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VFT Propagation Question

SubRosa

BS Bulldozer
I know that VFTs can be propagated vegetatively through the use of flower stalks, but I don't know the specifics, and I have an interesting situation I'm looking at. I divided a small piece off of my VFT last summer, and now it has two flower stalks forming. To complicate things, it's in a little dish of assorted CPs that I'm putting up for sale to benefit my aquarium club at a seminar we're sponsoring on 6/8. Given that the division is really small it would probably be in the best long term interests of this particular clone to not flower this season. The question is whether an immature flower stalk will work or does it have to have developed fully? TIA!
 
I know it's been done with flower stalks but I think you'd have a higher strike rate with basal leaf cuttings.
 
From what I have been told you want to cut it just before it flowers. After the flowers open it is too late. Good luck
 
when you use a flower stalk for multiplication, do you need a rhizome piece (a little bit of white) for better germination? like a leaf cutting?
 
Agree with Corky, I have gotten plantlets from stalks under two inches, but get a better rate waiting until they are at least three inches or close to buds opening up. They will produce plantlets for me after flowers have opened also, but the reason I cut mine before is so the plant's energy goes solely into trap production and growth.

You do not need to get any rhizome with the stalks, just cut them near the base and bury them with a little bit of stem exposed.

When I plant the stalks in the bog soil outside, I usually don't see plantlets until the following spring with the stalks turning brown and seemingly dead. When I float them on sloppy wet LFS in a container, I get plantlets by the end of the growing season. Not sure why that is.
 
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when you use a flower stalk for multiplication, do you need a rhizome piece (a little bit of white) for better germination? like a leaf cutting?

As far as I know, no. It isn't even possible (or just really, really difficult) to get some white rhizome on a flower stalk cutting--the stalk grows in the plant's center. If you did want to, you'd need to pull the whole plant apart. That's not very practical, unless you wanted to gruesomely pretend to murder your Venus flytrap. But you don't want to do that. Right? RIGHT?
 
Ok, thanks for all the help! These are about .5" right now, and with the cool damp spring we've had so far and which is predicted to continue into the forseeable future I'm not sure how big these will be when I have to cut them, but I'll be sure to post how it turns out.
 
those that put flower stalks in water, to get new plantlets, what do you do to keep algae from growing in the container and on the stalk? Thanks for any help

monkey_Cup
 
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those that put flower stalks in water, to get new plantlets, what do you do to keep algae from growing in the container and on the stalk? Thanks for any help

monkey_Cup

If you change the water out weekly, algae should not be a probem. To avoid having to do water changes, I stick the stalks in dead LFS with the water level kept at the surface and do not cover the shallow container. In my conditions this eliminates algae growth, but sometimes after an extended period green slime grows over the LFS, but that does not seem to affect plantlet growth. By that time though the plantlets are about ready for repotting anyway.
 
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