Question
I have been growing carnivorous plants for a number of years now and I still have a reoccurring issue with venus flytraps which happen to be my favorite. Essentially, I always buy the largest venus flytraps I can find. They are mature plants and usually have traps approaching 1.5 inches. I grow them in either a 50/50 mix of sphagnum peat/perlite or sphagnum peat/horticultural sand (I have tried both)with 6+ hours of direct sun on the tray system with distilled water. I always use plastic or glazed ceramic pots and have tried 6 inch pots all the way up to 12 inch pots. I live in south central Indiana (I believe zone 5).

They all do very well until they initiate a flower spike. In every single instance, probably about 12 plants in total, the plant has divided after I remove the flower stalk and my once huge and lush plant is reduced to 2 plants with the diameter of a nickel. It would not be a frustrating issue in and of itself, but I have continued to grow these divisions for a number of years and they have not increased much in size. They are not even the diameter of a quarter after 3 years.

I repot them every year and have noticed the rhizome is extremely long, about 2.5 inches long with a growing point at both ends. I can only think of 4 possibilities for the plants not increasing in size.

1) I have never divided the rhizomes. If I need to do this, should I wait until next year or is it safe to do it now

2) ALL of the plants were cultivars (Red Dragon, Dente, Low Giant, Big Mouth, B 52, Red Piranha,etc.) Perhaps this is a common occurrence among cultivars.

3) I buy distilled water but also use the water from a steam distiller I own found at www.steamdistiller.com. I use the steam distiller water exclusively on my Sarracenia and they do fine though,but perhaps it is still to hard for Dionea.

4) This is completely normal and I shouldn't worry about it.

Any advice would be much appreciated. I really miss having large, lush and mature flytraps. Thanks for your time.

Answer
Hi Jayson,

This probably isn't a big deal, especially if the rhizomes look nice and healthy.  You might try a couple of things.

1.  If the plants are in bigger pots, (6"+) leave them in those pots for a couple of years.  Our yearly repotting directions applies more to small pots since the peat breaks down, especially in hotter climates.  In a larger pot you could leave them 2-3 years.  The idea here is to disturb them less.  On our page about humidity, http://www.cobraplant.com/humidity those plants are in 5 or 6" pots, and have been there about 2 years.

2.  Try not removing the flower stalks.  Bigger healthy plants don't need to have the flowers removed.  This advice is more for smaller, less healthy plants.  We've always found our older plants bloom and do just fine.

Let us know if this helps.


Good Growing!

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