FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I was trimming the black, spent traps from my plant and noticed this tan/brown material near the base of the roots. I started digging it out, because it doesn’t look like the black roots previously described in the forum, and noticed it’s also under the soil surface around the root system. Is this a fungus that should be removed? If so, how is the best way to do so without harming my plant? Thanks for the help!

Are you talking about what's on the tissue? That's just Sphagnum moss (with peat mixed around it).

Is that a Lowe’s or Walmart VFT? They will often times be wrapped with sphagnum moss (the brown/tan stuff you pulled out) around the roots and then be placed into the pot and the space filled with peat moss. It is perfectly normal. Just leave it be. It is a great media for them to be in. That’s what I use for most of mine.

Just normal sphagum moss.

I use it on the bottom of the pot, mixed into the peat, and sometimes as a top dressing.

Perfectly fine to keep in there.

Won’t hurt.

That brown crap is just old dead rotting leaves and roots from the traps. That's what I was talking about a few months ago is that stuff is easier to spot with LFSM and cleaning it out is like giving the plant a dental cleaning and the media is much healthier for roots to grow in. Every plant you grow is gonna have that brown stuff down below you can leave it or clean it. Mostly it doesn't harm the plants at all but removing it provides a cleaner medium for them to grow in. Hold on though I just looked at your picture Walmart vfts from rocket farms usually have the rhizomes wrapped with LFSM and the rest is just filler with peat moss. It's just a cheaper way for them to package up the plants and ship them. It looks to me like it's a rocket farms plant from Walmart. Am I correct?