The question that I had after reading this article was “how do the hairs of the Venus flytrap leaf trigger the closing of the leaf?” I was wondering how this occurred because in the article the scientist also mentioned that the hair were responsible for the closure, but they did not go into any further detail on the subject of hair stimulus.

Answer: According to Wikipedia.com, the hairs are stimulated and this results in an action potential being generated, but this does not answer the question of how the hairs work as a trigger for closure. Scientist have discovered that either the same hair must be touched twice, or multiple hairs must be touched for the trap to trigger, however my search for a mechanism continues. The reason for the two touch or two being touched is that such a large amount of energy is used to prepare for the closing of the trap, that a false signal to close would result in a large energy loss. Ahh success at last, apparently the triggers send an electrical impulse to the leafs cells which then began the processes necessary for closure. The most detail I have been able to find is that the trigger hairs are “triggered” by movement which then results in the trigger cells sending signals to the rest of the leaf to shut it’s self.

The second subject I began to wonder about after reading this article was if other plants had a similar mechanical system to help them with movement. I also thought about which plant moved the second fastest behind the flytrap. Many other questions involving other plant species ability to move and mechanisms they use to do some came to my attention after reading the paper. Sunflowers and many other flora move to follow the sun, is this movement the result of elastic potential energy, or another plant system.

Answer: Mimosa is a genius of plants that also exhibit fast movement mechanisms. Another plant that also moves fairly quickly is the telegraph plant who’s leafs jump rapidly every several minutes, but do not move near as quickly as the flytrap. Through my research I have found that in reality the Venus flytrap is not the fastest plant. This title goes to the bunchberry dogwood. This plant can release pollen in 1/1000th of a second, which is much faster than the flytrap. Although this plant has tiny flowers that in theory would cause the dispersal range to be low, the plant can disperse pollen to great range. It launches it’s pollen as if it is a catapult allowing the pollen to be launched up to 10 times farther than it could be with only the flowers. I was able to find that the sunflowers follow the sun when younger, however once full grown they face east as a defense mechanism against sun burns. All plants show some form of movement when following the sun or closing their petals at night to help prevent desiccation(water loss).

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