If you’re looking to expand your collection of carnivorous plants, you don’t have to stick to just dividing them. You can actually grow Venus flytraps from seed! While you can easily pick up a packet of seeds at the store, it’s way more rewarding to harvest them yourself if you already have a plant at home.
Getting Ready for Harvest
Before your Venus flytrap can produce those tiny seeds, the flowers need to be pollinated. Usually, the bugs buzzing around your house or garden in the summer take care of this for you. But if you want to be 100% sure the job gets done, you can play “busy bee” yourself. Here’s how to hand-pollinate step-by-step:
- Grab a small, soft paintbrush or a cotton swab.
- Gently swirl your tool inside an open flower to pick up pollen.
- Move to the next flower and rub the pollen onto it.
- Keep going until you’ve touched every single bloom.
How to Spot Ripe Seeds
Once the flower withers away, it will start forming a seed pod. Be patient, though—it takes a little while! You’ll know the seeds are ready for harvest when the pod itself looks completely dry. Inside, you’ll find a bunch of tiny, shiny black seeds that look like little grains. A cool fact: since there’s only one true species of Venus flytrap, your new baby plants will look just like the parent!
Harvesting Your Venus Flytrap Seeds
Harvesting the seeds is super simple. One easy way is to hold a small plate under the dried seed pod and give it a gentle tap so the seeds fall right out. Alternatively, you can snip off the dried flower heads and open the pods manually. My favorite “pro tip”? Tie a small plastic baggie around the flower head and give it a shake. The bag catches everything, and you just have to slide it off when you’re done.
Storing Your Seeds
To make sure your seeds actually sprout, they need a little “winter nap” before planting. The best place to store them is in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. They need a consistent cold period to trigger germination later on. Just make sure to keep them in a light-proof bag or container, as they prefer to stay in the dark until spring planting time.
One last thing: if you’d rather your plant focus on growing big, scary traps instead of making babies, you should cut off the flower stalk as soon as it appears. Flowering takes a ton of energy, and removing the stalk allows the plant to put all that power back into its traps!
