Sunday 19 July 2020

One Of The Many Groups Of Plants That I Like,

are the ones that are insectivorous,


like the one above, a Venus fly trap, (Dionaea muscipula), I like many others thought that for the trap to shut, the insect would have to hit 2 'hairs' within the trap for it to close, and apparently for 200 years, scientists have been studying how the trapping mechanism of Venus flytraps work. It is now known today that touching trigger hairs twice within 30 seconds would make the trap snap in an instant. New research from the University of Zurich (UZH) and ETH Zurich, however, found another way that could make the trap snap immediately: by touching it slowly, "Contrary to popular belief, slowly touching a trigger hair only once can also cause two signals and thus lead to the snapping of the trap," says co-last author Ueli Grossniklaus, director of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at UZH, scientists theorize that this happens to catch slow-moving larvae and snails, more details about this over at ScienceDailyI took the above photograph when we were living in Thailand and went to our local weekend plant market, and you know what I am going to say next, if only we had a garden!


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