The Venus Flytrap

General Information

The Venus Flytrap (Dionaea Muscipula) is the evidence that Charles Darwin was right when he created the Theory of Evolution. There are much more carnivorous plants in the world (including Sundews, Tropical Pitcher Plants, North Pitcher Plants etc. ) but Venus Flytrap is certainly the most advanced of them. It is native to North America. It lives on the East Coast of US in North Carolina, South Carolina and partly Florida. It lives on the subtropical wetlands.
Carnivorous plant?!
As I mentioned before Venus Flytrap lives on the subtropical wetlands. This means that the nutrients are often washed out from the soil. Because of that Venus Flytrap evolved to catch insects and other small creatures to get those nutrients.
Ok, but how do it catch insects?
We still don't know how the whole process occurs so i will tell you some basic informations. Venus Flytrap has really characteristic traps, they look a bit like a mouth with teeth. And actually it works pretty similar. The plant produces sweet secretion on the edges of the traps which attract insects. When a hungry insect walks across, the trap snap shots. But, it's not that easy. The Venus Flytrap has special system to avoid losing energy for closing traps, it produces special trigger hairs. The insect needs to touch two of these hairs in 20 seconds to activate the trap, this is called action potential. Then the trap snap shots and catch the insect inside, but it doesn't close completely allowing smaller insects to escape. Why? Thats the other security system to avoid losing energy. When the insect is in a trap it moves, and these movement tells Venus Flytrap "Okay, it is worth digestion." if the insect is to small it can just go away and Venus Flytrap don't need to lose energy to digest it.

This plant is AMAZING! Can I get one? How to care for it?
Venus Flytrap isn't hard plant to grow. You just need to abide some basic rules.
1. A lot of sun
Venus Flytrap needs a lot of sun if you want to keep it on the window sill it needs to be aimed south. Otherwise you'll need some artificial lightning. I prefer using LED Grow lights and T5/T8 fluorescent light.
2. Humid but not wet
Watering is really important. There are two ways of doing that. You can make the soil wet once a week and then just let it dry or you can keep it moist but not wet all the time. I use both options.
3. Do not close the traps!
Never ever close the traps of VFT. Venus Flytrap uses a lot of energy to close the traps. So if you close it it will lose this energy. You can even kill your plant by doing that. Also remember that the food must move inside the trap for few hours so don't feed it burgers ;).
4. Hibernation
I will make another article about that :)

So...
Thank you for reading my article! :) Please smash that "money" button so i can make more and more posts :) And please remember... don't feed VFT's burgers ;)

Sorry for mistake it's not my native language :)

Sources:
Myself :)
Pixabay.com (Love their photos ;) )

Greeting's,
Pascal Hutyra