Abstract:
Most of the world's wild Venus's flytraps are located within a seventy-five-mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina. There the flytraps find the necessary ingredients for survival -- damp, acidic soils in open-canopy forests or on the edges of pocosins. Of the more than 450 carnivorous plants in the world, North Carolina's flytrap has the distinction of being the first to be recognized by science for its ability to capture insects. Colonial governor Arthur Dobbs wrote about the plant in 1760. Other writers on the plant have included Charles Darwin and botanist B.W. Wells.