Herself's Houseplants

The Venus flytrap has a “memory”. In order to avoid reacting to a “false alarm”, the plant does not snap shut at the first touch of the sensory hairs. Instead, there must be at least two stimulations of the hairs within 30 seconds. After that, the trap closes fast so that the prey cannot make a last-gasp escape. How does the trap’s memory work? The hypothesis is that certain messenger chemicals are released every time the hairs are stimulated, and these substances accumulate in the trap. Only when these substances reach a certain threshold concentration does an ion channel open – like the mechanism used to transmit signals in our nerve cells—producing an action potential that allows the leaves of the trap to shut.

The trap snaps shut

Trap closing chemical factors

Researchers isolate the substance that causes Venus Flytraps to close