If you want to see Venus flytrap nirvana -
Link is to the facebook page of Jeremiah’s Carnivorous Plants in Colorado Springs. I’ve been there once while they were doing scheduled tours, and it’s multiple greenhouses with square feet of different plants with tiny walkways between. The link is to a very happy trap with dozens of little bity traps, and planters worth of more behind.
Oh. Mine never did. Possibly user error.
Watch some YouTube videos by people who work with Flytraps.
Possibly too many nutrients or not enough sun (flytraps are a full-sun plant and IME do poorly without it).
The house I grew up in had a large south facing window in the entryway. My mother found this a good spot for house plants, From about 1970, there were 5 plants on the table and all grew exceedingly well. This spot became known as the jungle. One of the plants was a Venus flytrap that my sister brought home from school. The flytrap soon outgrew it’s planter, my mother placed it in metal coffee can full of dirt. For years, it grew and grew. We had neighbors that raised cows so flies and other insects were plentiful. Around 1980 the coffee can was rusting through so I transplanted it into a plastic flower pot and used some fresh compost. It went on a growing spurt, it was about 3 feet tall, I counted over 50 traps on it. My mother passed away in 1989 and the house was sold. A cousin took the flytrap and it did well in her house. Around 2008 at a family gathering, we received the bad news. She told us during the winter they lost power for about 10 days and her house got down in the 40’s inside. The flytrap did not survive. To this day when the family gets together, if my mother is brought up, someone always has something to say about that Venus flytrap.
My Venus flytraps are grown outside. They very rarely catch flying insects. They mainly catch ground-dwelling bugs like opiliones (harvestmen). They don’t seem to actually attract their prey. Rather they seem to catch bugs that accidentally wander into the traps.
I don’t know what kind of plant you were growing, but it wasn’t a Venus flytrap. They grow in nitrogen and phosphorus-poor environments. Growing them in compost will kill them. And no Venus flytrap ever grew 3 feet tall. These plants grow low to the ground in a rosette, and have leaves that are typically 4 or 5 inches long.
Our previous house was about a block away from a small farm, and we had two dogs. As a result, we had a lot of flies in our back yard. We also had a dog door, so we ended up with a good amount of flies in the house. We tried flystrips, which our neighbor recommended, but really hated seeing the strips covered with dead flies. One day we saw Venus Flytraps on sale at the hardware store, and decided to give it a shot.
We did our research. We got a small LED grow light, and made sure to only water it with distilled water in the tray it sat in, so it never got direct water. The thing worked like a champ- it got fairly big, and really cut down on the number of flies in our house. It survived three years, and might’ve kept going but we had to move and had to get rid of it.
Yes.
Indeed, they die if they do not go dormant during the Winter.
Also, almost 40 years would be a world record for a flytrap, I’d think. 25 years is about the max.
You are correct I asked my sister about the flytrap. I was thinking of another plant. I think it might have been some kind of jade plant that grew a lot bigger than normal.
My own person record is about 2 weeks. I tried a few times and the paddles started to blacken practically before I got the poor plants to the car.
I did some cat and plant-sitting for someone with some 'traps a few weeks ago. I even added a few ounces of distilled water when their tray went dry and managed to not kill them.
And 3 or 4 inches is a large, multiple-years-old vft. Young ones are more like this:
If you keep them alive long enough they do produce relatively tall flower stalks.
My mom had a jade plant that thrived for her, becoming a small tree looking thing. My sister still has it, and has hacked off and rooted many daughter plants from it.