FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Question about my flytrap. I have decided to grow this one on a windowsill as an experiment, where I essentially removed the window on that windowsill for it to get unfiltered light. While it did well in summer, it began to enter what I assumed was dormancy. It began to show all the signs of dormancy, such as a complete halt of growth, the recent growth being small in leaf size, and mass trap dieback. But it, also, shows signs of just generic light deficiency, like super green leafs and the omission of red in the traps. I asked people on Facebook, and some people said it's dormancy, others said it's death from a lack of light. What do you all think?
Thanks for the help here's some photos
P.S: keep in mind, the plant in the first photo, during the summer, was taken using day light, while the 2nd one was taken using a desk lamp so, that can affect things. Thank you!

I believe that plant is going dormant. Check the rhizome to see if it's turning brown/black and mushy or if it's white and firm. If it's white and firm, you're all good. It appears you repotted it recently (seeing that the media is different) so the problem could be it's just being stressed from that repot, too.

In the first photo, the plant is definitely needs more light, and it also looks like it is planted too deeply. When did you repot it. The longer, skinnier leaves and lack of color are good indications of a light problem. If anything, I've noticed dormancy color changes becoming darker.

Panman wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:26 pm it also looks like it is planted too deeply

how can you tell that? Is it just if the emerging leaves are covered by dirt?

Sundews69 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:20 pm I believe that plant is going dormant. Check the rhizome to see if it's turning brown/black and mushy or if it's white and firm. If it's white and firm, you're all good. It appears you repotted it recently (seeing that the media is different) so the problem could be it's just being stressed from that repot, too.

Gotcha, ill check the rhizome in a few minutes then. You're right, I did repot it about early November when I found peat moss locally lol. Thank you for the heads up!

Panman wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:26 pm In the first photo, the plant is definitely needs more light, and it also looks like it is planted too deeply. When did you repot it. The longer, skinnier leaves and lack of color are good indications of a light problem. If anything, I've noticed dormancy color changes becoming darker.

I repoted it early November. And ah gotcha. Recently it's been nothing but cloudy days here, no direct sunlight at all. I've been exposing it to cold temperatures as much as I could, that with the decreased photoperiod im confused as to why it isn't going dormant yet. I might just do the fridge dormany. And I will be sure to plant it less deep when I check the rhizome lol. Thank you!

If it isn't cold enough the plant will still need light in dormancy. If it's below 35-40F they don't need any light. Would you say it's been cooler than that?

Sundews69 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:36 pm If it isn't cold enough the plant will still need light in dormancy. If it's below 35-40F they don't need any light. Would you say it's been cooler than that?

I would say it's been around 1 C, or 35F. I keep it on that same windowsill with the window wide open and the door to that room closed. Half the windowsill has a heater so I keep it on the half that doesn't have it.

Sundews69 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:36 pm If it isn't cold enough the plant will still need light in dormancy. If it's below 35-40F they don't need any light. Would you say it's been cooler than that?

Oh I should say that I live in Lithuania, with day temperatures being around 35 F with nighttime getting about 28 F nowadays

Ok, well try to keep it no warmer than 1 C. VFTs can survive freezes as long as its pot is only frozen overnight. If it is frozen for more than a day or two, it could cause problems or even death. I learned that the hard way. It can be challenging especially considering we both have cold winters. I have colder winters than what you get which makes dormancy quite difficult here without a fridge. I'm actually using a basement windowsill which stays a little warmer than what I want but they still get some light. Do you have a basement window that gets cool? Another thing people in cold climates do is leave the plants outside but put about six inches or more of snow and pine needles to insulate them. Also having a large pot is very helpful to prevent the pot from freezing solid. Hopefully that made since and I wasn't jumping around too much lol

Sundews69 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:56 pm Ok, well try to keep it no warmer than 1 C. VFTs can survive freezes as long as its pot is only frozen overnight. If it is frozen for more than a day or two, it could cause problems or even death. I learned that the hard way. It can be challenging especially considering we both have cold winters. I have colder winters than what you get which makes dormancy quite difficult here without a fridge. I'm actually using a basement windowsill which stays a little warmer than what I want but they still get some light. Do you have a basement window that gets cool? Another thing people in cold climates do is leave the plants outside but put about six inches or more of snow and pine needles to insulate them. Also having a large pot is very helpful to prevent the pot from freezing solid. Hopefully that made since and I wasn't jumping around too much lol

While I do have a basement, there's no window unfortunstely. I was planning on keeping it on an open windowsill in the day and move it to the basement itself at night, and bring it back up come morning. I work from.home so LOL
Also, I checked the rhizome and.. I'm not experienced enough to tell but, well, mixed signals. It looks ever so slightly more brown than previously, however it's also still pretty firm. I'll let you judge, I'm not as skilled in this LOL

It doesn't look bad IMO. It's probably just brown from the tannins in the peat moss. If it was brown from rotting it would be completely brown in some spots and very wet and squishy. Was it pushed up against the side of the pot? It's not great when the rhizome is growing down because the new growth points need to work hard to reach sunlight. How cold is your basement? If it's below 30F you can leave them down there for the rest of winter. If you want you could probably keep doing what you're doing or you could move it to the fridge. Because you unpotted it already, you can just wrap it in a moist paper towel, put that in a plasic ziplock bag, seal it, and put it in your fridge. That's what I would do. All you'd need to do is check on it every week to make sure mold isn't growing

Sundews69 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 9:26 pm It doesn't look bad IMO. It's probably just brown from the tannins in the peat moss. If it was brown from rotting it would be completely brown in some spots and very wet and squishy. Was it pushed up against the side of the pot? It's not great when the rhizome is growing down because the new growth points need to work hard to reach sunlight. How cold is your basement? If it's below 30F you can leave them down there for the rest of winter. If you want you could probably keep doing what you're doing or you could move it to the fridge. Because you unpotted it already, you can just wrap it in a moist paper towel, put that in a plasic ziplock bag, seal it, and put it in your fridge. That's what I would do. All you'd need to do is check on it every week to make sure mold isn't growing

Actually funnily enough, it wasn't growing against the pot. I just initially thought that as the plant grows it deepens the depth of the rhizome. I'll have to look into that.
And I'm not entirely sure about the basements temperature, however it's not insulated and it gets to be only slightly warmer than outdoors, by maybe one or two degrees. Later on it'll start to get to about -15C, or 5 farenheit, so it should get decently cold down there. So I'll probably do the thing of keeping it on an open windowsill for light in the day and bring it into my basement at night. *thanks for all this help btw you've given me some amazing information *

Sundews69 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 9:26 pm It doesn't look bad IMO. It's probably just brown from the tannins in the peat moss. If it was brown from rotting it would be completely brown in some spots and very wet and squishy. Was it pushed up against the side of the pot? It's not great when the rhizome is growing down because the new growth points need to work hard to reach sunlight. How cold is your basement? If it's below 30F you can leave them down there for the rest of winter. If you want you could probably keep doing what you're doing or you could move it to the fridge. Because you unpotted it already, you can just wrap it in a moist paper towel, put that in a plasic ziplock bag, seal it, and put it in your fridge. That's what I would do. All you'd need to do is check on it every week to make sure mold isn't growing

Oh yeah and I would do fridge dormancy, but one of my roommates despises plants and barely tolerates this one. If she sees this in the fridge one day I won't hear the end of it lol, when they first saw rhe flytrap they yelled for like 8 hours it's partially why I wanna keep this one alive so bad, idk when I can get another

LOL how can someone hate plants?!? Yeah, sounds like what you're doing is best so far. I wouldn't risk -15C. But part of the problem is wind chill and dry air. So with that in mind, you could still keep it in the basement by putting it in a bigger pot and/or wrapping the pot in something insulating to prevent it from freezing and then insulate the top of the pot with pine needles and a little snow. That's just a suggestion though and I haven't tried it myself. Another thing you could try is putting some snow in a cooler and put the plant in there if you want to keep it somewhere other than the basement. You'd just need to put a temperature reader in there to make sure it isn't too cold. I'm not trying to discourage you from keeping it on your windowsill, just giving you some suggestions

Yeah, VFTs grow slightly down when new divisions come along but that's just because the division comes from the bottom of the rhizome. They naturally grow to the side.

Phosmin wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 9:36 pm *thanks for all this help btw you've given me some amazing information *

Of course! That's what we're here for