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Venus Flytrap Facts & Worksheets

Dionaea Muscipula, Venus flytraps are the most popular carnivorous plants in the world.

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A carnivorous plant endemic to North and South Carolina subtropical marshes on the United States East Coast is known as Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). It traps its prey, primarily insects and arachnids, using a trapping device made in the terminal region of each of the plant’s leaves and activated by tiny hairs on their inner surfaces (called “trigger hairs” or “sensitive hairs”).

See the fact file below for more information on Venus flytraps or alternatively, you can download our 21-page Venus flytraps worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

ETYMOLOGY

  • The plant’s popular name (formerly “Venus’ flytrap”) relates to Venus, the Roman goddess of love. The genus name, Dionaea, links to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, while the species name, muscipula, is Latin for both “mousetrap” and “flytrap.”
  • The Latin words muscipula (“mousetrap”) and decipula (“trap”) are derived from mus (“mouse”) and decipula (“trap”), respectively. In contrast, the homonym word muscipula (“flytrap”) is derived from Musca (“fly”) and decipula (“trap”). 

DISCOVERY

  • In a note to English botanist Peter Collinson on April 2, 1759, North Carolina colonial governor Arthur Dobbs wrote the earliest recorded description of the plant.
  • “We have a sort of Catch Fly Sensitive that shuts onto everything that touches it. It develops in Latitude 34 but not in 35. I will attempt to conserve the seed here,” he stated in the letter.
  • A year later, in a letter to Collinson dated Brunswick, January 24, 1760, Dobbs went into much further detail regarding the plant.
  • It was Europeans’ first thorough recorded mention of the plant. The account predated John Ellis’ letter to The London Magazine on September 1, 1768, and his letter to Carl Linnaeus on September 23, 1768, in which he described the plant and offered the English name Venus’s Flytrap and the scientific name Dionaea muscipula.

DESCRIPTION

  • When an insect or spider moving over the leaves comes into touch with a hair, the trap is ready to close, snapping shut only if another contact happens within twenty seconds of the first strike. Triggers can occur as early as a tenth of a second after contact.
  • Repeated triggering in this system protects against wasting energy by catching items with low nutritional value. After five more stimuli, the plant will only begin digesting to verify it has trapped a live insect worthy of eating.
  • Dionaea is a monotypic genus related to the waterwheel plant (Aldrovanda vesiculosa) and sundews (Drosera), all of which are members of the Droseraceae family.

POPULATION & DESIGNATION

  • The North Carolina Natural Heritage Program performed a large-scale study in 2019 and found 163,951 unique Venus flytraps in North Carolina and 4,876 in South Carolina, assessing a total of 302,000 individuals left in the wild throughout its native habitat.
  • It is a more than 93% decrease from a 1979 estimate of around 4,500,000 people. According to 1958 research, there are 259 verified surviving or historic sites. There were 71 locations where might find the plant in the wild as of 2016—evaluated only 20 of the 71 sites as having excellent or good long-term viability.
  • The Venus flytrap was named North Carolina’s official carnivorous plant in 2005.

CARNIVORY

PREY SELECTIVITY

  • The majority of carnivorous plants feed on particular prey, and this selection is influenced by the organism’s accessible prey and the sort of trap it employs. 
  • Prey for the Venus flytrap includes beetles, spiders, and other crawling arthropods. Dionaea’s food consists of 33% ants, 30% spiders, 10% beetles, and 10% grasshoppers, with less than 5% flying insects.
  • Given that Dionaea developed from Drosera (carnivorous plants that utilize a sticky trap instead of a snap trap), the rationale for this evolutionary branching becomes evident.
  • Drosera eats more petite, flying insects, whereas Dionaea eats enormous terrestrial insects. 
  • Dionaea can extract more nutrients from more giant bugs, and Dionaea has an evolutionary advantage over its previous sticky trap form.

TRAPPING MECHANISMS

  • The Venus flytrap is a select group of plants that can move quickly, including Mimosa pudica, the Telegraph plant, sundews, and bladderworts.
  • The mechanism that closes the trap is a complicated interplay of elasticity, turgor, and growth. The trap only closes after two stimulations of the trigger hairs to prevent dust and other wind-borne material from accidentally triggering the mechanism. The lobes are convex (bent outwards) in the open, untripped condition but concave (bent inwards) in the closed state (forming a cavity).
  • The trap is closed by the quick switching of this bistable state, although the mechanism by which this occurs is yet unknown. When the trigger hairs are triggered, an action potential is created, which propagates across the lobes and excites cells in the lobes and the midrib between them.
  • It is theorized that the Venus flytrap must reach a certain level of ion accumulation before responding to stimulation. According to the acid growth theory, individual cells in the lobes’ and midrib’s outer layers rapidly transfer 1H+ (hydrogen ions) into their cell walls, reducing the pH and loosening the extracellular components, allowing them to swell quickly by osmosis, elongating and changing the shape of the trap lobe.
  • Cells in the internal layers of the lobes and midrib, on the other hand, may rapidly release other ions, allowing water to follow through osmosis and the cells to collapse. Both processes may be involved and have experimental data to back them up.
  • Flytraps are an example of plant memory; the plant detects when one of its trigger hairs is touched and remembers this for a few seconds. The flytrap closes if there is a second contact during that time. After shutting, the flytrap counts five further trigger hair stimulation to begin the creation of digestive enzymes.

DIGESTION

  • If the prey fails to escape, it will continue to activate the inner surface of the lobes, causing a subsequent growth response that presses the lobe edges together, finally hermetically closing the trap and producing a “stomach” in which digesting occurs. 
  • The jasmonic hormone acid regulates the release of digestion enzymes, which is the same hormone that causes the production of poisons as an anti-herbivore defensive mechanism in non-carnivorous plants.
  • Once the leaf lobes’ digestive glands are active, the hydrolase enzymes produced by the glands catalyze digestion. GH18 chitinase is one of these enzymes that tears down the chitin-containing exoskeleton of imprisoned insects. This enzyme’s synthesis begins with at least five action potentials that promote chitinase transcription.
  • Dionaea muscipula is expected to utilize oxidative protein modification as a pre-digestive process. On autoxidation, aqueous leaf extracts include quinones such as the naphthoquinone plumbagin, which partners with various NADH-dependent diaphorase to create superoxide and hydrogen peroxide. 
  • Such oxidative alteration has the potential to break animal cell membranes. Plumbagin is known to promote apoptosis by regulating the Bcl-2 protein family.
  • When Dionaea takes were pre-incubated with diaphoresis and NADH in serum albumin (SA), it facilitated subsequent tryptic digestion of SA.
  • Because Droseraceae secretory glands contain proteases and possibly other degradative enzymes, the presence of oxygen-activating redox cofactors may function as extracellular pre-digestive oxidants to yield membrane-bound proteins of the prey (insects).
  • After roughly ten days of digestion, the prey is converted to a chitin husk. The trap then reopens and is ready to be used again.

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

  • Venus flytrap extract is marketed as a herbal cure and the main component of a patent pharmaceutical called “Carnivora.” 
  • According to the American Cancer Society, these items are promoted in alternative medicine as a cure for several human disorders such as HIV, Crohn’s disease, and skin cancer. However, scientific data does not support the Venus flytrap extract’s health claims.

CONSERVATION

  • Despite being commonly grown for sale as a houseplant, D. Muscipula populations in the wild have declined significantly. Since 1979, the number of people in its native range is predicted to have reduced by 93%.
  • The species is now being reviewed under the Endangered Species Act by the United States. 

Venus flytrap Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Venus flytrap across 21 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Venus flytrap worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about the Venus flytraps, which are the most popular carnivorous plant in the world. It has a very limited native range, growing only in the coastal bogs of North and South Carolina.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Venus Flytrap Facts
  • Coloring Activity
  • Comi-construction
  • Quick Quiz
  • Trap Family
  • Anatomy of the Venus Flytrap
  • Staying Alive
  • Art and Ad
  • Word Creator
  • Conservation Status

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Venus flytrap?

It is a carnivorous plant endemic to North and South Carolina subtropical marshes on the United States East Coast.

How does Venus flytrap trap its prey?

The mechanism that closes the trap is a complicated interplay of elasticity, turgor, and growth. The trap only closes after two stimulations of the trigger hairs to prevent dust and other wind-borne material from accidentally triggering the mechanism. The lobes are convex (bent outwards) in the open, untripped condition but concave (bent inwards) in the closed state (forming a cavity).

How long does the Venus flytrap digest its prey?

After roughly ten days of digestion, the prey is converted to a chitin husk. The trap then reopens and is ready to be used again.

Is Venus flytrap extract can treat a variety of human ailments?

According to the American Cancer Society, these items are promoted in alternative medicine as a cure for several human disorders such as HIV, Crohn’s disease, and skin cancer. However, scientific data does not support Venus flytrap extract’s health claims.

Is the Venus flytrap endangered?

Despite being commonly grown for sale as a houseplant, D. Muscipula populations in the wild have declined significantly. Since 1979, the number of people in its native range is predicted to have reduced by 93%.

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Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.

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