When the insect lands, it sticks to the hairs it is touching. As the victim struggles, other hairs bend over and attach themselves to secure the meal even further. The sticky liquid soon enters the insect's breathing holes and it suffocates. Digestive juices soon follow and the sticky liquid and the soft parts of the victim's body are soon dissolved away to be recovered and used by the plant. Perhaps the strangest and most well-known carnivorous plant is the Venus flytrap.
The flytrap, whose scientific name is Dionaea muscipula "mousetrap of Venus" looks like a small circle of strange leaves sitting close to the ground. Sometimes it is topped by a long stem with small white flowers. These plants are so strange that folklore has it that they come from outer space and only grow near the sites of meteor impact craters.
The truth is that the flytrap comes not from the second planet from the sun, but from North and South Carolina.
Its strange leaves have a lob at the end that looks like a small, green clamshell with teeth. Inside the clam shell are two sensitive hairs. If an insect lands on the lob and touches both of the hairs, or touches one of the hairs twice in a short amount of time, the trap is sprung.
The two sides of the clamshell leaf close quickly on the insect. The "teeth" intermesh, making sure the animal cannot escape. After the trap closes, glands on the inner surfaces of the shell release digestive juices. Are any of these carnivorous plants capable of posing a threat to humans? Not really. The largest of the meat-eating plants is a relative of the pitcher plant named Nepenthes.
It grows in the rain forests of Southeast Asia as a vine up to 50 feet in length. The pitchers sometimes grow to be a foot in length. Nepenthes traps mostly insects and small frogs, though animals as large as a rat have been found dead digesting in its juices.
Some Nepenthes pitchers that have been found are large enough to hold four quarts of liquid. The Nepenthes is not a threat to humans, however. In fact the local people have found ways to make them useful. The pitchers can be cleaned out and used to cook rice, while its long, strong vines serve as ropes.
If no carnivorous plant known is large enough to consume a human, where did the idea of man-eating plants come from? The Corpse Flower. The plant responsible for starting these rumors might be Amorphophallus titanum otherwise known as the " corpse flower. When it blooms it can reach at height over nine feet in height and smells like a mixture of rotting flesh and excrement. It is the only species of its genus and does not produce its own digestive enzymes, relying on bacteria to break downs its prey.
Low's pitcher plant Nepenthes Iowii gathers nutrients in a way unlike most carnivorous plants. Its wide, toilet bowl-shaped pitchers are very sturdy and just the right size for a tree shrew to stand astride while feeding on the nectar at the lid.
While feeding, shrews excrete directly into the pitcher, delivering useful, already-digested nutrients. Low's pitcher plants grow on only a few mountainsides in Borneo. The bat pitcher plant Nepenthes hemsleyana has a fascinating alliance with woolly bats. Rather than producing nectar, it offers a convenient roosting site. Its pitchers have a prominent ridge that bats can cling to, and an enlarged opening that reflects their ultrasound calls through the dense vegetation of Borneo.
In exchange, the plant receives all the nutrient-packed bat guano faeces it needs to thrive. Adhesive traps lure insects and other small prey with sweet, sticky droplets that look like nectar or dewdrops. Small insects are immobilised by the sticky slime and larger victims may struggle to break free, coating themselves further in the mucilage - death is usually indirect, via suffocation.
Some varieties of adhesive traps will actively curl their sticky tentacles around struggling victims. Illustration of Drosera rotundifolia from Charles Darwin's monograph on insectivorous plants. In , Charles Darwin published a page monograph on carnivorous plants that shook the scientific establishment.
He found round-leaved sundews growing extensively in the heaths of Sussex and studied them closely. Darwin fed sundew plants salts of ammonia, egg white and even small crumbs of cheese before describing their digestive systems and proving, unequivocally and for the first time, that carnivory exists in the plant world.
Drawn by the promise of a flower, the insect or small reptile entering the trap stimulates sensitive trigger hairs. These send an electrophysiological impulse to snap the leaf blades shut and ensnare the visitor. Once a meal is secured, the leaf secretes a digestive fluid to resorb the animal protein.
Venus flytraps are native to the subtropical wetlands of the US east coast. They can grow large enough to ensnare small lizards. The waterwheel plant Aldrovanda vesiculosa is an aquatic plant and the only underwater snap trap carnivore.
Waterwheel plants grow worldwide, in nutrient-poor freshwater swamps. Their tiny traps grow up to one centimetre in length and capture prey including mosquito larvae, small fish and tadpoles.
Disguised as safe and delicious root structures, snare traps specialise in capturing single-celled organisms such as protozoans and ciliates, which they attract through chemicals. Organisms enter the snare trap through opening slits in tubular projections, and unidirectional hairs shepherd the tiny organisms into a digestive bladder.
The corkscrew plant Genlisea violacea is native to South America and develops small, purple blossoms. These were dark in color, somewhat black, and emitted a sticky gum that had a horrible odor. Dunstan hacked away at these tendrils but was initially unable to do so. Not only were these difficult to cut with just his knife, but they actively fought back.
Dunstan did manage to save his dog, but both suffered injuries during this encounter. The canine was disoriented and had trouble walking. Not much else is known about this plant, but the locals do fear it immensely and leave it well alone. Rumor has it that Central America is home to a vicious man-eating tree with long spikes that purportedly impales its victims.
Anyone or anything can be overwhelmed by the impact of these spikes and the tree does not discriminate. The spikes often remain hidden from sight until they are triggered by pressure upon them.
Once in the clutches of the tree and its spikes, quite often it is too late to escape. See also : Yggdrasil Tree of Life. During a voyage led by the explorer Captain Arkwright in , a discovery on the South Pacific islet known as El Banoor was recorded. He described this as a large flower with bright petals capable of releasing a sleep-inducing toxin that causes the victim to rest on the large petals. Once the victim was in its grip, the flower would close over the victim and digest him alive.
Assuming that this is such a flower in a lost South Pacific island, Arkwright must have been a witness to this process in action. This is the only known report of a carnivorous flower from this part of the world. While none of these carnivorous plants and trees are likely to be found in an urban environment by a downtrodden florist who wishes to make a name for himself, there is a chance, however remote, that undiscovered forms of carnivorous plants might be lurking deep inside one of the many rainforests of the world.
Perhaps someone will find one someday and bring it back to civilization. Perhaps it will even have the voice of Levi Stubbs — but the Little Shop of Horrors might be best left in the wild.
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