FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

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Discussions about anything related to Venus Flytraps, cultivars and named clones

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By PlantMom84
Posts:  140
Joined:  Fri Mar 17, 2023 5:43 am
#433779
Hello beautiful people! I have a question. Is it safe to cut off dead leaves from a Flytrap? Mine has a few dead leaves and I have been afraid of killing it. TIA ❤️
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By optique
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Posts:  1924
Joined:  Fri May 24, 2019 11:15 pm
#433780
you can removed dead stuff no issues. Try giving it a gentle tug if its fully dried up it will come off ez.
By Barlapipas 6
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Posts:  476
Joined:  Tue Aug 30, 2022 11:26 pm
#433787
As optique said you can pull off the black leaves if they don’t need a lot of force to be pulled. But it’s kinda risky because sometimes you can pull off living rhizome parts and damage the plant. I did this with my old VFTs and I didn’t care if the dead leaves had living rhizome parts. Then on a rainy day microbes from the rain got into the open wound of the rhizome and one plant rotted. So there are 2 options. Cut off only the black parts with clean scissors or wait a month after the leaf got black and try to pull it. If you leave the dead leaves usually nothing bad will happen to the plant but if there are a lot they can block some sunlight, be a hiding spot for pests and sometimes they can mold if there is a lot of humidity and wet soil with stagnant air. I personally cut off only the traps and then wait a month. After that I pull off the remaining leaves.
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By Panman
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Posts:  6397
Joined:  Wed Mar 04, 2020 8:41 pm
#433790
When I trim back the plants, and I do that rarely, I only take off the black parts. The plant will continue to photosynthesize with green parts and will reabsorb some of the nutrients from yellow parts.

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