How does the Venuss flytrap catch and digest its food?
We are used to the idea of plant eating animals. But the idea of animal eating plants is hard to believe. Nevertheless, there are several smallish plants that do devour the meat of insects. They live in regions where meaty food is needed to give them a balanced diet. The Venus’s flytrap grows wild in certain swampy regions of the Carolinas. Here the soil is short of nitrogen compounds. All plant life needs these food chemicals to grow and stay healthy. But plants do not give up easily when things get tough. The lack of nitrogen is a severe hardship ¬but nature has given the Venus’s flytrap a most astonishing way to solve it. The soil has little or no usable nitrogen, but there is plenty of it in the tiny bodies of passing bugs. The flytrap has a built in booby trap to catch insects and a way to make the best use of their valuable chemicals. The flytrap sprouts about ten heart shaped leaves, each one built to spring shut like a miniature bear trap. The plant grows about one foot tall wi
