Why Carnivorous Plants Are So Amazing

A Plant That Moves Fast Enough to See

A Venus flytrap snaps shut in a fraction of a second. That alone is wild for a plant. But it's smarter than that. A single touch of a trigger hair does nothing. It takes two touches close together to close the trap, which keeps it from wasting energy on raindrops and falling debris. Then the struggling prey keeps triggering the hairs, and that tells the trap to seal tight and start digesting.

Charles Darwin was obsessed with them. He wrote that the Venus flytrap was "one of the most wonderful in the world," and I agree with him.

So Many Ways to Catch a Meal

• Snap traps: Venus flytraps.
• Pitfall traps: Sarracenia, Nepenthes, and Heliamphora, with slick walls and a pool of digestive fluid at the bottom.
• Sticky traps: sundews, whose tentacles slowly curl around their prey, and butterworts, with flat leaves like flypaper.
• Suction traps: bladderworts, with tiny bladders that pull prey in faster than you can see.

Carnivory evolved several separate times in unrelated plant families, and each one came up with its own design. How many carnivorous plants there are.

Utricularia sandersonii, bunny flowers above, traps below, from $15

Drosera capensis Big Red, tentacles that curl, from $25

Not Everything Gets Eaten

Some of the coolest stories involve animals that live with these plants instead of being eaten by them. Certain Bornean Nepenthes have pitchers shaped to work as toilets for tree shrews, trading a perch and a snack for nutrient rich droppings. Another Bornean species provides roosting spots for tiny bats, which pay rent the same way. And in northern Sarracenia purpurea pitchers, whole little communities of insect larvae live in the fluid without being digested.

One Species, Hundreds of Looks

There's only one species of Venus flytrap, but growers and breeders have picked out every oddity over the decades: all red plants, fused teeth, giant traps, strange shapes. I've grown hundreds of varieties, and there's still something new every year. The same thing happens with Sarracenia and Nepenthes hybrids.

I've done some of this myself. In 2006 I crossed Nepenthes rajah with Nepenthes peltata and named the result Leviathan. In 2019 a cutting of it set a Guinness World Record for the most expensive carnivorous plant ever sold. I've also grown the world's largest Venus flytrap trap three times.

They Take You Places

Carnivorous plants have taken me all over the world, from Sarracenia growers in Italy to the Arctic hunting for tiny butterworts. My field trips and plant visits. Where these plants come from.

A Few of My Favorites

All in stock now.

Flytrap Alien Fused ToothFrom $55 Flytrap GJ ButterflyFrom $26 Nepenthes trusmadiensis x villosaFrom $195 Heliamphora minor var. pilosaFrom $160 Sarracenia x Royal RubyFrom $100 Drosera capensis TwizzlerFrom $45

Start With One

That's how it started for me: one flytrap on a windowsill. If you've never grown one, pick up something easy and see what happens. My beginner's guide will get you started. Fair warning, it's hard to stop at one.