Hello!
Venus flytraps are in the news - this is very exciting for me because houseplants don't hit the headlines that often. The spike in interest stems from the new John Lewis Christmas ad which centres on a giant venus flytrap called Snapper. You can watch the ad here. (If you're not British, you may not be aware that this department store's annual Christmas TV ad is a bit of a fixture, always garnering headlines and in some cases setting the mood of the nation for the upcoming festive season.)
Of course, this is likely to cause a surge in interest from people who want to buy flytraps, if the Google search stats are to go by. Houseplant sellers shop The Little Botanical will be selling flytrap live plants for Β£10 in store in a collab with John Lewis (all called Snapper of course) and the store are also offering Snapper plush toys for Β£18. (There are various other product tie-ins: I want the PJs.)
I've been on TikTok and Insta talking about the ad - and explaining why it's part of a longstanding tradition of turning this relatively tiny (in stature and geographical distribution) species into a fantastical creature. It's wildly inaccurate of course - the flytrap seed is acorn-sized for instance - and flytraps will never get anywhere close to that size. There are some bigger flytrap cultivars with larger traps and leaves, but they still only reach a few centimetres tall and a whole plant can reach a diameter of about 20cm. The biggest trap on a venus flytrap recorded was 6.1cm long.
Nevertheless there are loads of accounts in popular culture of huge flytraps - Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story called The American's Tale about a man in Arizona who got eaten by a giant flytrap.
But I want to talk about why the venus flytrap aka Dionaea muscipula isn't a great choice as a houseplant, unless you have quite a bit of experience, but what to do if you really want to keep one (or already have one that is ailing).
- Flytraps' needs are rather different from most of the popular houseplants we grow indoors. They fly off the shelves at garden centres and DIY stores because people are so enchanted by their curious looks and habits, but the vast majority of these plants don't survive long, because people think they can treat them like a regular houseplant. For instance they need rainwater or distilled water, not tapwater.
- You can't just give them regular houseplant potting mix either. They need special type of potting soil that mimics the low-nutrient, sandy conditions of their homes in the coastal bogs of North and South Carolina.
- Flytraps should be sat in a shallow tray of water around 2cm deep from spring to autumn - keep them moist but not wet in winter. They also need as much sunlight as you can muster - place them in your sunniest windowsill, or supplement their light with an LED growlight. It also really helps plants to give them a winter rest period: put plants somewhere brightly light but cool - around 10C (50f).
- Strangely enough, in the wild flytraps don't eat many flies - they mostly live off a diet of ground-dwelling creatures such as beetles and spiders. They will most likely just catch the occasional fly in your home, which is absolutely fine - they don't need feeding every day.
- Tempting though it is, never trigger the traps using your finger. The traps only have enough energy to be set off two or three times, and they will die off pretty quickly if forced to close without a meal. And don't think of hand-feeding it with pieces of meat and the like - the traps are specially designed to only begin digesting food that is wriggling and struggling in the trap, so anything dead will just end up rotting inside.
Check out my book Legends of the Leaf for a whole chapter of fascinating flytrap facts, and listen to these episodes of On The Ledge.
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