Guide: Dormancy and overwintering for carnivorous plants in a cold climate

Description

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In November your flytrap turns black. The traps shrivel one by one, the plant flattens itself against the soil, and everything about it says the plant has died.
It hasn’t. And if you throw it out now, you are throwing out a living plant — which is what thousands of people do every autumn.

The opposite mistake is worse. Keeping the plant warm all winter doesn’t kill it right away. It comes back weakly in spring, spends a second winter warm, and dies of exhaustion in its third year. Almost nobody makes the connection.

This guide is written for here: where the ground freezes for four months, where snow lies all winter, and where most of the advice you find online simply does not apply.
Inside

What sleeps and what doesn’t: the full table, genus by genus
Reading the signs of dormancy in each species, so you stop panicking

Hardiness species by species, with concrete zone references across Canada
The five overwintering methods — bog garden, mulched pots, unheated garage, refrigerator, cold room — with the trade-offs of each

What actually kills plants in winter, and it isn’t cold
Waking up in spring, step by step
A month-by-month calendar and a printable winter record sheet
What most guides get wrong. Cold is not the danger. Freeze-thaw cycles, dry wind and frozen standing water are. A plant held at -5 °C all winter fares better than one swinging between +8 and -8 °C every week. And the container rule: in a pot, count one hardiness zone less — sometimes two.

Illustrated with photographs: what a dormant flytrap actually looks like, a sundew hibernaculum, botrytis on a crown, a healthy rhizome in section.