Slowly. Bring it out and put it near a cold window that gets a little light. When its obviously growing again, then you can see about putting it in a warmer/sunnier spot. Seriously take it slowly, last year i just popped all mine into a terrarium when i decided their dormancy was over, and every last one rotted up and died.

Thanks. Its been zzzzz since Nov 12. Know they can be touchy coming out. I have only a North exposure. Granted its the entire North wall but the light is pathetic 2000 fc's and is at about 70ºF. drops to 50 -55 nights. Will that do it? Keep light on the water until there are new signs of life? I water it about 1x/mo. Its moist. Smells very "earthy". Think thats the moss.
-Can anyone ID this VFT? It never went dormant. I should have put it down
- ID for the tall Drosera to the left?
Thanks
CV
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I agree with slow adaptation to temperature, humidity, and light changes, however; they are not going to instantly wilt and die for no reason. I just took my Venus Flytraps out of an ice chest that I placed frozen water bottles in.. opening it by day in a south window for several hours most of the time and closed by night, and they are doing fine even after a total bareroot repotting. Some actually broke off the mother plant and had to be repotted separately. The cool room sounds perfect, letting the temps go down to 50-55 in a North window would be just right to give them an adjustment period as it warms and greater day lengths occur. After a few days, they will be just fine in regular day lengths of 12 or more hours and at room temps of over 75. Mine were fine after I let the ice melt for a couple days between replacement, allowing the temp to warm up to about 60 for a few hours at a time before taking them out in regular room temps. Two days after taking them out, they started catching insects and spiders themselves and have not suffered any ill effects at all (no dying traps from indigestion).

Yours might be a Red Dragon or a typical with a lot of sunlight, I would bet a Red Dragon... try giving it even more light and see if more red develops on the petioles.

The Drosera looks like a D. filiformis or D. graminifolia. If filiformis, it should go dormant like the Flytrap... if graminifolia, it is a tropical that likes full sun and cool roots. Both look very similar. Ask whoever you bought it from and see what species it is exactly if nobody here can precisely place your Drosera.

Thanks to you both.
The VFT will go from 38ºF to the 70º room N exposure. I have well too many plants to be hand acclimating. I can crack the door and give it a little cold air but the light is painfully bad which concerns me. cfl's will raise temps. Hope for the best. This VFT was a prolific bloomer but not a great catcher.

The red one is maxed out with light. 85wcfl (380w equiv) + a 42 w cfl. The structure of the red looks a bit different than a common green VFT. In full sun the Green only got a pink tinge at the traps so Dragon is probably correct. TY I detest having NO ID plants! Its growing new traps. Hope it doesn't zzzzzz come bug season. The green went dormant by itself in Oct. The red kept on going. Should I have forced it down? I often have to do that with winter deciduos orchids

The other carnivor was a gift. It appears to be a Drosophyllum lusitanicum. Could that be correct?
CV

It could be D. luscitanicum or D. graminifolia. It depends upon how the leaf unfurls.

Here is a picture of a section of D. graminifolia leaf with tentacles. The tentacles of D. graminifolia will bend to grip prey and the entire top third of the leaf can flex like D. capensis. D. lusitanicum cannot flex its tentacles or leaves at all and the tentacles are shorter and look more like thumbtacks than pins. D. filiformis cannot flex its leaf, but can flex tentacles.

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Here are the three that I have been growing for over a year.

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Mine tend to all die, but this year was my first attempt at fridge dormancy and I'm seeing my first sign of life in sarracenia and I am quite thrilled. The VFTs are likely dead-I have no idea why. The sarrs were all potted up and placed on the south windowsill. When I pulled the second wave out and had no more room, three pots went into the closet under the lights and I am seeing my very first sarracenia flower stalk starting! I'm worried about changing the conditions too much, but I think it'll have to come out of the closet (literally, not...well, you know. Not that there's anything wrong with that....) soon because the flower stalk won't fit under the lights. Maybe it'll go back to the window.

I'm guessing that the VFT procedure should be the same. Sunlight is probably ideal, and not drastic conditions.

Ilbasso:

I think the keys to ensuring VFT health during dormancy would be to slowly acclimate them to lower light in November all month down to about 8 hours the last week. Just as the plants start making short prostrate petioles and loose some of their coloration, they are ready for temperature reduction by gradual levels for a few days. I typically use the ice chest as I can create a microclimate to any temperature I want there. I place two ice bottles (16-20 ounce) in the chest near the plants the first night, adding two each morning after that to simulate a gradual cooling over several days. I even let the ice melt off for a day or so between replacement to simulate warmer days sometimes. Eventually, after a week or so of this treatment, I have up to 8 bottles around the plants directly touching the pots. The ice chest also keeps humidity high as condensation occurs constantly, so drying does not occur easily as it does in the fridge.

If I were to try the fridge, I would ensure the plants were still in their pots and just place them in a big ziplock bag with the zipper only slightly open for air circulation. I would ensure they had some water to keep them moist every so often as the fridge will dry them badly. Before putting them in the fridge I would also slowly acclimate them to lower temps first.

I also open the ice chest in winter to give the plants some light by day for several hours in a window... this reduces fungus due to ultraviolet light and allows air circulation from the ceiling fan. I did not even require fungicide this last winter and no fungus was noticed on any of the dormant plants... VFT or Sarr. Occasionally I misted them to clean spores off their leaves and moisten their soil slightly every month. Thats it... they all survived with no extra precautions and the Sarr is beginning to flower and the VFT are growing new leaves and trapping prey like normal.

Just wanted to thanks for the illustrations!

My VFT has been in dormancy only since about the middle-end of January - I know three months is the recommended minimum; will bringing it out now will it harm the plant? I guess it would be more convenient to leave it in the fridge and bring it out the last week of April after I move home - will leaving it in that long do anything but possibly shorten the growing season?

mutant_hybrid, your tips from my previous thread about dormancy have worked very well. I bought a small (about the size of the super-small refridgerators that hold 6 cans of pop) foam cooler and added bottles of ice gradually, for short periods of time and then left the plant in there with them longer over the course of probably 2 weeks. Since I have a mini fridge, I could only fit 3 bottles of water in the freezer with the food in there, but that amount seemed to work fine. It's been in the fridge since then, in a Ziploc bag. I haven't had any problems with it drying out - I take the plant out of the bag and put it in the cooler with some ice and a light on it about once a week to air it out, and I set it in a small dish of water to let it soak up a bit. I have only had to trim two dead traps off.

I plan on doing the same thing to bring it out of dormancy. I am also going to repot it this spring, which I will not be able to do until the end of April. When would repotting it fit in best with bringing it out of dormancy? I don't know how worried about shock I need to be, but I assume it should be fully out of dormancy (i.e. the soil has warmed completely to room temperature) - should I wait until it starts growing again before repotting?

jmach, you are best to repot it while it is dormant. If you wait until it starts to come out of dormancy, the repotting is going to set it back with "transplant shock".

Venus Flytraps respond well to repotting in general, though it is easier to repot them just before they fully wake up.

Thanks for the advice - do I need to worry about temperature differences between the new and old pots? For example, should I put the new potting mix and pot in the fridge with the plant to cool it down before transplanting it, or bring the plant up to room temperature?

Don't worry about temp differences. Just do it! I took mine out of the fridge about a month ago, Placed in mix and off they went. Same with my Sarrs.

If you have the opportunity to match temp and humidity, by all means do so.

Thanks for the great info on acclimating the VFT

Does anyone have pics of a VFT just before it goes dormant and just when it comes out?
CV

Pictures? Did someone ask for pictures? Ooh, I do like that :)

It's actually a difficult topic, because dormancy looks very different, depending on the set-up....

In the wild, the old traps likely die off, and a winter rosette of small, slowly forming traps forms during dormancy, then tall, vigorous spring traps plus a flower stalk emerges when the plant breaks dormancy.

In the fridge, the plants are really in suspended animation, so there should be no or little change from when you put them in the fridge to when you take them out. In reality, the old traps from the previous year will probably turn black and die, but the bulb should stay white and healthy.

In MY conditions, where frost threatens from late September through to late May each year, here's what happens with respect to dormancy:

By September, the plants pretty much stop putting up new traps, so I end up with mature plants with mature traps, and little new growth. The weather is cooling, and the days are getting much shorter, and the plants sense this and stop growing...they go dormant. I bring them indoors to a basement window with a bit of sun by late September. They look like this:
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I overwinter plants in a basement window with only a bit of sun, but with winter temps typically 45-55F near the window. A new rosette of tiny winter traps forms, and the older traps may either continue to live, or gradually die. By mid-late November, a rosette of tiny winter traps has clearly formed around the center of the rosette. The big summer traps remain healthy:
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In this February pic, most of the old traps remain quite healthy, as does the rosette of winter traps, but there are a few more vigorous traps starting to form -- the first sign of the plant wanting to break dormancy, about 5 months after going dormant.
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Fast forward to March 9, now 6 months after the flytraps went dormant, and they are aggressively trying to break dormancy. You can see the vigorous new growth of spring traps, which have overwhelmed the tiny winter traps. Amazingly to me, many of the old traps from last August and early September still remain healthy. (In another pot I have, those older traps died off over the winter.)
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Anyway, that's my experience with dormancy, hope it helps. Now how to keep my plants semi-dormant for another two months until I can put them outside... hmmm.
-Don

Beautiful plant and photo! Thank you. I have one that looks like it needs a rest now. Its growth is slowing but making another new trap. Not wondering if I should put it down for a quick dormancy. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
CV

I wouldn't put it in dormant conditions now, I'd wait until next fall. You don't want to get completely out-of-whack with the natural cycle of dormant in fall, growth in spring and summer.

Relatively new plant. Doubt it went dormant in the fall. I'll keep an eye on it. In the event I have no choice what is the best course of action?
CV

Let it grow now. Wait until this fall/winter to give it dormancy. Too late now. It'll be o.k.

This is the new growing season. Worry about dormancy in another half year.

I looked for a website to read, I could learm.any/everything about my new VFT. Then I noticed the dates on these posts.... 13 years ago!!!

So how to everyone's Fly traps doing?

What the life span of one anyways.