Judy Greenhorn, age 12, Deep Cove, B.C., or her question:

Where are man‑eating plants found?

There are only a very few places where these strange forms of life may be found. We may come across them in a tall tale or in one of those wild movies about some never‑never land. For these nasty specimens grow only in the world of imagination ‑ they do not exist in the real world at all.

True, there are meat eating plants of a kind. But they are modest little plants and they never scared anything bigger than a bumble bee. They feed on :insects, usually small insects such as flies. For this reason we call them insectivorous plants. There is the sundew, a pink rosette of a plant dust a few inches across, there is the small, flat‑leafed Venus's flytrap and the tall weed like pitcher plant. There is also a pond dwelling insectivorous plant which catches water bugs.