KILLER PLANTS.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

JUNCTION CITY - They all seem to have lips.

And looking into the maw of a carnivorous plant, something tells you to keep your paw a safe distance away.

Because, you know, carnivorous plants are - duh - meat-eating plants. Therefore, just like man or bear or any beast, they kill other life forms.

And even though they have names such as doodle bug and dewthread, it's not recommended you make fun of them, meathead.

Besides, they're also pretty. Some of them.

"I've always liked them," says Dean Cook, who owns Cook's Carnivorous Plants just south of Junction City on Prairie Road, with his wife, Kim Cook. "It's almost like a pet plant."

More and more folks are growing their own "Little Shop of Horrors" these days, even in winter months, according to those who sell and cultivate carnivorous plants. After all, not every plant species can claim something with a name, or a look, as cool as Venus flytrap.

"They're definitely becoming more popular," says Jacob Farin, co-owner of Sarracenia Northwest in Eagle Creek, southeast of Portland, which has a Carnivorous Plant of the Month Club to make your leafy meat-eaters a year-round hobby. "It's still considered on the fringe, but it's gaining popularity, especially among orchid growers."

"Feed me!"

That's what you expect to hear as you tip-toe among the Venus flytraps in the Cooks' garage. If you've seen either the 1960 or the 1986 version of the black comedy "Little Shop of Horrors," you know the line well. It's the story of a plant shop owner who is forced to kill (people) to feed the bloodthirsty plant he's developed, Audrey Junior.

Carnivorous plants can be found all through popular culture, from cartoons to the "Piranha Plants" of the Super Mario Bros. video games and the "Invenusable Flytrap, a villain on "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," to a character named Venus Flytrap on the 1970s TV sit-com, "WKRP in Cincinnati."

The best known of all carnivorous plants, the Venus flytrap is native to North and South Carolina and has distinctive little teethlike protrusions called cilia, and its name comes from ...? Who knows? Kim Cook says. "Their real name's Dionaea muscipula," she says. "I think somebody couldn't pronounce that."

Actually, the "flytrap" part is obvious and the "Venus" part comes from the Roman goddess of love and plant life. And Venus flytrap is not the plant's only nickname. It is also known as big mouth, jaws, red jaws, red piranha, royal red, blood red traps, clamshell, fang, fine tooth X red, green dragon, pink Venus, pompom, wacky traps and, get this, Bart Simpson (note the jagged hairs), among many other names.

Not by meat alone

Carnivorous plants are native to all the continents of the world except Antarctica, and of the world's more than 600 species, about 45 are native to North America, including some right here in Oregon, such as Darlingtonia Californica, also known as the cobra plant and native to the Oregon Coast.

Carnivorous plants usually grow in places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as in bogs.

They trap their prey and are categorized by how they do it: "pitfall" traps (also known as pitcher plants) where the insects are trapped in a rolled leaf that contains a pool of digestive enzymes or bacteria; "flypaper" traps that use a sticky mucilage; "snap" traps that trap prey with rapid leaf movements; "bladder" traps that suck prey with a bladder that generates an internal vacuum; and "lobster-pot" traps that use inward-pointing hairs to force prey to move toward a digestive organ.

And, yes, you do have to water carnivorous plants. They cannot live by meat alone. They also need proper sunlight. "That's one of the big misconceptions about carnivorous plants," Farin says. Just like any plant, water and sunlight are the most important things. "No matter how many bugs you give a plant, they're going to die (without water and sunlight)."

Dean Cook, who works behind the parts counter at Kendall Honda in Eugene when he's not helping his wife with the plant business that's existed in one form or another since 1992, says orchids and roses are still more popular among plant lovers, but there is so much more education out there now about how to grow and care for carnivorous plants, thanks to the Internet.

"It's mainly a hobby for most folks," Dean Cook says.

When you log on to the Cook's Carnivorous Plants Web site at www.flytraps.com, you are greeted by a giant buzzing, red-eyed fly that hovers above a cartoonlike "Cook's Carnivorous Plants" sign before its eyes "bug" out of its head and it is "chomped" by a devil-horned Venus flytrap. The Cooks do most of their business online, though they do provide plants to some local nurseries, as well as a few in Portland and Washington. They also do some wholesale business by mail, Kim Cook says.

The "Carnivorous Camaro"

But carnivorous plants really don't eat anything other than bugs, do they? It's all just a myth, right? In other words, the 11 cats on the Cooks' property don't have anything to worry about, and you don't have to feed the plants hamburger, right?

No, Kim Cook says, they do it all themselves. "The neighbors have cows," she says, which provide plenty of flies from their dung.

Standing in one of the greenhouses, Dean Cook peels open the dead stem of a plant to reveal the deceased insects inside. "Now, in the spring when you open them up, it's all juicy and icky," Kim Cook says.

The Cooks have about 1,000 varieties on their property and Dean Cook likes to experiment by creating hybrids, three of which he has had published in the International Carnivorous Plant Society's newsletter, its quarterly journal. "That's where you get the cool ones," Kim Cook says. Among the names of Dean Cook's hybrids: up periscope, cyclops, Stonehenge and bug scoop.

In addition to having four greenhouses full of carnivorous plants, the Cooks' garage keeps others warm with heaters and a woodstove in the winter. Dean Cook's 1968 Camaro, the "Carnivorous Camaro," he calls it, is covered from hood to trunk with potted plants that "Blackie" - one of those 11 cats - moves through like a panther. She is not afraid of them.

"No," Kim Cook says, "she lays on them."

FLYTRAPS AND COBRAS For more information on carnivorous plants in Oregon, check out these two Web sites: www.flytraps.com: Dean and Kim Cook run their mostly online business from the Junction City area and provide plants to lots of local nurseries www.cobraplants.com: Jeff Dallas and Jacob Farin run their online business from Eagle Creek near Sandy and have a Carnivorous Plant of the Month Club you can join