It may possibly be aphids bothering the VFT. The VFT HAS to have dormancy in winter. They do not do well without it. They also should be grown outdoors in full sun all growing season. They are not indoor plants.

Hello Chanina,

There are a bunch of myths about Venus Flytraps that must first be addressed.

1. Humidity. These plants do not need high humidity to grow properly and be healthy. Many people grow them in 15% humidity just fine.

2. Light. A lot of people think that growing plants indoors still gives them plenty of light when actually the amount of light that reaches the plant from windows and artificial lighting is generally inadequate for full sun plants like Venus Flytraps.

3. Repotting. Venus Flytraps can be repotted just like any other plant. Get a 5 inch pot and buy some peat moss and perlite found in square bales from nurseries and hardware stores. Avoid anything in small bags as they might be fertilized. Fertilizer will kill your plant if you pot it in such soil. Just turn the old pot upside down and gently squeeze the sides and tap on the underside while holding one hand under the plant. The entire root and soil mass should come out in your hand and you can remove the old moss carefully. Pot up some new moistened moss and perlite in a 50/50 mix and plant the Flytrap in the middle of the pot, leaving the moss only slightly tamped down enough to hold the plant in place, but spongy enough to allow for water drainage and air circulation in the moss.

What kind of pitcher plant do you have? There are many kinds of pitcher plants, 5 known genera and about 100 or so known species. Each genera has its own likes and dislikes, so you will need to let us know what kind you have so we can help with that.

For the Venus Flytrap: Slowly reduce humidity by opening the fish tank a little every 3 days until the cover is completely off by two weeks time. Take the plant out of the fishtank at that time and it should be a bit more adapted to lower humidity in your home. It will be easier to care for and keep alive as an open pot plant since high humidity can induce fungal infections in indoors plants since the air inside is stagnant and their is little ultraviolet light to kill spores. Once the plant has been adapted to low humidity, you will need to address dormancy. If the plant has been in cool weather and short days for the last 4 months, it is likely out of season since it is just now winter. I just placed my plants in dormancy about 2 weeks ago. They should come out of dormancy in February. What region are you in? If your plant has not been in cool conditions and in short days, it was not dormant, rather was probably sick, perhaps from light starvation or infection. Low light is not the same as short photoperiod days. The length of light a plant gets in hours per day tells the plant when to go dormant. This happens naturally in winter between November and February. Low light all day in Summer generally means that the plant is getting seasonal light that simply is not full sun since it is indoors, so the plant knows it should not be dormant, but cannot get enough light to grow properly. This is what happens in stores when you see the plants sitting in shade. They are not ready to go dormant, but they are slowly starving to death.

I grow mine indoors only because I have to for now. I keep mine alive only due to very high intensity light from 12000 lumens of florescent shop lights. Even then, that is simply not full sun to these plants and I have my Venus Flytrap 1 inch from the lights in the growing season. It would be better if I had a good window and extra florescent light over them if I have to grow them indoors. I would much rather have them outdoors and not have to worry about light as that would be optimal for these full sun plants.

When Venus Flytraps, or any plant for that matter, grow deformed leaves it is generally from pests like Tommyr advised, infection from fungus or bacteria, chemical damage, leaf burn, or humidity problems. The fact that your plant is quickly growing new leaves that are deformed and die quickly indicates that it is badly disoriented and does not know what season it is in. It also indicates that something is damaging the plant. Repotting the plant in fresh soil and getting it into a stable environment with more light will help. (Stop moving it around so much from room to room as plants have roots; that means they like to stay in one place). In this case, trying to get the plant to go dormant might kill it at this point if it is sick. Keeping it from going dormant in high intensity long photoperiod light might also kill it sometime next year if it survives winter with no dormancy. It is a sad situation when Venus Flytraps have growth problems right before dormancy.

Do not despair if you lose this plant. Just try again next year with one bought from a specialist nursery or get one that is healthy just as a store stocks them. If they sit too long in shade in hardware stores they will be sick when you get them and might die a few months later like what might be occurring with yours.

I'm from Israel, everyone says that the plants die easily, I guess they don't know them well?
The sun is pretty harsh here, and the weather is crappy, one day sunny the next all gloomy, couldn't that mix them up?
I want to put them outside, it doesn't get that cold, but wouldn't the sun be too much for them?

Hello Chanina,

Oh, ok, well Israel would be a different story. You might want to buy tropical plants for inside growing there.. The North American plants would be very hard to keep alive there inside or outside from what I understand of how harsh the climate is there.

Your right to keep them in a window for light. If the humidity is below 15 percent there you might have to give them extra humidity. Venus Flytraps and Sarracenias can survive 100 degree weather at most, so if the temperature gets over that, do not put them outside.

You must be living in the Negev! We do have hobbyists that grow VFT's successfully in our desert Southwest. One needs to make sure that there is adequate water and acclimate plants from where they are to where they will be. For instance, I had my dormant VFT's & Sarracenias in buckets, as a minibog, in our cold attic for the winter. When spring came I moced them to our porch - under the porch, so that it wouldn't be too much too fast. Can you provide a shady location for awhile?

Two basic concepts should be followed: slow acclimation and refraing from tinkering too much.

Shalom!

no, i do not live in the negev :)
I live near Tel-Aviv.
Shoud I keep them in the shade and cool? even away from the window?

That would be a good start. Then gradually get them acclimated to Middle East conditions. We have a hobbyist who lives in our desert southwest and his plants are magnificent. They grow in drier substrate but that leads to longer and deeper roots. VFT's are sun lovers out of proportion to many other CP's. But at this point you are acclimating.