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A zillion little traps after cutting a flower stalk?


Roberto

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Hello,

my Dionaea has recently stopped growing normal-sized traps, and it has decided to produce zillions of small traps instead. I've counted more than 30 traps, all sprouted in the last 2-3 weeks.

This happened right after I cut the flower stalk (it was about 3 inches tall at the time), but this had never happened in the past, when I grew my Dionaeas outdoors. Today I'm forced to grow it indoors, at my office desk to be exact, under a 23W white fluorescent lamp (16h light/8h dark). So I really don't know how angry the poor plant might be for one thing or the other, the stalk or the weird growing conditions.

I'm sure others had similar experiences with Dionaea... Was cutting the stalk that caused all this growth this time?

Pictures:

General view of the poor accomodation

http://postmage.org/image/vl9616yz3/

Close-up of the zillion small traps

http://postmage.org/image/ypwdfqgx7/

How the plant looked like about a month ago

http://postmage.org/image/srb5vqa2l/

Edited by Roberto
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The Flytrap is dividing. It's common for a Venus Flytrap to grow one or more new rosettes (growing crowns) after putting up a flower stalk, usually but not always followed by a pause in growth before the new divisions become visible.

One way to look at it is this-- A single Venus Flytrap, with just one growing crown, will flower as the terminal action of that growing crown, just as many annual plants finish their growth by flowering and setting seed. In the case of the Venus Flytrap, the end of the growth of one rosette (represented by putting up the flowerstalk) often means that this particular rosette is ready to die, at the end of its lifecycle. But the plant (usually) has plenty of food and nutrients stored in the rhizome, from which new plants (the divisions) arise, from the tissue shared by all leaves at the bottom of the rhizome.

Some Venus Flytraps, depending on various characteristics or conditions, will produce just one new growing crown, or several, or many. These divisions can also happen (and frequently do happen) at other times of the growing season as well. Some Venus Flytrap clones tend to divide more frequently than others, but all have the capacity to replace themselves with new young plants from the old plant's remaining tissue.

Over the next weeks and months, every leaf from the old growing rosette, before the Flytrap produced the flowerstalk, is likely to die, and when the last one dies and the remaining part of the flowerstalk has darkened and died, nothing will remain of the old Venus Flytrap except for some leaf-base material under the surface of the growing medium that continues to feed the new, young divisions until it is exhausted.

Anyway, thanks for sharing the photos! :smile:

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Thank you FlytrapRanch, I think that's the exact case. Many of the old, big leaves are in fact blackening and dying.

You explained it so logically that I'm a bit ashamed I didn't realize it before, heheh. Thank you so much!

Roberto

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  • 3 weeks later...

I was thinking that it could be TC related too. Is the plant relatively new and was it purchased from a nursery or store, rather than being a division from a plant?

It certainly looks happy, considering that it is under artificial lighting. I've successfully grown a VFT this way in the past and it's surprising how little wattage is required if the lamp is close enough to the plant.

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Well, the plant was definitely not straight from tissue culture... It had quite the "grown-up" looks when I purchased it.

This is the first picture I took of it, from may 25 (just a note - the illumination has changed since then).

naotempreco.jpg

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I know what you mean, and I bought it at a flower shop (just a reseller then) so I can't exclude that the plant might have been raised by tissue culture. All in all, it's likely. But even so, by the size of its traps, it must have spent enough time out of TC before being sold (and then a further three months growing on my desk, before the burst started) to make the TC boost a less likely explanation, wouldn't you agree?

Besides, all but two of the old, bigger leaves blackened and died, just as FlytrapRanch predicted (the last two traps are senescent).

All considered, I would think that FlytrapRanch's explanation - the death of the old plant - nailed what happened in this specific case... or can the TC effect be so long-lasting, and delayed?

Edited by Roberto
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