Welcome to the home page of the Institute for Educational Advancement's summer botany internship. This two-week program gave six high school students from around the country the unique opportunity to study with botanist Jim Folsom at the famed Huntington Botanical Gardens in Pasadena. The primary object of inquiry was none other than Dionaea muscipula, the Venus flytrap. This fascinating little plant is a window into not only the bizarre phenomenon of carnivorous vegetables but also the general issue of how plants obtain essential resources.

Working in a small mentorship program at the Huntington gave students several distinct advantages rarely enjoyed in a conventional classroom setting. Firstly, students had at their disposal more than 50 flytraps from the Huntington nurseries, enabling very extensive experimentation. Moreover, the presence of the magnificent Huntington libraries enabled the use of a wide variety of scientific publications, from the earliest treatise on Dionaea by Charles Darwin to the most recent studies which employ modern molecular techniques to help explain the plant's remarkable trapping mechanism. All the work done during the first week of the internship can be divided into two segments. First, experiments were conducted which both imitated and expanded upon Darwin's primitive yet imaginative investigations into the variables surrounding Dionaea's closing and digesting processes. Second, a broader foray was made into the evolutionary history and carnivorous nature of the world's best-known but least-understood variety of flesh-eating flora. What follows is a summary of what was accomplished in one week of the internship as well as examples of experiments that might be suitable for the classroom.