Pruning a Venus Flytrap

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Wes on behalf of Expert Village.com, and in this video segment I am going to show you how to grow the Venus fly trap. If you want to know more about carnivorous plants and Venus fly traps, you can visit us at equilibriocarnivorousplants.com. In this video segment, I am going to talk to you about pruning your Venus Fly Trap. It is important to know that the traps of the fly trap, like I said before, are just modified leaves that you would have on any other plant. These leaves will grow old and die. This is just the natural life cycle of the Venus Fly Trap. So usually what happens is that, as the fly trap leafs out a new trap like this one, an old trap will start to die, as you can see here. What you want to do when you are pruning…we like to use just simple pruning scissors. You go in and trim the dead traps as close to the base of the plant as possible. If you have traps that are just dead at the top, like this one here, you can just trim off the dead head and leave most of the stem. This is because the stem is still going through the process of photosynthesis and is still producing energy for the plant. At the end of the summer and before the plant goes into dormancy, you can start to trim off as many leaves as you like really just for aesthetic purposes, to create more symmetry and to make your plant looking as best as possible. "