Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: 17 October 2010

Happy Boxing Day, everyone! Just needed something completely different from snow and old barns. Dug deep into my archives and came up with this macro of a leaf tip of a Venus Flytrap plant. A splash of colour feels good today - a sunny day, but with a temperature of -18C (-0.4°F) with a windchill of -24C (-11.2°F). This macro shot shows the trap slightly open. I'm not sure why some traps are green and others more yellow, orange or red, but I've had all these colours on one single plant. Perhaps they change colour with age? This leaf tip was somewhere around half to three-quarters of an inch long. "The Venus Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, is a carnivorous plant that catches and digests animal prey—mostly insects and arachnids. Its trapping structure is formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant's leaves and is triggered by tiny hairs on their inner surfaces. When an insect or spider crawling along the leaves contacts a hair, the trap closes if a different hair is contacted within twenty seconds of the first strike. The requirement of redundant triggering in this mechanism serves as a safeguard against a waste of energy in trapping objects with no nutritional value." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Flytrap David Attenborough looks at how this well known carnivorous plant captures its prey. This short video is from the BBC. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktIGVtKdgwo