The Venus Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, is a carnivorous plant that catches and digests animal prey—mostly insects and arachnids. Its trapping structure is formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant's leaves and is triggered by tiny hairs on their inner surfaces. When an insect or spider crawling along the leaves comes into contact with one or more of the hairs twice in succession, the trap closes. The requirement of redundant triggering in this mechanism serves as a safeguard against the spurious expending of energy toward trapping other, non-living things which may not reward the plant with similar nutrition.
I saw some small pots of the Venus fly trap at the Warehouse in Johnsonville a couple of months ago. I have been familiar with carnivorous plants for a long time now principally because I find them amazing. I have seen pitcher plants in the wild back in high school when we were tramping at the Mountain Provinces. I also remember gingerly dipping my finger onto a venus fly trap, although I can no longer remember exactly when that was.
I wanted to buy one pot when I saw the Venus fly trap but at almost $8.00, was quite expensive. I said to myself, if the price will drop to a dollar or something, I will buy one. Sure enough, it did last weekend. Unfortunately, the price dropped because the plant was already in an advanced state of failing health. A number of blackened leaves surrounded the core, a lone trap trying to reach out. Jo-Lo and I grabbed it and soon we were heading home with it.
The Venus fly trap was grown in sphagnum moss. I googled about this plant only awhile ago as introduction to this post. But I learned that it favors swampy environments and - this is the bad news - it is a difficult plant to grow and propagate. For one thing, you can never truly simulate a swampy environment at home, and it is rather picky about the soil (or lack thereof, hence the sphagnum moss). What I did though is get some rich soil and plant the fly trap into it, sphagnum moss and all.
The Venus fly trap is housed inside the sun room, and has been with us for a week now. So far the lone trap is still reaching out and I think it is also experiencing some new growth. But the trap is so small I don't think it can catch anything at all. In fact, the plant itself is quite small. At any rate, I hope it pulls through and grows more traps.
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