The genus name Dionaea, meaning “daughter of Dione,” references Aphrodite — the Greek goddess of love, known to the Romans as Venus. The species name muscipula is a Latin homonym, meaning both “flytrap” (from musca, fly) and “mousetrap” (from mus, mouse), and this ambiguity appears to have been entirely deliberate. Ellis himself acknowledged both translations, writing that Dionaea muscipula could be rendered as either “Venus’s flytrap” or “Venus’s mousetrap,” though he publicly preferred the former.

This was no accident. Eighteenth-century botanists sometimes encoded thinly veiled sexual metaphors into Latin names — an insider joke that only the classically educated could decode. Venus carried strong female anatomical connotations in the botanical world of the 1700s, and with the flytrap’s vivid red interior, suggestive form, and sweet nectar secretions luring unsuspecting prey, the reference is hard to miss. That the plant was known in private correspondence among botanists as “Tipitiwitchet,” a contemporary slang term for female genitalia, leaves little doubt about the intended joke. And calling Venus’s trap a “mousetrap” — seduction leading to capture — was the punchline.

This tradition was not without controversy. Linnaeus, the founder of modern taxonomy, caused genuine scandal with his broader use of sexual metaphor in plant classification, with critics accusing him of dragging botany into vulgarity. Ellis’s own public explanation was that Dionaea referred to the beauty of the white flowers — which, being rather nondescript, is a little hard to believe.

Perhaps the most fitting footnote to this story is that, despite the Venus flytrap’s iconic status in popular culture, the real meaning behind its name remains largely unknown outside specialist circles. An insider joke that has remained exactly that for over 250 years, just as Ellis intended.