It's #throwbackthursday and The Woodlands has a botanical treat today!
In a letter to William Hamilton dated April 22, 1800, Thomas Jefferson (yes, the Thomas Jefferson of Monticello) wrote, "Among the many botanical curiosities you were so good as to shew me the other day, I forgot to ask if you had the Dionaea muscipula, and whether it produces a seed with you. if it does, I should be very much disposed to trespass on your liberality so far as to ask a few seeds of that..."
Dionaea muscipula is most commonly known as the Venus Flytrap, and it was among one of the thousands of species Hamilton cultivated in his infamous greenhouse at The Woodlands. His friend William Bartram of Bartram's Garden illustrated the plant in what is probably the first known drawing of Dionaea muscipula from 1767 (see it in the lower left corner?).
Venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula
William Bartram (1739 - 1823)
Pen and ink on paper, 1767, © Natural History Museum