it possibly has s.minor you can mention that in the description. It's really only matters if you are selling your plants because misidentification is a big problem especially with Drosera. I hope this makes sense...