Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first written European record of the Venus flytrap occurred on the 2nd of April 1759. North Carolina colonial governor Arthur Dobbs wrote a letter to English botanist Peter Collinson describing the plant.
English botanist John Ellis gave the Venus flytrap its scientific name Dionaea muscipula in 1768. The species name translates to mousetrap or flytrap in Latin.
The Venus flytrap mechanism requires a second touch within 20 seconds to snap shut after prey touches one of the trigger hairs. The lobes flip from convex to concave in about one-tenth of a second to seal the prey inside.
The Venus flytrap grows only within a 100 km radius of Wilmington, North Carolina. It inhabits nitrogen- and phosphorus-poor bogs, wet savannahs, and canebrakes.
A 2019 survey counted 302,000 individual Venus flytraps remaining in the wild. This represents a reduction of more than 93% from a 1979 estimate of 4.5 million individuals.
North Carolina made poaching the Venus flytrap a felony in 2014. One man received 17 months in prison for poaching 970 plants and another man faced 73 felony counts in 2019.