Venus Flugfälla
Venus Fly Trap
Vetenskapligt namn: Dionaea muscipula
Indelning: Art
| AbutmicumVenusflugfälla är en insektsätande växt som trivs bäst på ljus, men sval plats inomhus eller i uterum. Vissa sorter är vinterhärdiga om de får vänja sig gradvis vid de lägre temperaturerna. Bör hållas konstant fuktig, men ingen gödning. Familj: Droseraceae Vetenskapligt namn: Dionaea muscipula Placering: I rumstemperatur eller ev. i uterum bara temperaturen är över 5° C. Ursprung: Nordamerika. Användning: Krukväxt under normala förhållanden. Dionaea muscipula is found naturally in the coastal plain of southeastern North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina. The plant is surprisingly adaptable considering its narrow distribution in the wild.
The main requirements for growing Dionaea muscipula are:
(1) The plant needs lots of light. Give it full sun if you can. Grow it outside as much as you can. It also makes an excellent indoor plant but requires more light than it can get on a typical house window sill.
(2) The pot with the plant must always be sitting in pure water. If your tap water has a total dissolved solids (TDS) less than 90 ppm (check with your city, water company, well test, or measure with a TDS meter) you can use it for your carnivorous plants. If the TDS is higher than 90, use distilled, reverse osmosis, or clean rain water. Filtering water will NOT remove the dissolved salts.
(3) If the plant is not catching its own food, it needs to be fed in the traps with live insects, rehydrated dried blood worms, or other kinds of fish food high in insect-derived protein that can be conveniently rehydrated. If you use dead food, the traps need to be massaged to stimulate full closure and digestion.
If you grow your plants indoors or just bought a plant please see the Check List for Growing Dionaea muscipula. If your plant needs repotting please see Dionaea Leaf Pullings Step-by-Step. A well kept VFT will need to be repotted every year or so.
Dionaea muscipula isn't very picky about soil. It grows well in pure Sphagnum moss (live or from dried), pure Sphagnum peat, and the standard 1:1 peat:sand "CP mix". Avoid perlite, pumice, and other potentially salty soil components. What does matter is how tall the pots are and consequently how far the crown of the plant is from the water level. The plants do not enjoy being soggy but must always be wet. The wetter the soil the taller the pot. In shorter pots the soil should be more sandy. Avoid pure Sphagnum moss or pure peat in short pots. In any case the water level should always be more than 5 cm (2 inches) below the surface of the soil.
Sow seeds of Dionaea muscipula on the surface of your medium of choice. About 3 mm of washed quartz sand over CP mix works well as does a layer of finely chopped live sphagnum moss over CP mix. The live sphagnum can overgrow the plants so keep a close eye on the seedlings if you use it. Finely chopped long fibered sphagnum over CP mix or CP mix alone also work well germinating seeds. The main problem is the nutrients in peat encourage the growth of cyanobacteria (AKA bluegreen algae) that can overgrow the small, very slow growing seedlings. Washing the peat helps cut down on cyanobacteria and moss. However the nutrients in the peat, what small amount there is, give the small seedlings a boost. The soil should be saturated with pure water.
What you do after sowing the seeds depends on what works best for you. Everyone has their own preferred routine. I lightly spray the seeds with water and put the pots in plastic zip-lock bags under but not too close to florescent lights. A temperature between 20°C to 25°C (70°F to 80°F) works best. After the seedlings get a few true leaves (the ones with traps), I remove the pots from the plastic bags and move them to bright terrarium or greenhouse. Please see Sowing Seeds Step-by-Step for more details on starting seeds.
The seedlings are very slow growing. It could easily take 5 years to get a mature plant from seed if they are not fed regularly. Experts with greenhouses can get mature or close to mature plants in three years. You can get a mature plant in two years if you feed it in the traps as much as the plant can handle. But no one grows Dionaea from seed commercially except to find new varieties. The usual technique for commercial propagation is sterile culture called tissue culture or micropropagation. They propagate only the very best selected plants which may be one in a thousand from seed. Expert growers may also fertilize their plants. This is tricky to do safely. DO NOT fertilize your plants unless you don't care if you kill them. Feed them in the traps with Dried Blood Worms.
New Dionaea seedlings will tend to grow for about 4 months then stop growing. They are expecting winter to start a that point. They can be tricked by keeping them warm under intense light and feeding heavily. As soon as a new trap opens, feed it with a small piece of hydrated dried blood worm. When it reopens remove the remains of the previous meal. That will probably result in it closing the trap. When the trap reopens again in the next day or so, feed it again.
If you live in USDA zone 8 or warmer, as much as possible, try to grow your larger seedlings and mature plants outside. They will grow best in full sun if you live in an area that is humid or cool in the summer. If where you live is hot and dry, full morning sun and then part shade is appreciated. The use of 10% or 20% shade cloth with full sun works well (if you can find it—most shade cloth is 50% or more and that is too shady).
In USDA zone 7 it is problematic growing Dionaea outside without a heated greenhouse but it can be done. During the winter, if the temperatures don't stay below freezing for more than a week at a time you can keep the plants outside fully exposed to the rain and snow unless there is an early or late freeze. The plants will survive being frozen solid for a week or longer if they are fully dormant and protected from drying out. If they are not fully dormant, freezing weather can kill them. When the plants are being overly protected or have started to grow and then get frozen they are easily killed. Do not let them dry out as the biggest danger is freeze-drying. Use of pine needle mulch or row cover cloth helps prevent freeze-drying.
In very cold climates (USDA zone 6 and colder) the plants will require substantial protection if grown outside. It may be best to put the plants in a heated greenhouse, a south facing window of a garage, or cover them with a foot of straw or pine needles during the winter. Although it is probably a good idea to supplement the light if you have the plants in a garage window during the winter I do not recommend bringing them into the house or basement and putting them under lights for the winter. It will get them out of sync with the seasons. It is better to just keep them indoors under lights all the time than to switch back and forth.
Dionaea appreciates seasonal light cues. Winters along the Carolina coast are relatively mild and dry so you do not need to refrigerate the plant or otherwise force it into dormancy with cold. It just needs enough natural light to know what season it is. You know the plants are getting enough light cues when they send up flowers in the spring. You can accomplish this by having them in a room that gets good sunlight around sunrise and not having your plant lights come on until 7 or 8 AM. I use 25W of fluorescent lighting per square foot of growing area and keep my lights on 16 hours a day. I also use 4000K bulbs because my plants have always done better or at least looked better to me than ones grown under 6500K bulbs. My plants grown this way are 8 years old from sterile culture and grow continuously. They have been repotted each time the growth point hits the edge of the pot, which is about every 18 months.
Another option I have considered but not tried is using a light timer that adjusts the on time according to the date. Since the timers are designed to turn lights on at night, set the timer six months and 12 hours out of phase with the current date and time. This will result in the lights being on during the day and in phase with the current season. You probably will need 50W of fluorescent lighting per square foot of growing area for the plants to get enough light. With the amount of heat generated by the lights I would put the plants in rather large pots and use up-side-down jugs of water in a tray to keep them from drying out.
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Many inexperienced Venus fly trap growers make the assumption that Dionaea muscipula are tropical plants and that they should be kept in warm growing conditions year round. However, the truth is that Venus Fly Traps are very hardy perennial plants. This means that they grow and bloom over the spring and summer and then die back to a small rosette every winter, growing back in the spring from their energy reserves saved up in the rhizome or root-stock. Venus Fly Traps go dormant naturally in the fall when growing outdoors. They can withstand frost and light freezes. However, freezes that last an extended period of time can kill Venus Fly Traps.
In order for Venus Flytraps to survive long term, they must have a dormancy period every year that lasts three to five months. Experienced growers report that a minimum dormancy period of 10 weeks is the shortest amount of time required for a Venus fly trap to grow well throughout the next growing season. Without a dormancy, Venus Fly Traps will weaken and die over a period of time. During dormancy, Venus flytraps still require as much light as possible in order to stay healthy. They should not be placed in a dark or low-light setting as this will almost surely end in death for a Venus Fly Trap. The only exception being using the Venus Fly Trap Fridge Dormancy Method, which requires allowing the plants to enter dormancy naturally before storing them for the winter months.
It seems that photoperiod, over temperature, is the more driving force for triggering dormancy in Venus Fly Traps. As the days begin shortening in the fall, Venus fly traps will start shedding their summer leaves. As the temperatures drop, their grow will slow. Flytraps will put out smaller, lower, ground-hugging leaves through their dormany period provided that the weather isn’t too harsh or too cold.
During dormancy, the light and water needs for the Venus Fly Trap change a bit. Venus Flytraps should receive a reduction in water to help prevent mold. The media should never dry out completely, but the plants shouldn’t be kept extremely wet either. Certainly not as wet as they are kept during the active growing season. As stated above, Fly Traps can go without light completely during dormancy, but this isn’t ideal. There are basically three ways to approach Venus Fly Trap dormancy:A dormant Venus Fly Trap isn’t very pretty. In fact, most people who don’t know that Venus Fly Traps enter a dormant period would think that the plant is dying. I have read on more than one occasion that people have thrown out their plant as it was entering dormancy, mistakenly thinking that it was dying. Most of the leaves turn black and the plant pretty much stops growing, at least to the observer.
I will go into the details of each of these options and the sub-options for each.
Outdoor Venus Fly Trap Dormancy
This is the easiest and preferred method of taking Venus Fly Traps through dormancy. If you are one of the lucky people and you happen to live in a place where the winters are mild, in a hardiness zone of 8 or better (see the hardiness map below), then you can just leave your Venus Fly Traps outside year round unprotected. If they are potted in a small pot, you might want to consider bringing them in if there is one of those rare, extended freezes, but for the most part, they can be left alone and they will be very happy outside.
Indoor Venus Fly Trap Dormancy
If you aren’t one of the lucky people, and you live in a place where you have extended freezes (hardiness zone 7 or less) and you don’t have a bog garden or other way of planting your Venus Flytraps in the ground, then you will likely have to bring your Venus Fly Traps indoors for the winter. Now, there are a couple of options for wintering the plants indoors.
A cool windowsill or unheated porch or garage
This is the best method if you are unable to winter your plants outside. If possible, put the plants in a south facing window of an unheated porch or garage that doesn’t freeze. Ideally the night-time temperature should stay between 32 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Daytime highs can get into the 70°F and even 80°F range and flytraps will remain dormant so long as the days are still short. Venus Fly Traps that are in dormancy will still grow, however the growth will be quite slow compared to spring and summer growth and it is unlikely that the plant will start putting up new large leaves until they are ready to come out of dormancy. If the plant is receiving sun during its dormancy, then it can still perform photosynthesis and this will help keep the plant healthy. Also, since the plant is still receiving sun daily, it will know when to come out of dormancy as the photoperiod starts to extend as spring arrives.
The refrigerator method
Be sure to read the Venus flytrap fridge tutorial if you think you might have to do a refrigeration dormancy.
Use this method as a last resort. If you don’t have any other option for a place to winter your plants, or if you happen to live in a place where it doesn’t get cold in the winter, or your days don’t shorten enough, you will likely have to “force” the Venus Fly Traps into dormancy. The more gentler the forcing, the more likely your plant is to live through the winter. Ideally, you would decrease the photoperiod over time along with decreasing the temperature in order to send the plant proper signals to start preparing for dormancy. Too sudden a change in photoperiod or temperature might actually kill your Venus Flytrap.
You have 2 options when placing the Venus Fly Traps into your refrigerator:
Bare root plants in the fridge
For this method, gently remove the Venus Fly Trap from its pot and dip the plant and soil in distilled water (or other pure water) and swirl it around to remove all of the media from its roots. When you have the entire white rhizome exposed and roots that are free of all soil, remove any parts of the plant that appear to be dead. This should be obvious from the color. Dead or dying leaves will be brown or black. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to just cut off all the leaves and traps. This will give the fungus much less to start growing on when the plant is in the fridge. Once you have removed whatever growth you feel might cause a fungal problem, treat the entire plant with a fungicide solution by either dipping it or misting it. Now, wrap up the Venus Fly Trap in a damp paper towel or sphagnum peat moss. The paper towel or sphagnum should only be damp, not soaking wet. If you squeeze it and water comes out, that’s too wet. Place the plant in a zip lock plastic bag. Be sure to squeeze out as much air as possible from the bag to limit the risk of fungus and seal the bag tight. If possible, put the bag in the vegetable drawer of your refrigerator. Check in on the plant every week or so throughout the dormancy to ensure that it isn’t rotting or suffering a fungal attack.
Potted plants in the fridge
The Venus Fly Traps and their pots should be put into plastic bags and placed into the refrigerator for the 3 to 5 months. Obviously this takes up quite a bit of space in the fridge, so for that reason alone, it may want to be avoided. If your fridge is like most people’s, it is probably already full most of the time. Also, Venus Fly Traps that are wintered this way are very susceptible to mold and other disease, so you will definitely want to use a light dusting of fungicide powder or protect the plants from mold in some other way. This is a must. You will also want to check in on the plants at least every couple of weeks throughout the 3 months or so that you leave them in the fridge to ensure that they aren’t molding.
Skip Venus Fly Trap Dormancy
If you just want to enjoy your plant year round and don’t care about killing it, you can just skip dormancy. Venus Fly Traps can live for perhaps a few years without dormancy, but they will eventually start to decline and die. If you can get another plant and just want to enjoy the plant as much as you can, skipping dormancy is an option, though obviously an eventually fatal one.
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