2013-07-11

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Brads Greenhouse & Gardening

The Venus Flytrap / How to Grow a Venus FlyTrap. Everything you need right here...accept the plant. How to grow this carnivorous plant in 3 minutes.

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Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients (but not energy) from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans, typically insects and other arthropods. Carnivorous plants have adapted to grow in places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as acidic bogs and rock outcroppings. Charles Darwin wrote Insectivorous Plants, the first well-known treatise on carnivorous plants, in 1875.[4]

True carnivory is thought to have evolved independently six times in five different orders of flowering plants,[5][6] and these are now represented by more than a dozen genera. These include about 630 species that attract and trap prey, produce digestive enzymes, and absorb the resulting available nutrients.[7] Additionally, over 300 protocarnivorous plant species in several genera show some but not all these characteristics.

The only two active snap traps—the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and the waterwheel plant (Aldrovanda vesiculosa)—are believed to have had a common ancestor with similar adaptations. Their trapping mechanism has also been described as a "mouse trap", "bear trap" or "man trap", based on their shape and rapid movement. However, the term snap trap is preferred as other designations are misleading, particularly with respect to the intended prey. Aldrovanda is aquatic and specialised in catching small invertebrates; Dionaea is terrestrial and catches a variety of arthropods, including spiders.[12]

The traps are very similar, with leaves whose terminal section is divided into two lobes, hinged along the midrib. Trigger hairs (three on each lobe in Dionaea muscipula, many more in the case of Aldrovanda) inside the trap lobes are sensitive to touch. When a trigger hair is bent, stretch-gated ion channels in the membranes of cells at the base of the trigger hair open, generating an action potential that propagates to cells in the midrib.[13] These cells respond by pumping out ions, which may either cause water to follow by osmosis (collapsing the cells in the midrib) or cause rapid acid growth.[14] The mechanism is still debated, but in any case, changes in the shape of cells in the midrib allow the lobes, held under tension, to snap shut,[13] flipping rapidly from convex to concave[15] and interring the prey. This whole process takes less than a second. In the Venus flytrap, closure in response to raindrops and blown-in debris is prevented by the leaves having a simple memory: for the lobes to shut, two stimuli are required, 0.5 to 30 seconds apart.[citation needed]

The snapping of the leaves is a case of thigmonasty (undirected movement in response to touch). Further stimulation of the lobe's internal surfaces by the struggling insects causes the lobes to close even tighter (thigmotropism), sealing the lobes hermetically and forming a stomach in which digestion occurs over a period of one to two weeks. Leaves can be reused three or four times before they become unresponsive to stimulation, depending on the growing conditions.