Venus Flytrap growing

Our experiment has entered it’s sixth week and will be shortly heading into the middle of the summer when they will be exposed to the most sun.

The test plants are looking fairly healthy but have lost some of the red colouration from their leaves in comparison to our control plant which is in a sunnier area. The maximum trap width of all of the test plants has not changed measurably so far.

Specimen A: Low light, distilled water

Specimen A, which is being watered with distilled water and grown in a low light environment is looking okay, but it’s leaf-base is weakening, causing the trap with the longest leaf-base (bottom right in above photo) to droop towards the ground. The initial angle was approximately 30 deg. from vertical, however it is now closer to 30 deg. from horizontal. This plant has grown an extra trap and a further three stems are growing. Unfortunately, one of the new stems has begun to turn black. A fly was fed manually to this plant one week ago, the trap is yet to re-open.

Specimen B: Low light, tap water

Speciment B, which is being watered with tap water was manually fed a fly one week ago, it’s trap is beginning to re-open. One of it’s traps was triggered, but did not catch a fly, this trap re-opened within 48 h. This plant still has three traps, but another trap is in the process of opening and another stem will probably be forming a trap soon.

Specimen C: Control Plant, medium light, distilled water

Our control plant speciment C, is looking nice and healthy and has caught a fly naturally and been fed one by hand, both times the traps re-opened within five days.  The red colouration in the leaves is not as intense as they were at the beginning of the experiment, but not hugely so. The total numbers of traps is still six, however their leaf-bases are noticeably longer than when purchased.

Conclusion

This is early days yet, so there’s not much that can be concluded from the results so far. However initial results are showing are indicating that the control plant (specimen C) is coping with it’s new environment better than the two test plants in dim light (specimens A and B). Specimen B which has been watered with tap water appears to be slightly healthier than specimen A which has been watered with distilled water.

Information will be posted here eventually with information about the amount and composition of dissolved solids in the tap and distilled water used for this experiment and the approximate daily average light intensity that the plants are exposed to. So check back later or subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up to date with the experiments progress.

To mimic the normal treatment Venus flytraps receive in the home, I caught a few flies today and fed them to each of our test plants. Regular house flies were used. I used a pair of tweezers to place the flies in the traps and quickly removed the tweezers as the trap closed. The flies were 4-5 mm in length.

The video below is of the tap water plant being fed. This particular fly caused many problems for us, as it kept launching off before I could grab it with the tweezers. However some deft tweezer saved the day and the plant eventually got fed! For information about manual feeding of flies, please visit our ‘manual feeding‘ page.

Many of the experts claim that growing Venus flytraps in shaded, dry indoor areas is difficult/impossible. So here at flytrapgrowing.info we are going to conduct some experiments to demonstrate what effects poor conditions have on Venus flytraps. Many complete novices report having their flytraps survive torturous conditions, out of the sun, tap water, dead bugs and occasionally letting their plant dry up and yet still their plants survive and grow big red healthy looking traps.

We are going to purchase two brand new Venus flytraps from a garden center. The plants will placed in our high tech new Venus flytrap growing facility. The facility (my bedroom) is on the third floor of an inner-city apartment block and looks out onto a wonderful concrete building which blocks all direct sunlight bar the occasional smidgen in the morning. The plants will be kept at the perimeter of the building behind a pane of glass (my window sill). Neither of the plants will be stored in terrariums, but will be left to fend for themselves in their mildly dry environment.

Specimen A will be watered with distilled water whereas Specimen B will be watered with tap water. The tap water supply here in Dunedin is treated with both fluoride and chlorine and contains large amounts of dissolved solids. It is a relatively soft water supply however, hence doesn’t contain many of the dangerous cations such as calcium and magnesium which are known to negatively affect Venus flytraps. As a control test, we have purchased a third plant (specimen C) which will be kept in a sunny location inside a glass enclosure and will be watered using distilled water.

Reports on the progress of the three plants will be posted here regularly over the next year - assuming they don’t die before hand!