Venus Flytrap

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is a carnivorous plant whose hinged leaves snap shut on insects. It grows wild only in a small region of the coastal plain of North and South Carolina, and is listed as Vulnerable.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Venus Flytrap in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Diaphoretickes lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

Each trap lobe has a few trigger hairs. One touch is not enough; two touches within about twenty seconds trigger an electrical signal and a rapid change in cell turgor that snaps the lobes shut in a fraction of a second. This counting prevents the plant from wasting energy on raindrops.

The closed trap seals and secretes digestive enzymes, which break down the prey over roughly a week. The plants live in nitrogen- and phosphorus-poor bogs, and insects supply the nutrients that the soil lacks. Photosynthesis still provides the plant's energy.

Habitat loss, fire suppression, which allows shrubs to shade out flytraps, and poaching have reduced wild populations. Taking wild flytraps is a crime in North Carolina.

• Photosynthesis — the plant's main energy source
• Nitrogen fixation — nutrient scarcity in bogs