Nature Voyagers

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is a carnivorous plant native to subtropical wetlands on the East Coast of the United States in North Carolina and South Carolina. It catches its prey—chiefly insects and arachnids—with a trapping structure formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant's leaves, which is triggered by tiny hairs (called "trigger hairs" or "sensitive hairs") on their inner surfaces. When an insect or spider crawling along the leaves contacts a hair, the trap prepares to close, snapping shut only if another contact occurs within approximately twenty seconds of the first strike. Triggers may occur if one-tenth of the insect is within contact. The requirement of redundant triggering in this mechanism serves as a safeguard against wasting energy by trapping objects with no nutritional value, and the plant will only begin digestion after five more stimuli to ensure it has caught a live bug worthy of consumption. Dionaea is a monotypic genus c...

Plants :  Angiosperms - Latest posts Angiosperms  are seed-bearing vascular plants. Their reproductive structures are flowers in which the ovules are enclosed in an ovary.  Angiosperms  are found in almost every habitat from forests and grasslands to sea margins and deserts.  Angiosperms  display a huge variety of life forms including trees, herbs, submerged aquatics, bulbs and epiphytes. The largest plant families are Orchids, and Compositae (daisies) and Legumes (beans). There are an estimated 352,000 species of flowering plants or  angiosperms . Statistics Species of  Angiosperms  contained within  The Plant List  belong to 405 plant families and 14,559 plant genera. The Plant List  includes 951,140 scientific plant names of species rank for the  Angiosperms . Of these 304,419 are accepted species names. The Plant List  includes a further 214,504 scientific plant names of infraspecific rank for the  Angiosper...