FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

VFTs come in all sizes at the store. Some of them have huge elephant ears for leaves. What makes them form this way? I am always tempted to get one but I know it will just be a typical when it grows out for me.

Low light conditions cause the petiole to grow wider in an attempt to increase photosynthetic area. Those hardware store deathcube flytraps will return to growing slimmer petioles (leaves) when they are put in high light conditions. Although I have seen one very nice ones that did grow some especially wider leaves year round, so I guess there's really only one way to find out.

I think the nurseries are getting better products to sell also. I got a $5 death cube fly trap that is 1 of my favorites now. and a $5 sundew that has over 25 divisions now, and I just bought it in the Fall.

always ask for a discount. They can say no, but normally they will mark them down if they have been on the shelf a week. They don't get water in those cubes and if they do, its not good water.

Flytraps seem to react to poor lighting in two different ways. They can either resort to growing big, wide, dark green leaves or they can get pale and grow longer thinner leaves. But what causes them to react one way or the other?

I don't know the answer but I do know that I've only seen the wide leaf version in plants sold in death cubes and sometimes when breaking from dormancy. It may make sense that they grow larger wider leaves in order to capture more light, but on the other hand, larger leaves require more energy themselves. So it may be the response of a VFT with lots of energy stored up to spend, that knows it's receiving some usable light, but not enough.

The long, spindly form, on the other hand, seems to be a plant searching for more light. If you imagine a VFT growing in the ground amongst grass and leaves, it could easily get covered up and would need to be able to grow taller to push through to the light. I've most commonly seen this form on the forums. Plants that have chronically been receiving some light but nowhere near enough every day for months. But the most extreme case I've seen is when I repotted some VFTs one year and found that I had accidentally buried one, upside down, 6 or 7 inches deep. It had spent all year sending up the skinniest shoots, almost the size of roots, with tiny little deformed traps on the ends towards the surface. They were about 4" long when I found them, basically no leaf blades, and almost completely white/pinkish with only a hint of green on the tinges at the end. I have a post about it somewhere on the forum. So it seems like this form may be the result of a chronically light-starved, or weaker plant searching for light.

SundewWolf wrote: Those hardware store deathcube flytraps will return to growing slimmer petioles (leaves) when they are put in high light conditions.

Wouldn't the petiole technically be the stalk between where the leaf blades end and the rhizome begins? Though the spine that runs up the center of the leaf blades would normally be called a midrib, I could see the spine, itself, still being considered the petiole since it again separates from the leaf blades to attach the trap to the leaf.

xr280xr wrote:Flytraps seem to react to poor lighting in two different ways. They can either resort to growing big, wide, dark green leaves or they can get pale and grow longer thinner leaves. But what causes them to react one way or the other?

The big, wide, dark green leaves happen when flytraps are getting sufficient light to stay moderately healthy The pale, longer and thinner leaves happen when light levels are far too low to even maintain moderate health.