Q: Why does my plant have two traps on a single leaf?

• 
  Dionaea 'Cupped Trap'
• 
  Developing

A:Every now and then, a plant makes a leaf with two traps on the same leaf. Sometimes these traps are completely separate and are completely formed. Other times they are partly attached to each other like conjoined twins. Even rarer is a leaf that makes three traps. I have neve heard of four traps on a leaf.

There's no explanation as to what causes this, or how to encourage it to happen more regularly. Nor are there any clones that are known to do this more commonly than any others.

One Dionaea cultivar ('Mirror') supposedly creates strange lobes on the backside of some of the leaves, and these lobes can even look like a second trap. However, it does not seem to make these weird lobes regularly, and I do not know if this plant's behavior is short-term. In a few years, it may turn out that this behavior was due to some weird reaction to an insecticide.

If you happen to find a plant that regularly makes two functioning traps on each of its leaves, contact me immediately and I'll PayPal you a whole ten dollars, as long as you promise never to tell anyone, or to complain when I make a gadzillion dollars off your plant.

Page citations: Blancquaert, D. 2010; personal observation.