Living Root Garden School • Plants & How They Grow • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the plant that eats bugs — a leaf snapped shut on a fly. Why would a plant need to hunt?
Carnivorous plants grow in bogs — soggy, swampy places where the soil is basically sour water with almost nothing in it. Roots cannot find enough nitrogen and phosphorus there, so these plants catch their own dinner instead: every bug they digest is a delivery of nitrogen and phosphorus, straight to the leaves.
The Venus flytrap is a leaf folded into two lobes, lined with tiny trigger hairs. One touch does nothing — it might be a raindrop. A second touch within about 30 seconds means this is probably a real bug, and the trap slams shut faster than you can blink. The plant literally counts to two.
A pitcher plant is a tube-shaped leaf with sweet nectar around a slippery rim. Bugs slip in, stiff hairs pointing down make climbing back up like climbing a slide covered in Velcro, and a pool of digestive soup waits at the bottom. A sundew is living flypaper: tentacles tipped with sticky goo called mucilage that glitter like dew and curl inward around anything that lands.
Rule out the lookalikes: these are not toys. Each flytrap can only snap about three or four times in its whole life, so never poke a trap for fun. Never dig one up from the wild — many are protected by law, and bogs are fragile places that do not recover from digging. Buy nursery-grown, and give them rainwater only, never tap water or fertilizer.
Ask: If a flytrap needs two touches to snap, will one touch from a raindrop close it — and what will two quick touches do? Write your guess before you watch.
Try: Watch a nursery-bought flytrap or sundew — never a wild one — and count the trigger hairs inside one trap. If you are lucky and a bug lands, watch what happens — and never poke a trap yourself.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Write the cost-benefit of eating meat in one paragraph: when does building traps beat growing bigger roots?
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what plant, how many trigger hairs, what you saw — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The trap snapped ___ because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw one trap up close: count the trigger hairs and draw every one.
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Tell someone why a flytrap eats bugs and why you never poke its traps — in your own words.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can explain why some plants eat bugs.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Trap log
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can explain why some plants eat bugs.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.