They grow within a 70-mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina, which is currently threatened by urban sprawl and overdevelopment.
Venus flytraps depend on fire. So without fire, the Venus flytrap gets overgrown by taller plants, and in unmanaged areas that might not be getting the regular fire it needs, they start to disappear.
Another problem they face is poaching. Many people still go out and collect these plants, and subsequently, it’s now a candidate for listing under The Endangered Species Act.
So researchers have recently started trying to answer two main questions:
- What pollinates Venus flytrap because there was no information to date on that.
- The second thing they wanted to know was, do they ever eat their pollinators? While this idea sounds a bit self-defeating, you’d think plants would evolve to avoid eating things responsible for their reproduction.