Lil_Flytrap_Kid's Website

So, the most famous carnivorous plant of them all - and also the plant most regarded as 'hard to grow'.
However, this is far from the truth.

←This trap shows deep red colouring which occurs when the plant is exposed to lots of sun*
It traps it's prey in a very obvious way - each leaf has a trap on the end which acts almost like a bear trap where the two sides snap shut when triggered. To 'trigger' the trap, an insect must touch the hairs that are located inside of the trap around 3 times and this will causes the trap to shut immediately. This is extremely clever of the plant as it means it won't lose energy trapping inanimate objects such as falling leaves because they will only touch the hairs once - it can tell if the triggering object is suitably an insect or not. The next stage is also genius, the trap does not at first close tightly, it must be further stimulated by the insect inside - this is useful so that if the prey escapes soon after being caught, the plant won't lose energy sending out digestive enzymes when there isn't anything to digest. Once the insect inside has triggered the plant further, the leaf practically seals itself and starts to produce digestive enzymes which help to break down the prey into a nutritious soup.


Here we see the leaf and trap forming.

Although it is tempting, deliberately triggering the traps means the plant loses a lot of energy and could result in death. If you want to keep your Venus Flytrap healthy, do not trigger the traps falsely. Similarly, do not give it any food like burger meat etc - if left outside it will catch its own without a problem. Letting it catch it's own food will stop it being overfed - overfeeding causes bacteria and fungi to get in the trap and the whole leaf rots. Usually, this will not affect the plant as it will just produce more leaves, but too often and it can have negative affects. Also, each trap can catch and digest prey approximately 3 times before they naturally die off so don't be alarmed when a trap does die off - just snip it off to prevent bacteria and fungi infection!

Your Venus Flytrap should be grown in peat with either perlite or well-washed sand. It should be kept wet throughout Summer - put the pot in a saucer and keep it topped up with rainwater, in Winter it should be kept just damp - never let it dry out completely. In Summer, if your plant is mature it will probably send up a flower stalk - if your plant is young or you'd like to keep it vigorous, I'd advise you to cut the flowers stalk off as soon as you see one - it drains the plant of energy and can make traps delayed and slow down growth. In Winter they often die back and become dormant - NOT DEAD! This is a natural occurrence, just put it somewhere cool but not freezing and then bring it out in Spring - it will soon send up new leaves when temperatures rise as well as the increase of sunlight.