Venus is the Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, and lust, among other things, and today is Valentine’s Day, so that makes this post somewhat well-timed.
The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is a plant that eats insects. Its leaves have red toothed lobes with a hinge at the midrib to snap shut around prey. But why is it called a Venus flytrap? Well, it’s named for the goddess, not the planet. (The planet is also named for the goddess, but that’s a different story.)
The plant, native to North and South Carolina, was first documented by European settlers in 1759 in a letter by the British colonial governor for North Carolina, Arthur Dobbs. Word of the discovery reached John Bartram, royal botanist to King George III for the North American Colonies. He was the first to send a specimen to England, calling it “tipitiwitchet” or “Tippity Twitchet” as slang for its supposed resemblance to female genitalia. Apparently he thought that was quite funny and made lots of jokes about it.
A less obviously crude-minded naturalist named John Ellis gave it the scientific name Dionaea muscipula. This translates from neo-Latin into English as “Daughter of Dione mousetrap.” (The daughter of the Greek goddess Dione was Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus.) Both the scientific name and the common name, it seems, are mere euphemisms for low-brow humor.
Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day. Bugs are good food for carnivorous plants, but for us humans, I recommend celebrating with chocolate.
Photo: Mosaic of Venus at the Makthar Museum in Tunisia.
Semiosis 