I actually just started reading up on them this morning and it's extremely fascinating! I plan on doing a few experiments to see what all I can do to trick it, eventually. I think I might start hand feeding it to see if I can get it too bulk up.
The one thing I'm a bit worried about it the supposed dormancy period that they require yearly. Apparently you can skip it, but they'll die off eventually. I'd like to get some more so I could pollinate and gets seeds.
I think it's safe to say we are all a little bit of organic/plant nerds lol. I'd get some strange looks bringing this up in casual conversation on the street! This is from What a Plant Knows:
The amazing characteristics of the Venus flytrap led Charles Darwin,
who was among the first scientists to publish an in-depth study of the
plant and other carnivorous flora, to describe it as “one of the most
wonderful [plants] in the world.” Darwin’s interest in carnivorous plants
illustrates how naive curiosity can lead a trained scientist to
groundbreaking discoveries. Darwin begins his 1875 treatise
Insectivorous Plants in this way: “During the summer of 1860, I was
surprised by finding how large a number of insects were caught by the
leaves of the common sun-dew [plant] (Drosera rotundifolia) on a heath
in Sussex. I had heard that insects were thus caught, but knew nothing
further on the subject.” From knowing virtually nothing about the matter,
Darwin became the foremost expert on carnivorous plants, including the
Venus flytrap, in the nineteenth century, and indeed his work is still
referenced today.
We now know that the Venus flytrap feels its prey and senses if the
organism crawling around inside its trap is the right size to consume.
There are several large black hairs on the pink surface of the inside of
each lobe, and the hairs act as triggers that spring the trap closed. But one
hair being touched is not enough to spring the trap; studies have revealed
that at least two have to be touched within about twenty seconds of each
other. This ensures that the prey is the ideal size and won’t be able to
wiggle out of the trap once it closes. The hairs are extremely sensitive,
but they are also very selective. As Darwin noted in his book
Insectivorous Plants:
Drops of water, or a thin broken stream, falling from a
height on the filaments [hairs], did not cause the blades to
close … No doubt, the plant is indifferent to the heaviest
shower of rain … I blew many times through a fine
pointed tube with my utmost force against the filaments
without any effect; such blowing being received with as
much indifference as no doubt is a heavy gale of wind. We
thus see that the sensitiveness of the filaments is of a
specialized nature.
Even though Darwin described in great detail the series of events
leading to trap closure and the nutritional advantage of the animal protein
to the plants, he couldn’t come up with the mechanism of the signal that
differentiated between rain and fly and enabled the rapid imprisonment of
the latter. Convinced that the leaf was absorbing some meaty flavor from
the prey on the lobes, Darwin tested all types of proteins and substances
on the leaf. But these studies were for naught, as he could not induce trap
closure with any of his treatments.
His contemporary John Burdon-Sanderson made the crucial discovery
that explained the triggering mechanism once and for all. Burdon-
Sanderson, a professor of practical physiology at University College in
London and a physician by training, studied the electrical impulses found
in all animals, from frogs to mammals, but from his correspondence with
Darwin became particularly fascinated by the Venus flytrap. Burdon-
Sanderson carefully placed an electrode in the Venus flytrap leaf, and he
discovered that pushing on two hairs released an action potential very
similar to those he observed when animal muscles contract. He found that
it took several seconds for the electrical current to return to its resting
state after it had been initiated. He realized that when an insect brushes
up against the hairs inside the trap, it induces a depolarization that is
detected in both lobes.
Burdon-Sanderson’s discovery that pressure on two hairs leads to an
electrical signal that is followed by the trap closing was one of the most
important of his career and was the first demonstration that electrical
activity regulates plant development. But he could only hypothesize that
the electric signal was the direct cause of trap closure. More than one
hundred years later, Alexander Volkov and his colleagues at Oakwood
University in Alabama proved that the electric stimulation itself is the
causative signal for the trap’s closing. They applied a form of electric
shock therapy to the open lobes of the plant, and it caused the trap to
close without any direct touch to the trigger hairs. Volkov’s work and
earlier research in other labs also made it clear that the trap remembers if
only a single trigger hair has been touched, and then it waits until a
second hair is triggered before closing. Only very recently did this
research shed light on the mechanism that allows the Venus flytrap to
remember how many of its hairs have been triggered, which I’ll explore
in chapter six. Before we get to the ways in which plants remember, we
need to take some time with the connection between the electric signal
and the movement of the leaves.
Peace!
P-
space cadet...
