Venus fly traps are fairly easy to grow, if given their like - pure water, lots of sun, and winter dormancy - lost of any of these will kill them in the long run. Growing medium can be a sphagnum peat/ coarse sand mix at about 1:3 or 1:4, or a peat/sphagnum moss mix, at about the same ratio, with or without sand, or straight sphagnum moss. The traps will trigger 3-4 times before dying and if they don't get anything to eat (like your triggering the traps for fun) your slowly killing the plant. Their native to a small region in Virginia, not far from DC, and there are many, many different cultivars now days - check out some of the carnivorous plant discussion groups. Best, Chuck On Apr 30, 2007, at 9:00 AM, pbs-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote: > I am responding to the above discussion on Venus Fly Traps - I have > seen > them growing wild in the Appalachicola State Forest here in FL and > they prefer > open sunny locations with moist acidic soils, not too different > than where you > would find pitcher plants. They die back during the winter months > and come > back up in the spring. I don't know if they need a winter > dormancy, like our > pitcher plants seem to need in order to thrive long term or how > much cold > they can handle - but we get some solid freezes each winter that > far north.