Carnivorous plants stir the imagination. You can find the results in science fiction novels (“The Day of the Triffids”), Broadway plays(“Little Shop of Horrors”) and in recent research that concludes that the Venus flytrap can count.

Not out loud, of course. And no one is claiming that the plants are aware that they are counting. But even so, this is the first time someone has demonstrated counting in a plant, according to the researcher who led the experiments, Rainer Hedrich at the University of Würzburg, in Germany.

Dr. Hedrich, Jennifer Böhm and Sönke Scherzer, all at Würzburg, and a team of other scientists reported their research in Current Biology.

Venus flytraps are carnivorous. They live in poor soil and pull needed nutrients from the insects they trap and dissolve. Their trap is a pair of leaves that act as jaws and stomach.