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The Venus flytrap is a small carnivorous plant from the wet, sandy bogs of North and South Carolina. It grows as a low rosette of leaves, each a flat green stalk ending in a hinged trap edged with teeth. When an insect brushes the fine trigger hairs inside twice in quick succession, the trap snaps shut in a fraction of a second, seals and digests its catch over a week or more. It is not a difficult plant, but its needs are the reverse of most houseplants: full sun, permanently wet, pure water, poor soil and a cold winter rest.
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As a precaution, keep it out of reach of children and pets.
Never use tap water and never fertilise. The plant comes from mineral-poor bogs, and the salts in tap water, bottled mineral water and plant food build up in the soil and kill the roots within months. Water only with rainwater, distilled or deionised water, and let the plant catch its own food.
Rainwater, distilled water or deionised water only. Stand the pot in a saucer with 1-2cm of water throughout the growing season, so that the soil never dries out.
No. Outdoors or on an open windowsill it catches all it needs. If it is kept where there are no insects, give one trap a small live or freshly killed insect every few weeks. Never feed it meat, cheese or anything larger than a third of the trap, which makes the trap rot.
Each trap works only a few times, then blackens and dies while new ones grow from the centre. That is normal. Many traps blackening at once points to tap water, fertiliser, traps triggered too often or food that was too large.
Try not to. Closing costs the plant a great deal of energy, and a trap that closes on nothing reopens after a day or so having gained nothing. A trap closes only a handful of times in its life.
It is resting. From late autumn the leaves die back to a small, tight rosette or disappear, and the plant needs three to four months of cold, around 0-10°C, in a bright, unheated room, cold frame or sheltered spot outdoors. Keep the soil just damp. A flytrap kept warm all winter weakens and usually dies within a couple of years.
On a small or newly bought plant, cut the flower stalk off as soon as it appears in spring. Flowering takes energy that the plant would otherwise put into traps. Strong, established plants can be left to flower.
A nutrient-poor, acidic mix made for carnivorous plants, such as moss peat substitute or sphagnum mixed with lime-free sand or perlite. Ordinary potting compost contains fertiliser and lime and will kill it.
