Carolina Beach, NC – The Jesse Anderson ranger takes dozens of people on a weekly walk in North Carolina to see some of the most unique living beings in the world: plants that complement the nutrients they obtain from sunlight when digesting ants, flies and spiders.
But the Venus Flight raps They are not like the Audrey of human, voracious and cruel in “Little Shop of Horrs.”
In nature, Venus flies are the size of a Lima bean and have no damage to anything but insects. Their special hairs come together when they brush, but only twice in about 20 seconds or less to reduce the amount of false alarms due to dust or rain.
Once inside, the insect is condemned to become plant food, Anderson said.
“It continues to trigger those hairs and the trap closes slowly and finally begins to release digestive enzymes to start breaking the insect. And because they are in poor enthorses in nutrients, they complement their food with insects,” Anderson said.
Anderson walk in Carolina Beach State Park On the southeast coast of North Carolina also shows other carnivorous plants. There are vase -shaped jug plants with liquid in the background that catches insects and then digest them. Butter and suns that attract insects with bright leaves, then secrete an adhesive to catch them instead. The Bladderworts work similar to the traps for Venus.
And the walk is one of the few places to see the traps for Venus. The plant only grows in 12 counties in the southeast of North Carolina, near Wilmington and some nearby places in South Carolina, which made the body the state. Official Carnivorous Plant in 2023.
Now it is an especially good time to wear that walk. Venus Flytraps Bloom since mid -May in mid -June, said Anderson.
The flos trap is a fragile plant that needs fire to survive. Forest fires in pine forests where they grow from excessive growth to provide the abundant sunlight that plants need.
They face two great enemies – poacher hunters and development.
The harvest of plants without permission is A serious crime in North Carolina and a minor crime in South Carolina. In 2016, a man He was sentenced 17 months in prison for taking almost 1,000 Venus traps from the hunting land in Hampstead, North Carolina.
And FLYS carvings live in one of the fastest growing parts of the United States, where neighborhoods and businesses have been built on their habitats. Most of the plants can now be found in preserves and other non -disturbed areas.
Scientists Cash Only about 300,000 flos traps in Las Carolinas several years ago.
While the Anderson walk is one of the few ways to see Venus floss traps in their natural environment, he said
“They like poor nutrient soils, nor can they support typical well or tap water. Therefore, they need things like rainwater or distilled water or compared to osmosis,” Anderson said.
Venus flos traps need abundant sunlight and wet but not soaked soils. And they don’t have to eat insects if they can get enough nutrients from photosynthesis.
Please, do not feed hamburger meat, that’s not what they eat. And try not to activate the leaves without something to digest. That requires a lot of energy that the plant needs to replace.
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Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this story.
