Study
Insectivorous Plants
Darwin, Charles
John Murray, 1875
Years of patient experiment on carnivorous plants: touching trigger hairs with hairs, glass, meat and water drops, timing responses, and testing which stimuli closed a trap and which did not.
- Studied in
- Dionaea muscipula, Drosera rotundifolia
- Sample size
- many individual plants over years of experiment
Venus flytraps close only in response to mechanical stimulation of trigger hairs, and are insensitive to rain and to blown debris. Darwin described the trap as requiring repeated touches, and called it one of the most wonderful plants in the world.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Carnivorous plants possess sensitive, specific mechanisms for detecting and digesting animal prey.
How NatureHQ reads it
Included as the historical anchor. Darwin identified the essential fact — the trap discriminates between prey and weather — a century and a half before the electrical mechanism was measured. It is cited for what it established and when, not as current evidence.
- Nineteenth-century methods with no instrumentation of the underlying signal.
- Descriptive; the mechanism was unavailable to him.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Venus flytrap
A Venus flytrap counts touches before it closes and again before it digests
Venus flytrap
A flytrap ignores raindrops and wind-blown debris
Venus flytrap
A Venus flytrap needs light, not flies. Insects supply nutrients, not energy
Venus flytrap
It is a flowering plant, it is not dangerous, and the biggest trap is about 3 cm
Published by: Public-domain scientific works
doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.17335
This reference was checked by an editor on 2026-08-09.
A note on this reference: The DOI is the Biodiversity Heritage Library scan of the 1875 D. Appleton (New York) printing; NatureHQ cites the John Murray (London) first edition of the same year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.