Question

Venus Flytrap  

Venus Flytrap   Hi my name is Alan. I've been buying carnivorous plants from your website and I got to say they are absolutely gorgeous compared to the poor plants at the hardware store. Very nice plants! In the past I've had very bad success growing these plants and I'm very determined to grow them like how you guys have them. I bought two dente and two king henrys and they are outside sitting inhalf inch of standing water in full sunlight around 84-94?F on the hottest days. They don't seem to have any significant issues. Though my main concern right now are the venus flytraps I bought at another website before stumbling onto cobraplant.com. They too have full sun outdoors and are in half inch of standing water and there soil is comprised of just sphagnum moss. Very few traps have red coloring and their instructions are never to put it on full sun. Though this contradicts your growing method. Im just here to ask it is ok to put these venus flytraps outside in full sun since these flytraps were grown in terrium and just couple of sunlight. I don't want to lose these plants, maybe an expert can help me out. I live in zone 7 in Northwest Arkansas region. Thank you! I had these for one day.

Answer

Wild Venus Flytrap  

North Carolina Pocosin   Hi Alan,

Yes, definitely put your plants out in full sun.  Here's what's going to happen, however.  You won't need to worry about humidity too much since you're in Arkansas, but you'll experience leaf burn on the plants at first.  If/when this happens, just cut off any leaves that get badly burned.  As new traps grow they will be darker green, stout, and red.  Those will be healthy traps ready to catch bugs.  The other option, and I've done this many times, just cut off all of the current leaves on the plants.  This will stop transpiration while the plants grow new, healthy traps.  It will take about 3 weeks to see new traps, and they'll be small at first, but you'll get better looking plants in the long run.  This is the advice I give now when someone buys a Venus Flytrap at a big box store in the summer since you never know how long they've been in those cubes, and salvaging the existing leaves is impossible.  After the plants have recovered, you can transplant them to larger pots with a 50/50 peat moss perlite or peat moss sand mix.  Be sure you're using distilled water or rainwater to water your flytraps.

This situation you're experiencing is why so many people think Venus flytraps are too hard to grow.  If cacti were sold in little cubes, they would experience the same leaf burn, and everyone would think that cactus were hard to grow.  We actually have an Aloe vera outside in our nursery right now that has leaf burn on it because it spent the winter in the greenhouse, and we moved it outside at the beginning of June.  Plants grow to whatever their conditions give them, and if they are normally a full sun plant, and they are in shady conditions, their leaves develop thin and soft.  Jacob and I were just joking about this yesterday, saying "Oh, Aloe vera shoudn't be in the sun! :)"  Few people would argue that an Aloe, a Mexican desert succulent, should be in full sun, yet here you get some Venus flytraps with instructions never to put them in full sun.  I also get into debates with people every weekend about this when I sell plants at a local market, even though we have thousands of them growing in full sun at the nursery.  They definitely grow in full sun in their native North and South Carolina habitats.  In many respects I find we have to get folks to think of growing carnivorous plants in regular gardening terms, soil, light, water, and not of keeping a pet in a cage, which I find is often what people are doing even though no one wants to admit it. :)

I'll get off my soap box now.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com