Loren P. Schmid, age 12, of Winston Salem, North Carolina, for her question:

How does the Venus's flytrap work?

The plant world is full of surprises    and the Venus's flytrap appears to put them all together. Plants strive to thrive wherever there is sunshine, moisture and a balanced diet of usable food chemicals in the soil. They depend on a number of basic food elements that break down from organic plant and animal materials, as they decay in the soil. The Venus's flytrap also needs this basic diet. However, it takes nutrients directly from captured insects.

This amazing insectivorous plant should not really surprise us    that is, if we observe the multitude of wondrous features in other plant species. Flowers secrete syrupy nectar to bait the bees and some close their petals at sunset. Certain sensitive leaves shrink shut when touched. And lately we have learned that plants respond to various types of music and other mysterious disturbances. The Venus's flytrap streamlines some of these features and adds a few of its own to become a plant that captures and digests insects.

We find it growing wild in the Carolinas, a circle of odd shaped leaves around a 12 inch stalk that bears small white blossoms. The soggy soil is short of certain nitrogen chemicals, essential items on a balanced plant food diet. True to the striving plant world, the flytrap has adapted itself to cope with this impoverished condition. There is usable nitrogen in the bodies of passing, insects. The amazing plant captures and adds them to its menu.

Its weird leaves are baited traps and usually about ten of them are in working order. Each thick green leaf is shaped like a heart and attached to a flat, hairy base. There are spikes around its sides and a thicker ridge down the center divides the heart into two lobes. This ridge is actually a hinge that closes the two lobes to form a small prison within a cage of spikes. The closing action is triggered by three sensitive hairs, set in a triangle on the surface of each lobe. The trap is baited when the lobes open like an outstretched palm and their sensitive hairs are laden with dewy moisture.

Sooner or later, a fly flits by and glimpses the glistening bait. He swoops down to investigate    and his fragile weight on those sensitive hairs triggers the hinge.

The two lobes snap shut and the victim is trapped in a fly sized cage. Now the leaf surface oozes strong digestive chemicals. The fly is engulfed, the essential nitrogen compounds in its body are absorbed and transported through the plant from cell to cell. When the meal is digested, the hinged leaf opens and the dry husk of the fly is wafted away by the breezes.

One leaf can capture and digest only a few meaty dinners. Then a new one grows in to replace it. It can and sometimes does capture larger insects. But on this planet, no insectivorous plant can cope with anything larger than a big bug. People ¬eating plants exist only in weird tales invented by human imaginations.