Venus Flytrap non-carnivorous leaves

I have a few different venus flytraps, one of the names varieties I grow is "Low Giant".  It was a nice enough plant that had a low rosette of large colourful traps.  This variety divides well and never has upright growth.

The Low Giant venus flytrap produced a lot of leaves and looked healthy, then in spring it decided to flower.  Sometimes I allows the flytraps to flower, other times I remove the flower stalk.  This time I cut off the flower stalk so the plant could put more energy into getting larger and stronger.

Low Giant Venus flytrap producing non-carnivorous leaves

 

Sadly, after I removed the flower stalk the plant did not produce any new leaves for a very long time.  A few months passed before it grew any more leaves. 

I started to wonder what was happening to this little plant.  It was growing next to a few other venus flytraps that were all producing a lot of new leaves and some plants were getting rather large.

Low Giant vft, not long after I removed the flowering stalk

Now it has started to produce leaves again, it appears to have divided, and is starting to produce small leaves instead of the large colourful leaves that it used to produce. 

As well as the normal flytrap leaves some of the divisions are also producing some non-carnivorous leaves.  I imagine this is short term, and it will get back to producing carnivorous leaves soon enough.  Hopefully it has time to do this and be fed before winter.

If all goes well this plant will over winter and I should be able to divide it into several plants in the spring.

Venus flytrap with non-carnivorous leaves

Interestingly , many of my venus flytraps seem to have female redback spiders (Latrodectus hasselti) living around the base of their pot.  Initially I thought they were catching insects that were drawn to the water, but most of my other carnivorous plants don't seem to have the spiders, only my venus flytraps.  I can't think of any reason why this would be.

Redback spiders are rather dangerous little spiders with a rather toxic venom for such a little spider.  Usually they won't bite unless provoked by something, something like picking up the pot they are living under!  For some reason they keep living near my venus flytraps, but not near any of the other carnivorous plants.

These spiders make picking up the pot to look at my plants a little more dangerous than I would like, and it means I have to tell my kids to keep away from the carnivorous plants for now.  Sometimes it rains and the pots get flooded and the spiders get washed away.  It normally doesn't take too long before a new spider arrives to replace the previous one.

Red back spider living near venus flytrap