Matt’s Adventures in Northwest Gardening

Well, it was sorta provoked.

Jen bought a Venus Fly Trap - which you can see here at her LiveJournal. If you look at the picture, you can see the outline of an unfortunate victim inside the plan. Did it end up there naturally? Well, it was alive and it was inside the plant. How they came together in such a way, I will leave that story up to Jen.

So, here is a bit of info about Dionaea muscipula - which we call commonly the Venus Fly Trap. They are found in nature in the steamy swamps of North and South Carolina. They are commonly sold at grocery stores, where I too acquired one as a kid. Unfortunately, they are very fickle plants, and, being from humid and warm areas naturally, they are not suited for regular home growth. Instead of buying a plant terrarium, Jen is going to use a nice cheese plate and cover to recreate that sweltering magic land.

VFTs lure flies through the release of a scent like a normal flower. After a fly lands inside the head brushing against the tiny little hairs inside the plant’s head, the VFT snaps - slowly - closed, and traps the fly between its little plant teeth, finally sealing the poor fellow up. The head of the plant hermetically seals, and the plant then proceeds to digest its prey in about 10 days.

They are able to be grown without eating flies and other insects - but what fun is that?

What happens when you feed it a small piece of cooked Chicken? Yup, it turns black and dies. It is like the old saying, give a venus fly trap a fish and it’ll eat for a day; Teach a venus fly trap how to fish and it’ll eat for a lifetime.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 7:49 pm and is filed under For The Good of the Order. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.