Venus Fly-trap in the sprung position after the trigger hairs were touched twice by the unfortunate fly whose wing can be seen protruding from the trap margin.
THE VENUS Fly-trap (Dionaea muscipula) is a carnivorous plant that catches and digests animal prey (mostly insects and arachnids). The trapping structure is formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant's leaves. The plant's name refers to Venus, the goddess of love and plant life.
The plant is a small herb, forming a rosette of four to seven leaves, which arise from a short subterranean stem which is actually a bulb-like Rhizome. Each leaf reaches a maximum size of about three to seven centimetres, depending on the time of year. Longer leaves with robust traps are generally formed after flowering. Fly-traps that appear to have more leaves are generally colonies formed by rosettes that have divided beneath the ground.
The Venus Fly-trap is found in nitrogen-poor environments such as bogs, in many places all over the world. In the United States, the Venus fly-trap is mainly found in the Carolinas. The nutritional poverty of the soil is the reason that the plant has evolved to have such elaborate traps: insect preys provide the nitrogen for protein information that the soil cannot. The Venus fly-trap is not a tropical plant and can tolerate mild winters. However, the Venus Fly-trap may be found in Jamaica at the Mason River Field Station in Clarendon.
