California Carnivores, the largest carnivorous plant nursery in the United States, I didn’t know there was a world of these plants beyond the Venus flytrap. I’d grown up seeing flytraps—with a warning not to touch—in museum gift shops or nurseries. When the plants sense a meal on their serrated mouths, they close their jaws and form a stomach. Their leaves secrete enzymes, and they digest their prey. When the leaves open, only a husk of chitin—the insect exoskeleton—is left. The plants shouldn’t spend their energy closing around nothing. That’s
