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Venus flytrap

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.07 sec.

Venus's-flytrap

 or Venus flytrap

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Venus's-flytrap (Dionaea muscipula)
(credit: Jack Dermid)
Flowering perennial plant (Dionaea muscipula), sole member of its genus, in the sundew family, notable for its unusual habit of catching and eating insects and other small animals (see carnivorous plant). Native to a small region of North and South Carolina, it is common in damp, mossy areas. Growing from a bulblike rootstock, the plant bears hinged leaves with spiny teeth along their margins and a round cluster of small white flowers at the tip of an erect stem 8–12 in. (20–30 cm) tall. When an insect alights on a leaf and stimulates its sensitive hairs, the leaf snaps shut in about half a second. Leaf glands secrete a red sap that digests the insect's body and gives the entire leaf a red, flowerlike appearance. After 10 days of digestion, the leaf reopens. The trap dies after capturing three or four insects.


Venus flytrap - [after the insect-eating plant] See firewall machine.


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? Mentioned in ? References in periodicals archive
 
She had lied to her teacher, claiming she had a Venus flytrap and would bring it in to show her classmates, and the lie became unbearable.
Call it a feminine variation on the male-rape fantasy: We're seductive but slippery, like a Venus flytrap.
No other plant motion, such as the snap of a Venus flytrap, comes even close, the researchers report in the May 12 Nature.
 
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