Nano Nursery · Rare Carnivorous Plant Encyclopedia
The teeth along a Venus flytrap’s rim and the trigger hairs inside its lobes are different structures. Cultivar descriptions may emphasise either, and a useful comparison must keep them separate. This chapter follows seven documented selections, one cultivar Group and several corrected or historical labels. It explains the characters behind the names without treating every short-toothed plant as the same cultivated identity.
Dentate Traps: a cultivar with triangular marginal teeth
Barry Meyers-Rice’s 2000 account establishes ‘Dentate Traps’ for a cultivated line with short triangular teeth in place of ordinary slender lashes. The feature can be inconspicuous on small or early-season traps. The account reconciles the older labels dentata and dente with this identity and prefers vegetative propagation. [1]
The ICPS names resource also reconciles the historical label Dentate with ‘Dentate Traps’. [6] Compare mature active growth and retain the accession history.
Dentate Traps Group is a broader category
The same publication defines the Dentate Traps Group for registered cultivars whose marginal structures are reduced to small triangular teeth. It explicitly distinguishes that character from several ordinary lashes fused together. ‘Dentate Traps’, ‘Sawtooth’ and ‘Red Piranha’ were included. [1]
The Group name is written without cultivar quotation marks. Membership of the Group does not establish a cultivar identity or a shared clonal origin.
Sawtooth: tiny divisions within the teeth
The 2000 diagnosis describes small triangular teeth divided into finer toothlets, producing a fringed edge. Mature late-season traps can have red interiors. Vegetative propagation is preferred. [1]
This is a close-view character: from a distance, a finely divided margin can look merely short. A photograph should show the edge in focus rather than relying on the overall colour of the open trap.
Jaws: a breeding history behind the shark-like outline
Leo Song’s account traces ‘Jaws’ to a 1993 cross at California State University, Fullerton. The pollen parent was ‘Dentate Traps’; the seed parent was a plant selected for consistently large, moderately red traps. The selected offspring combined substantial traps with dentate margins and vigorous growth. Song reported that the traps still caught insects and preferred vegetative reproduction. The partially closed outline inspired the name. [2]
The description supports a combination of characters, not the proposition that every large dentate flytrap is ‘Jaws’. It also separates parentage from identity: repeating the cross would produce another population of seedlings, not automatically reproduce the selected cultivar. No numerical maximum trap size is supplied in that account, so a precise size promise should not be invented from it.
Microdent: one identity with a published spelling correction
Gayl Quenon’s March 2008 description appeared under ‘Microdents’. It emphasised exceptionally small marginal teeth, sometimes more than eighty around a trap, and orange-red lobes. It placed the selection in the Dentate Traps Group and required vegetative propagation. Names such as microteeth and microdentata were mentioned as informal alternatives. [3]
The June 2008 erratum states that the author and registrant preferred ‘Microdent’, without the final s, and identifies that as the correct name. [4] The two index entries therefore document an original spelling and its correction. They are not evidence for two different cultivated selections.
Keep the original spelling in historical source records so that older literature remains findable, while using ‘Microdent’ for the corrected identity. The reported tooth count describes the author’s material; it is not an identification test requiring exactly the same count on every trap.
Red Pico-Teeth: reduction taken further
Sébastien Bonnet’s 2017 diagnosis combines dark red colour, low leaves and extremely reduced or absent marginal teeth. It contrasts the plant with ‘Red Micro-Teeth’ and requires vegetative propagation. [5]
The word pico is part of the name’s imagery, not a claim that a tooth was measured in picometres. The distinction concerns visible morphology. The name does not establish that the plant lacks trigger hairs, which are separate structures inside the trap.
Farou: look inside the pale trap
Arnaud Dalmais described ‘Farou’ with pale-green small traps, reddish digestive glands, short inward-curving teeth and four transparent trigger hairs per trap. Its leaf bases are elongated. The account requires vegetative propagation. [7]
The reddish glands matter because a mostly green appearance does not by itself demonstrate absence of red pigments. Likewise, counting the outer teeth would not test the claim about four trigger hairs. Use a clear view of both inner lobes and record the leaf’s developmental stage. The description is a morphological comparison, not a biochemical analysis or a measurement of sensitivity.
Carniplant: some fused teeth and more trigger hairs
Guillem Gutiérrez’s diagnosis combines partial tooth fusion with later-season traps bearing eight to ten trigger hairs. It contrasts the red colour developed in sunlight with the predominantly green ‘JA1’, and records tissue-culture propagation from leaves. [7]
Those observations provide several points of comparison. The number of trigger hairs is not itself a measured capture advantage, and partial fusion is not equivalent to joined lobe tips. A useful record shows the margin and the inside of the same trap, rather than combining features from unrelated leaves or photographs.
Comparing teeth without turning names into diagnoses
A sequence of mature leaves is more informative than one newly opened trap. Record the season, photograph the entire rosette, and then take separate close views of the margin and inner surfaces. An image that shows the teeth clearly may still hide the trigger hairs. Avoid forcing a trap apart merely to obtain a count.
The comparisons in this chapter come from cultivar descriptions, which identify selected material. They do not establish the genetic mechanism behind every tooth form or prove that a similar feature elsewhere arose in the same way. For names maintained vegetatively, documented divisions or other clonal material preserve the connection to the selected plant; parent names on a seed packet describe ancestry.
Original reference photographs remain linked in the sources. Historical labels and corrections are retained in the encyclopedia register so that a reader can trace how a name was used without multiplying the number of identities.
Sources
- Barry Meyers-Rice (2000), Dentate Traps, Dentate Traps Group and Sawtooth, CPN 29:16–17
- Leo Song, Jr. (2001), Jaws, CPN 30:111–112
- Gayl Quenon (2008), original Microdents description, CPN 37:26
- CPN editors (2008), correction to Microdent, CPN 37:46
- Sébastien Bonnet (2017), Red Pico-Teeth, CPN 46:157
- ICPS Names Resource: historical Dentate label
- Arnaud Dalmais and Guillem Gutiérrez (2015), Farou and Carniplant, CPN 44:32–33
Sources checked 2 October 2026.
