Venus flytrap leaf pullings: new plants from old leaf bases

When to take leaf pullings

Leaf pullings are a by-product of repotting. The ICPS step-by-step page treats a flytrap that has spent a few years in one pot, or has grown to the pot edge, as due for fresh soil, and treats that repotting as the moment to split off side plants and take pullings ^[1]. The ICPS growing guide expects a well-kept plant to need repotting about once a year, when it runs into the side of the pot or the soil becomes so salty that traps on new leaves fail to develop ^[3]. The CPN article on indoor flytraps says every year or two and adds a timing rule: if the plant has stopped eating, repot as soon as possible; otherwise feed it well first and repot a few weeks later ^[2]. For plants grown outdoors, the ICPS guide notes that some growers repot every spring just as growth starts ^[3].

Repotting means cutting the bulb down to size anyway, and the CPN article suggests turning the removed part into extra plants for yourself or to give away ^[2]. The ICPS guide shows an overgrown ‘Akai Ryu’ split in two: one piece kept the growth point, and the other could be broken up into more than a dozen new plants ^[3].

What you need

• Planting forceps to lift the plant and set the leaves, dissecting scissors for trimming, and a small planting knife ^[1].
• A peat and sand mix. The ICPS page calls peat/sand usually the best soil for flytraps and points out how coarse its sand is. It rules out standard planter mix, which contains lime and fertilizer, and calls perlite risky because it can be salty ^[1].
• Coarse sand, both for the mix and for a top layer. The ICPS seed page uses #12 sand-blasting sand (14 and 16 mesh also work) and warns against play, builders’ or beach sand unless you sieve out the fine grains and wash it ^[4].
• Pots, a tray of pure water, plant tags, and a plastic bag or sealed terrarium for pullings that still have green leaf showing ^[1].

The soil and water guides explain why the mix and the water must be free of fertilizer and dissolved salts.

Taking the plant apart

1. Set out your tools somewhere you can make a mess ^[1].
2. Ease the plant out of its pot with planting forceps ^[1].
3. Study the rhizome. The leaves grow from it, and its oldest part rots away as the plant grows. Snap that old part off, but keep it: it is where most pullings come from ^[1].
4. Take off some of the outer leaves around the growing part too. Pull each one outward and downward so the whole leaf, white base included, comes away in one piece, and keep these as well ^[1].
5. Replant the growing part first. The ICPS page pots the mother plant and puts it straight into a tray of water before going back to the removed pieces ^[1]. How to pot it is covered in dividing a crowded Venus flytrap.

Planting the pullings

1. Trim each piece with dissecting scissors, cutting off the trap and any blackened leaf tissue ^[1].
2. Sort the pieces. A pulling that includes a chunk of rhizome with roots is the best possible kind; leaves that came off cleanly at the rhizome are good; a leaf that broke off without any of the part that touched the rhizome is probably worthless ^[1].
3. Fill a pot with peat/sand mix, leaving at least 1 cm of space at the top for sand ^[1].
4. For pullings with roots, make a hole with the forceps and ease the roots in, just as for a whole plant. In the ICPS example most pullings had no roots ^[1].
5. Fill the pot to the top with pure sand. For rootless leaves, use the forceps to draw each leaf base gently down through the sand until it just reaches the soil. If you cannot do that without damage, add only part of the sand, position the leaves with your fingers or a planting knife, and then top up ^[1]. In the CPN photos the leaf bases lie on the soil and are then buried completely by 1 cm of sand ^[2].
6. Spray the leaves thoroughly with water and add a tag with the variety and the date ^[1].

Aftercare: tray or bag

Where the pot goes next depends on how much green leaf is left above the sand. If none shows, stand the pot in the water tray with the parent plants. If green tissue sticks up above the sand, put the pot in a plastic bag or a sealed terrarium so the leaves do not dry out too much, and trim them back as they blacken ^[1]. That is an exception to the usual rule: the ICPS checklist says flytraps do not need terrariums, and suggests a plastic bag for a few weeks only when a newly bought plant has to be repotted before it has settled in ^[5].

Use the same pure water as for mature plants: rain, distilled or reverse-osmosis water, or tap water only if it measures below 90 ppm dissolved solids ^[3].

What success and failure look like

Progress is slow and mostly hidden under the sand. In the ICPS sequence the pot of pullings held a cluster of small plants 5 months after planting, which was the signal to separate them ^[1]. The CPN article captions its photo of established pullings “after six to 12 months” ^[2]. Neither source publishes a success rate.

Black leaves are the usual sign of loss, but not always a bad one. Leaf blades above the sand are expected to blacken and are simply trimmed off ^[1]. The pieces least likely to produce anything are leaves with no rhizome tissue at the base ^[1]. Separated plants do not all thrive either: one small plant in the ICPS follow-up photos had not grown in 5 months and was not expected to survive ^[1].

Separating and growing on

1. Lift the young plants once they are big enough to handle, which in the ICPS example was at 5 months ^[1].
2. Pot each one exactly as you would a mature plant, and label the pot ^[1].
3. Feed even the small ones with small pieces of rehydrated dried bloodworm. The ICPS page expects the small plants to catch up with the larger ones because they are all the same clone ^[1].

The ICPS bloodworm page sizes each piece at about a third of the trap, and reports that young flytraps fed once a week on one or two traps grow much faster ^[6]. The feeding guide covers the technique.

Pullings, seed and tissue culture

A leaf pulling copies its parent, so it is the way to multiply a named cultivar, and the reason the ICPS page has you write the variety on the tag ^[1]. Seed works differently. The ICPS growing guide says seedlings can take five years to reach maturity if they are not fed regularly, and that nobody raises flytraps from seed commercially except to look for new varieties; the plants worth propagating may be one in a thousand seedlings ^[3]. The steps for seed are in sowing seeds.

Nurseries multiply those selected plants by sterile culture, also called tissue culture or micropropagation ^[3]. A 2006 CPN article by David Conner describes doing this at home with flower stalks. Pieces of stalk are surface-sterilized in alcohol, bleach and hydrogen peroxide, laid on a sterile gel medium in sealed jars under lights, and, with luck, start new growth in about 4 to 8 weeks; a dozen or more plantlets can come from one piece ^[7]. Conner had found seed, division and leaf pullings slow by comparison, but his method needs sterile technique, a pressure cooker and a measured nutrient medium ^[7]. Leaf pullings need nothing beyond the tools already on the potting bench, which makes them the usual first step for growers who want more of a Venus flytrap they already own.