Since ancient times, people have tried to decorate their homes with plants, choosing varieties with unusual leaves and bright flowers. There are many legends about carnivorous plants that lured people into their traps and killed them, but scientists are skeptical about this, but there are more than 300 species of carnivorous plants that feed on insects in the world.
Sundew
Sundews live for the most part in Australia, but their representatives are found in temperate wetlands. Sundew leaves are covered with thin hairs, at the end of each there is a drop of sticky secretion, similar to dew. When, attracted by the smell, it sticks to a droplet, the leaf of the plant curls up around the prey and digests it.
The famous naturalist Charles Darwin made a great contribution to the study of carnivorous plants. In 1875, he published the book “Insectivorous Plants,” where he summarized the results of fifteen years of research.
Venus flytrap
The Venus flytrap has an interesting trapping device - two flaps with long hairs along the edge slam shut like a trap when the insect lands between them. Digestion of prey takes about ten days. The flytrap is capable of distinguishing small foreign objects from living creatures, and only works on the latter.
It is possible to keep a Venus flytrap at home if you follow necessary conditions- good lighting and humidity, soil composition and, of course, living things. Just please do not overfeed the plant - this can lead to its death.
Nepentis
Nepenthis are otherwise called pitcher plants because of their hunting devices. At the ends of the leaves of these long vines, reaching 20 meters, there are bright pitchers. Insects attracted by the smell, crawling along the edge, often fall to the bottom of the jug and, unable to get out on the slippery surface, are digested.
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Sources:
- Magazine "Around the World", Charming Killers, June 2003
Carnivorous plants grow not only on land - the seabed is fraught with similar predators that have evolved over the course of a thousand years and learned to camouflage themselves as harmless, bright life forms. There are not as many of them as outside the sea, however carnivorous plants In terms of predation, they are in no way inferior to their land-based counterparts.
The horror of the deep sea
If you look closely at these creatures, it may seem that they are coming to our planet from outer space. However, their original habitat is deep seas and canyons, where they anchor on the bottom and wait for their unsuspecting prey, which calmly swims past their gaping luminous mouth. When the fish swims as close as possible, they grab it with their stinging tentacles, sting and paralyze, after which they pull the prey into their mouth.
Marine predatory plants cannot eat a person, but they can easily seriously burn a person, so divers are not recommended to reach out to everyone beautiful flowers at the bottom of the sea.
Almost all plants that lead a predatory lifestyle are animals that specifically produce bright color pigments to attract careless food. Some of them are even able to reproduce without the participation of other individuals - for example, tunicates, which look like extraterrestrial life forms, simultaneously produce both sperm and eggs.
Carnivorous flowers known to modern science
Animals masquerading as carnivorous plants are among the simplest primitive groups that appeared on Earth about 500-600 million years ago. In ancient times, they inhabited the entire marine space, including shallow waters, but with the advent of stronger predators they had to move to the depths of the seas. Today, the best known bottom-dwelling carnivores are sea anemones or anemones.
In all the seas of the world, with the exception of the Aral and Caspian, there are 1,500 species of sea anemones ranging in size from 2 millimeters to 15 centimeters.
In nature, there are a wide variety of colors of sea anemones - purple, blue, green and pink. Sea anemones are found mainly at depths of over 10,000 meters and in shallow coastal waters with very salty water. They are “equipped” with a suction cup leg, with which the flowers are attached to stones, or are buried in the bottom soil.
Sea anemones feed on small fish and shrimp, which are injected with a strong paralyzing poison at the slightest touch to the anemone petals. The tentacles then pull the prey into the central mouth opening and digest it using the juices of the pharynx and stomach. In addition, the tentacles of these predatory animals protect them from larger marine predators who want to feast on the bright sea anemone.
Carnivorous plants are an amazing creation of nature. Evolution has equipped them with various kinds of devices for fishing and digestive glands. About 500 species of carnivorous plants are known.
Waiting
Sarracenia has special leaves for catching insects in the form of a water lily, forming a funnel. The plant secretes a secretion whose color and smell attract insects. They fall to the edge of the funnel and can easily fall inside.
Nepenthes is a vine up to 15 meters high. The trapping leaves have the shape of a water lily, turning into a cup-shaped formation. The calyx is closed by a growth resembling a lid.
This cover protects the trap from overflowing with rainwater. The lower part of the cup contains glands for the absorption of nutrients. There are many species of Nepenthes, large species can even catch small mammals like rats.
Bladderwort uses an amazing bubble trap. The pressure in the bubbles is negative, resulting in suction when the hole opens. This is how the insect gets inside.
The Darlingtonia Californian leaf forms a cavity with a hole. Insects that get inside find themselves in a thicket of hairs that impede their progress to the exit. As a result, they have only one road - to the digestive organs.
The predator genlisea has flowers that act on the principle of a crab claw. To prevent the insect from escaping from the trap, small hairs grow from inside.
Adhesive
Butterwort has special glands on its leaves, the sticky secretion of which contains digestive enzymes. The leaves of the butterwort are bright, bright green or Pink colour. They attract insects that land on the leaf and are immediately trapped.
The sundew is equipped with glandular tentacles, at the ends of which a sweet secretion is secreted. As soon as an insect lands on one of the tentacles, the rest immediately close around it. It's not a process, but it's fairly reliable.
Byblis is a carnivorous plant native to Australia. Its leaves are covered with glandular hairs that secrete mucus. The mucus has an attractive appearance, for which this plant was even nicknamed rainbow.
Grabbing
The Venus flytrap uses a trap consisting of two valves. The inner surface of the valves contains red pigment, and sensitive hairs grow along the border. Stimulation of the hairs causes the trap to close, resulting in the victim being trapped in a kind of closed stomach.
The hairs do not close tightly, so small prey can slip out. After digesting three victims, the leaf dies due to excess nutrients for the plant. While new ones are growing, the flycatcher takes a break from food.
Aldrovanda vesica is an aquatic carnivorous plant. Feeds on small aquatic invertebrates. A bipartite trap can slam shut within tens of milliseconds.
Predator plant, or. The plant is certainly unusual and exotic, but you can grow it at home. The Venus flytrap is extremely whimsical. She requires constant attention and careful care.
The first step after purchasing the plant is to replant it. The flycatcher is a marsh plant, so for planting it is necessary to use a mixture that contains peat or sphagnum moss. Moreover, the soil of the flycatcher should always be moist. Here you need to be extremely careful, because if there is excess moisture, the plant will begin to rot.
The flycatcher loves light very much, but does not tolerate direct sunlight. The air in the room where the plant lives must be humid. The ideal option would be to humidify the air around the plant with water from a spray bottle 2-3 times a day.
The flycatcher actually feeds on insects. But despite the fact that this is a predatory plant, you cannot throw flies and bugs at it yourself. She may simply not digest them, then the flower will begin to rot, which will lead to its death. In addition, eating insects is not mandatory for the flycatcher; it resorts to it only as a last resort. With careful care, it is possible that the flycatcher will reward you with its flower.
Most often, predator flowers are found in areas with poor soils - in deserts, swamps, etc. Attracting insects with its bright appearance and smell, the plant mercilessly eats them, replenishing the lack of nutrients.
In total, there are more than 500 species of predator plants in nature. One of the most famous is the sundew. Outwardly, it looks like a low plant with wide leaves. Each leaf is covered with long red cilia with a sticky substance at the ends. The putrid odor emitted by sundew attracts insects. They land on a plant, smear themselves in sticky juice and can no longer fly back. The sundew tightly rolls up the leaf, trapping the victim in a cage, and digests living creatures with the help of special substances similar to digestive juice. The same principle applies to fatty acids.
Venus flytrap leaves resemble brightly colored shells with fine hairs along the edges. Moreover, in the summer they are much larger than in winter. In order for the trap to work, the victim needs to touch the hairs twice within a few seconds. In this way, the flycatcher avoids a false signal, because the slammed leaf can no longer be opened. Having caught an insect, the plant uses enzymes to process it into a liquid state. Currently, the Venus flytrap is listed in the Red Book due to mass extermination. People plant it at home and use it as a fly catcher.
Darlingtonia Californian attracts prey with its beauty and aroma. Its flowers are arranged like a jug. An insect lands on a flower and falls inside. Thin hairs located on the inner walls make it impossible to get out. The victim dies inside the flower, and the products of its decay serve as nutrients for the plant.
Sarracenia is a swamp plant of stunning beauty. Its large, pitcher-shaped flowers are streaked with crimson. The insect flies towards the bright color and sweet smell of nectar, lands on the plant and falls to the bottom of the jug. After which the sarracenia digests the victim.
Nepenthes liana can reach several meters in length. The main prey of this plant is insects, but it is quite capable of catching toads, small rodents and even birds. Nepenthes flowers are shaped like a tall vessel with liquid at the bottom. The victim flies to the smell of nectar, lands on a flower and slides down the slippery walls covered with a waxy coating. The insect is then left in “nectar,” which is actually digestive juice.
The giant biblis is very popular among the people of Australia. The plant can reach 70 cm in height, and its petals are covered with such a sticky liquid that it can catch snails and frogs. The secreted juice does not contain bacteria or enzymes, so there are several hypotheses regarding the digestion of the victim. Some scientists believe that fungi are involved in the process, while others believe that wingless small insects that live on the surface of flowers. Because of the sticky liquid, people use byblis petals as tape.
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There are many strange plants in the world, but the strangest, perhaps, are predator plants. Most of them feed on arthropods and insects, but there are some that do not refuse a piece of meat. They, like animals, secrete a special juice that helps to break down and digest the prey, receiving from it the necessary nutrients.
Some of these carnivorous plants can be grown at home. What exactly they are and what they are, we will tell you further.
Sarracenia
The natural habitat of this plant is the east coast. North America, but today it is also found in Texas and southeastern Canada. Sarracenia catches its victims with its leaves in a flower shaped like a jug with a deep funnel and a small hood over the hole.
This extension protects the funnel from rainwater, which can dilute the digestive juices inside. It contains various enzymes, including protease. The edge of the bright red water lily exudes juice that has a nectar-like aroma. This is a trap plant that attracts insects. Sitting on its slippery edges, they are unable to hold on, fall into the funnel and are digested. Important! Today there are more than 500 species of such plants in different parts of the planet. Most of them grow in South America
, Australia, Africa. But all of them, regardless of the species, use one of five methods of catching prey: a flower in the shape of a jug, leaves closing like a trap, suction traps, sticky traps, a trap in the form of a crab claw.
Nepenthes tropical plant , which feeds on insects. It grows as a vine, growing up to 15 meters in length. Leaves form on the vine, at the ends of which one tendril grows. At the end of the tendril, a flower in the shape of a jug is formed over time, which is used as a trap. By the way, this natural bowl collects water, which natural environment monkeys drink. For this it received another name -
"monkey cup"
The liquid inside the natural cup is a little sticky, sometimes just liquid. Insects simply drown in it and are then digested by the plant. This process occurs in the lower part of the cup, where special glands are located to absorb and redistribute nutrients. Did you know?Plants that feed on animals cause us inexplicable anxiety. Probably the fact is that this order of things contradicts our ideas about the universe.
This insectivorous plant has about 130 species, which grow mainly in the Seychelles, Madagascar, Philippines, as well as Sumatra, Borneo, India, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China. Basically, the plants form small trap pitchers and feed only on insects. But species such as Nepenthes Rajah and Nepenthes Rafflesiana do not disdain small mammals. This meat-eating flower quite successfully digests mice, hamsters and small rats.
Carnivorous plant Genlisea
This seemingly delicate herb grows mainly in South and Central America, as well as in Africa, Brazil and Madagascar. The leaves of many plant species, of which there are more than 20, secrete a thick gel to attract and hold prey. But the trap itself is located in the soil, where the plant lures insects with the help of attractive aromas. 
The trap is a hollow spiral tube that releases fermented liquid. They are covered from the inside with villi directed downwards from the exit, which does not allow the victim to get out. The tubes also act as plant roots. On top, the plant has neat photosynthetic leaves, as well as a flower on a stalk about 20 cm. The flower, depending on the species, can have different colors, but yellow shades predominate. Although Genlisea is an insectivorous plant, it feeds mainly on microorganisms.
Darlingtonia californica
Only one plant is classified in the genus Darlingtonia - Darlingtonia Californian. You can find it in the springs and swamps of California and Oregon. Although it is believed that this rare plant prefers running water. The trap is the leaves of the plant, which are red-orange in color. They are shaped like a cobra's hood and have a light green pitcher on top with two leaves hanging from the end. The jug, where insects are lured by a specific aroma, has a diameter of 60 cm. Villi grow inside it towards the digestive organs. Thus, an insect that gets inside has only one way - into the depths of the plant. It can no longer return to the surface. 
Pemphigus (Utricularia)
The genus of these plants, which includes 220 species, got its name for great amount bubbles from 0.2 mm to 1.2 cm, which are used as a trap. The bubbles have negative pressure and a small valve that opens inward and easily sucks insects into the middle along with water, but does not release them out. The plant feeds on both tadpoles and water fleas, as well as protozoan single-celled organisms. The plant has no roots because it lives in water. It produces a peduncle with a small flower above the water. It is considered the fastest predator plant in the world. Grows in moist soil or water everywhere except Antarctica. 
Butterwort (Pinguicula)
The plant has bright green or pink leaves coated with a sticky liquid that lures and digests insects. The main habitat is Asia, Europe, North and South America.
This extension protects the funnel from rainwater, which can dilute the digestive juices inside. It contains various enzymes, including protease. The edge of the bright red water lily exudes juice that has a nectar-like aroma. This is a trap plant that attracts insects. Sitting on its slippery edges, they are unable to hold on, fall into the funnel and are digested. Today, the popularity of carnivorous houseplants has increased so much that botanists keep secret the places where such plants were discovered. Otherwise, they are immediately ruined by poachers who are engaged in illegal production and trade in insectivorous plants.
The surface of butterwort leaves has two types of cells. Some produce a mucous and sticky secretion that appears on the surface in the form of drops. The task of other cells is to produce special enzymes for digestion: esterase, protease, amylase. Among the 73 plant species, there are those that are active all year round. And there are also those that “fall asleep” for the winter, forming a dense, non-carnivorous rosette. When the ambient temperature rises, the plant produces carnivorous leaves. 
Sundew (Drosera)
One of the most beautiful domestic carnivorous plants. In addition, it is one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants. It includes no less than 194 species that can be found in almost every corner of the world, except Antarctica. 
Most species form basal rosettes, but some species produce vertical rosettes up to a meter in height. All of them are strewn with glandular tentacles, at the ends of which there are droplets of sticky secretions. The insects they attract land on them, stick, and the rosette begins to curl up, trapping the victims. Glands located on the surface of the leaf secrete digestive juice and absorb nutrients.
Byblis
Byblis, despite its carnivorous nature, is also called the rainbow plant. It is native to Northern and Western Australia, and is also found in New Guinea on marshy, moist soils. It grows as a small shrub, but can sometimes reach 70 cm in height. Gives beautiful flowers purple shades, but there are also pure white petals. Inside the inflorescence there are five curved stamens. But a trap for insects are leaves with a round cross-section, dotted with glandular hairs. Like sundews, they have a slimy, sticky substance at the ends to lure prey. Similarly, there are two types of glands on the leaves: those that secrete bait and those that digest food. But, unlike sundew, biblis does not secrete enzymes for this process. Botanists are still conducting debate and research regarding the digestion of food by plants. 
Aldrovanda vesiculosa
When amateur gardeners inquire about the name of a flower that eats insects, they rarely learn about Aldrovandum vesica. The fact is that the plant lives in water, has no roots, and therefore is of little use in home cultivation. It feeds mainly on crustaceans and small aquatic larvae. 
As traps, it uses thread-like leaves up to 3 mm in length, which grow in 5-9 pieces around the circumference of the stem along its entire length. Wedge-shaped petioles filled with air grow on the leaves, which allows the plant to stay close to the surface. At their ends there are cilia and a shell-shaped bivalve plate covered with sensitive hairs. As soon as they are irritated by the victim, the leaf closes lengthwise, capturing it and digesting it.
The stems themselves reach a length of up to 11 cm. Aldrovanda grows quickly, adding up to 9 mm per day, forming a new curl every day. However, as the plant grows at one end, it dies at the other. The plant produces single small white flowers.
People once believed in the existence of amazing creatures: griffins, dragons, unicorns and monsters with human heads. But most amazing of all were the carnivorous plants that ate people. In the 19th century, travelers talked about a tree from Madagascar. They said that he had tentacles like green snakes, tenaciously grasping his prey. Of course, this is just a Victorian tale, but like any fiction, it contained some truth.
The dark side of plants - murder and chaos
While exploring the slopes of Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, Victorian naturalists found something no less amazing - a representative of the fauna with leaves in the shape of pitchers, one of which contained a half-digested rat carcass. This discovery became sensation.
It attracted the attention of the greatest naturalist of the time - Charles Darwin. Through painstaking experiments, he discovered that many plants catch and kill insects to feed on them. For this purpose they used methods no less macabre than any product of Victorian fantasy.
Sundew - a flower that eats flies
More than a century later, Charles Darwin proved him wrong. He grew many carnivorous plants for his experiments, but he was most interested in a crop called sundew, or drossera.
Darwin is famous for his theory of the origin of new species, but this unusual flower amazed him so much that he wrote: “I am more interested in drossera than the origin of all other species on Earth.” Sundews use leaves for hunting. Insects stick to mucus, but at first naturalists thought this was an accident.
Darwin proved that the reality is more sinister. The results of the experiment amazed and frightened him. He placed various substances on the leaves:
- milk,
- meat,
- paper,
- stone,
- and even urine.
And I recorded how the plants reacted. Milk made the leaf curl, meat and urine did the same, but the plant did not react to stone and paper. Darwin discovered that the reaction is provoked by substances containing nitrogen. He also discovered that the plant absorbs nutrients through its leaves. A real predator, like animals.
But why did plants become insectivorous?
Mostly carnivorous plants live in places like swamps and swamps where the soil is poor nutrients, such as nitrogen. Nitrogen is still there - he walks around on six legs. The plant only needs to catch the bug to receive the fertilizer.
As in Darwin's experiments, sundew leaves are activated when the insect is stuck. Within half an hour, the nearest hairs bend towards the insect, gluing it more firmly. The leaf is then wrapped around the prey, glands on the surface of the leaf secrete chemicals that dissolve and digest the insect.
Seeing this, Darwin wrote: “I sometimes think that the drossera is an animal in disguise.” In a sense, he was right. In Florida swamps, sundews compete with other animal predators. In some places the ground is completely covered with pink sundew. Most often there is no shortage of prey, and the sundew feeds well.
But the plant has rivals - wolf spiders. The spider weaves a dense web above the ground. If someone steps on the web, the vibration is transmitted to the spider hiding in its center, and it attacks with lightning speed. When there is not enough prey, the spider increases the size of the net to catch more insects and the sundew is deprived of food.
Predatory plants also have other competitors. The sundew takes time to kill and digest its prey, and the insect's throwing behavior attracts attention baby toads. They are found in these damp forests and often steal the sundew's prey. Sundew sticky traps take many forms, from flat carpets to plants growing up to 2-3 meters in height.
Roridula
Sticky traps are so effective that other plants have developed similar methods. This roridula, growing only in a few regions South Africa. Like sundew, it is covered with a sticky substance, although unlike sundew it is more like resin. The droplets are stickier than sundew mucus and trap larger, stronger insects. Roridula has no digestive glands on its leaves. What does she do with her prey?
A tiny bug helps her - horsefly bug. The horsefly spends its entire life on the roredula. It has a non-stick wax coating and can walk through this superglue forest without worry. The horsefly bug is a predator. On a large plant there are hundreds of them - more than enough to process all the insects caught by the roredula. Beetles are careful. After all, prey that is too large and dangerous may fall into the trap. So, for the first 10 minutes, the horsefly just assesses the situation and waits for the fly to weaken.
Then young animals emerge from the wild forest, anticipating a feast. At first, the beetles are outraged by the company - fights break out here and there. But now the prey is almost dead and everyone has no time for self-indulgence. The horsefly has a hard proboscis, no worse than a medical needle, and it sticks it into the fly to suck out the juices.
Even barely born beetles join in the meal. After eating, the beetles leave their droppings on the leaves of the roredula - ready-made fertilizer, which is absorbed by the plant. Roridula and horseflies have a symbiotic relationship: without bugs, roridula would not be a predator, and horseflies are found in those sticky branches.
Sticky leaves provide carnivorous plants with all the nutrients they need to survive in wet forests and swamps, but one plant goes even further. In nature it grows only small area wet pine forest in North Carolina - Venus flytrap. It evolved from the sticky trap of the sundew. The slow folding of the leaf turned into a sensitive trap capable of capturing an insect.
Samples of the plant were sent to Darwin and he grew them in a greenhouse to study. Upon closer examination, he discovered that in addition to the spines along the edges of the leaves, there were three fine hairs on the surface of each lobe. It is reasonable to assume that this is the trigger mechanism. To test, Darwin touched one hair, but the trap did not always work. But when you touched two hairs at once, the trap immediately slammed shut. There are reasons for this: slamming requires energy.
In nature, flycatchers live where there is frequent heavy rainfall and they do not need the trap to react to every raindrop. It is more difficult to touch two hairs at the same time, and the trap won't go off by accident.
For the trap to close, you need to touch two hairs with an interval of no more than 20 seconds. The beetle stimulates the first hair, setting off a time bomb. One more touch and the trap slammed shut.
Insects have a quick reaction, but the predator plant is even faster - the trap closes in a third of a second. The spines along the edges of the leaves intersect like prison bars, but not yet tightly. There are reasons for this too: the hairs are so sensitive that they even work on tiny insects, too small for a full meal, and the gaps between the bars of the prison allow small insects to get out.
After a few days, if nothing touches the hairs, the trap opens again. More worthy prey remains inside, continuing to stimulate the hairs. Within a few hours, the walls of the trap close and the cells on the inner surface release substances that kill and digest insects. It's easy to understand why Darwin called the flycatcher the most amazing plant in the world.
Aldrovanda vesiculata
The flycatcher has lesser-known relatives that grow in water - Aldrovanda vesicularis. The arrangement of the branches makes it look like a water wheel, but its blades are death traps. Each trap is framed by sensitive hairs.
The traps are only a few millimeters long and work like a flytrap. Aldrovanda hunts barnacle crustaceans and copipods. As soon as you touch the hairs, the trap works almost as quickly as a flytrap. What amazing– after all, these traps are located in water, which is much denser than air. The caught crustacean is slowly digested.
Darwin studied sticky traps and traps and proved that these plants are real predators. But there is a third type of trap that Darwin was not so sure about—plant pit traps with trapping leaves. He suggested that they were insectivores and now we know that such traps are the most complex and ingenious of all.
Trap leaves arose independently of each other in
- both Americas,
- in Australia,
- and in Southeast Asia.
They are beautiful, but the beauty of these flowers is deadly. Beneath it lie traps that attract and kill the unwary. This design amazed Darwin; he doubted the natural origin of such complex systems. And in vain.
Bromeliad
The answer lies in the swampy forests of tropical America. The trees here are hung bromeliads– predator plants, relatives of pineapples. Many grow as epiphytes, clinging to tree branches and trunks to rise above the ground closer to the sun.
But roots hanging in the air cannot absorb water and nutrients from the soil. Instead, the leaves form a well in the center of the plant, which collects water when it rains. Leaves falling from trees also end up there. So the plants get necessary water and food from a personal source. Or not so personal?
To many creatures, bromeliad funnel flowers appear to be miniature ponds. In South America, dart frogs move from plant to plant in search of an unoccupied well, that is, a place to breed. But some bromeliads are not so hospitable.
Like many bromeliads, bromeliad brochinia in the very center of the plant there is a funnel, but inside it there is acid and digestive enzymes. Its leaves are waxy and slippery like ice. An ant that climbs onto such a leaf slides and slides to the death well, where it will be digested and turned into food.
Sarracenia
Starting with the simplest, nature, through natural selection, created more complex traps. One of the most elegant is hidden at the far end of a swampy pine forest in the southeastern United States. This is a carnivorous plant - sarracenia.
They grow long funnel-shaped flowers and attract insects sweet nectar. Trying to get it, insects slide down. The prey falls to the bottom of the trap and cannot get out - it is impossible to climb up the inner surface of the funnel. The victim dies, and the plant releases enzymes and acid, breaking down the captured insects.
Droplets of alluring sweet nectar appear on the underside of the leaf, covered with fine hairs that make it difficult for the insect to stay on. Tall, visible funnels attract insects with the promise of nectar as good as bright colors. Insects are so busy eating nectar that they do not notice how it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold on.
The walls of the funnel are slippery and there is no escape, and the plant secretes digestive enzymes, slowly dissolving the victim. Such a meal makes up for all the costs of producing sweet nectar, but sometimes the work is wasted. The sweet drops are eaten by the swallowtail butterfly, which is too large to fall into the trap. And in many jugs there lives green lynx spider, waiting for an opportunity to intercept prey from a plant.
Conclusion
Today our interest in these amazing carnivorous plants is as great as after their discovery and scientists are probably still waiting new surprises. Over the past few years, about a dozen new species of insectivorous plants have been discovered, but there are still hundreds of unexplored regions where dozens of new species are waiting to be discovered.
We are just beginning to understand the incredibly complex relationships between carnivorous plants and animals and other organisms. Victorian stories of man-eating plants were just myths. But discoveries recent years showed that in the world of insectivorous plants, truth can be much stranger than fiction.
Not all plants rely solely on nutrients from the air and soil. Among them there are also carnivorous plants that eat insects, small crustaceans, and even fish fry...it happens that a person becomes a victim of a plant. Carnivorous plants live in unusual conditions: in the desert, on high marshes, wet rocks, marshy meadows - on poor soil, poor in nutrients. That’s why they developed the ability to assimilate living protein food, snatching it literally out of thin air.
They have not lost the ability to feed on inorganic substances coming from the soil and air. Simply, life on soil poor in nitrogenous salts and other minerals forced them to look for additional sources of food. Many predator plants live in swamps and swamps, and at the expense of captured victims they make up for their lack of nitrogen. Carnivorous plants are able to live without protein food, but this makes them very stunted.
Predatory, or carnivorous, insectivorous plants catch victims using special trap leaves. All carnivorous plants have beautiful flowers and brightly colored leaves. Insects fly for nectar and fall into a trap. When insects fall for the bait, they either stick to a leaf with sticky glandular hairs, or they find themselves caught in the leaves in the form of special traps. The victim's body is digested with the help of special enzymes or destroyed by organic acids secreted by plants.
Predatory plants are divided into three groups based on their trap organs. These are plants with moving trap organs (sundew, butterwort, flycatcher); with sticky sticky leaves (rosolist, growing in the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco); with bubbles, jugs and “catching pits” in the form of tubes (pemphigus, nepenthes, saracenia).
Insectivores are perennial herbaceous plants; there are not very many species of them, only about 500. Some soil fungi are also predators. They are found in all ecosystems in various parts light, grow on soil and in water. As a rule, these plants are inhabitants of areas with warm, temperate and tropical climates; they love the sun. More famous to us are sundew and butterfly - inhabitants of peat bogs.
Giant carnivorous plants
In the tropical jungles of Madagascar you can find giant carnivorous plants. The natives talk about a tree that can eat a person. The German naturalist K. Lihe witnessed how “a palm tree with a thick trunk in the shape of a pineapple and about 2.5 meters high” ate a woman. The scientist saw a ritual of sacrifice to this tree.
After the ritual dance, a young woman was brought to the tree, she climbed up the trunk and began to lick the juice from two huge leaves in the shape of open palms until she fell into a trance. Then the two-meter vines began to close around her. Gradually the leaves-palms shrank. The girl screamed. After 10 days, Lihe found only the bones of the victim under this tree.
According to scientists, several million years ago predator plants were larger. Their growth has decreased as a result of climate change. Since the climate has changed less in the equatorial tropical zones, the ancestors of carnivorous plants should be looked for there.
In the middle of the 20th century, the German scientist K. Schwimmer went on an expedition to check rumors about a monster devouring people in Northern Rhodesia (Central Africa). The search for the monster ended with the discovery of a man-eating tree. Arriving at the source of the spicy, intoxicating smell, the members of the expedition saw a tree-grove, lush crown which was supported by thick shoots.
Under the tree, Schwimmer found many bones. With slaps in the face, he brought his companions, intoxicated by the narcotic smell, to their senses. The travelers plugged their nostrils with chewing gum and conducted an experiment. They shot the vulture and threw it into a tree. The vines immediately wrapped themselves around the bird. As soon as the researchers walked away a little, they heard a chilling scream: the Negro porter had become prey to the tree. It was impossible to save him. Hearing from Schwimmer about what had happened, the tribal leader ordered the terrible plant to be burned.
1970 - naturalists from Brazil saw a palm-like tree feeding on monkeys and sloths.
In forests Central America discovered the so-called “Tree of Justice”. It got its name from the Goboro tribe. According to the tribal leader, those suspected of murder or theft are handed over to the tree for trial: it releases the innocent, but sucks the blood from the criminals.
It was a tree with two trunks growing 1 meter apart and with long vines. According to eyewitnesses, they actually wrapped her around, but immediately released the girl, who decided to test the leader’s words in practice. It can be assumed that the tree reacts to substances that are released from fear by a criminal placed between the tree trunks.
Vampire mushrooms
The powerful impact of radiation on nature, caused by the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, led to the appearance of monstrous mushrooms in the forests of the Kyiv, Gomel and Bryansk regions. These vampire mushrooms secrete a sticky substance to which insects stick. Then the fungus grows into the victim’s body with a thin tube and sucks out its contents. Other mushrooms, “rocket launchers,” shoot a spore at an insect, the spore germinates in the body of the victim, kills it and gives life to a new mushroom.
Sundew
Sundew is called so because droplets of sticky mucus glisten on it, which look like dew or droplets of honey. The sundew itself is colored red and green. The leaves of this small insectivorous plant are covered with 25 cilia on the upper side of the leaf blade and along the edges where the longest ones are located. The upper end of the cilia is thickened. It is there that the gland is located, which secretes sticky mucus. Insects fly to the predatory sundew, attracted by the shine of this droplet. But as soon as they touch the fox, they stick. Soon, after 10 or 20 minutes, the eyelash to which the victim is stuck will bend towards the center of the leaf. All neighboring eyelashes will also bend.
Afterwards, the edge of the leaf blade will bend and the trap will close. If there is a substance that does not contain protein on the eyelashes, for example a drop of rain, they will not move. Enzymes secreted by the cilia break down protein (dewdew enzymes are similar to pepsin, the gastric juice of animals). After the predator has had lunch, the cilia straighten, become covered with “dew” again and attract new flies. Sometimes the digestive process lasts for several days. The South African royal sundew, a plant half a meter tall, can even digest snails and frogs.
Zhiryanka
The green leaves of butterwort are much larger than the leaves of sundew. They are covered with mucus and this makes them appear greasy. If you examine a section of a leaf under a microscope, you can see two types of glands: some are like mushrooms with caps, others are just caps without legs. On one square centimeter of a butterwort leaf there are up to 25 thousand glands. When an insect sticks to a leaf and causes irritation, the plant immediately secretes digestive juices. The butterwort eats insects even faster than the sundew: it only takes a day.
Pemphigus
The most complex traps in design are those of bladderworts. These are plants without roots. They are rarely found larger than 2 mm in diameter. The bladderwort, which lives in swamp water, catches and eats insect larvae, fry and crustaceans. The leaves of the predator float in the water, and a stem with large yellow flowers is visible above the water. Its heavily dissected leaf was transformed during development, so some of its parts became hollow bubbles.
Each such bubble has its own mouth, framed by hard bristles. The inner lining of the trap is covered with hairs that constantly absorb liquid, therefore creating negative pressure in the cavity. As soon as the valve opens, water enters the bubble along with the victim. It is impossible to get out of the bubble. Its walls inside cover the digestive glands. When a crustacean or fry dies in a trap and decomposes, the plant “digests” its remains.
It has long been known that sundews and butterworts produce a protein-digesting enzyme. People use this feature when cleaning clay jugs from milk residues. They are evaporated with a decoction of sundew leaves, which decomposes the milk protein even in the pores of earthenware.
There are gardeners who grow these carnivorous plants at home. “Predators” are dug out along with peat moss, “settled” in a terrarium, and covered with glass on top so that the plant has enough moisture. The owners of predator plants have to catch flies for them to feed; some manage to feed them pieces of meat and cottage cheese.
Saracenia purpurea
Saracenia purpurea is widespread, in which the leaf petiole has turned into a tube, and the leaf blade has turned into a cap above it. Even when Saracenia is not in bloom, its emerald-crimson or yellow-red leaves attract midges. Small Saracenia and Californian Darlingtonia have another trick for insects: the canopies over the traps are translucent, the insect mistakes the gap for an exit, takes off, hits the wall and falls into the liquid.
The insects drown in the liquid, are digested, and then the remains are absorbed by the walls of the tube. The most favorite food of this plant is cockroaches and flies. The Saraceniaceae family includes 10 species of Saracenia, Darlingtonia californica and six species of Heliamphora. Their habitat is swamps in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions in southern North America and northeastern South America.
Venus flytrap
Near Wilmington, North Carolina, a Venus flytrap grows in peat bogs. Its leaves are a kind of trap. Each of them is divided into two parts, the lower part extracts nutrients from the air, and the upper part catches insects. The two movable lobes of the locking leaf have sharp teeth, and each of them has three long elastic bristles.
As soon as a fly or mosquito touches the bristles, the lobes quickly slam shut and clamp the insect. Resistance will only strengthen the grip of the predatory plant. The victim breaks out, and the leaf segments squeeze it more and more tightly. Then small red glands begin to secrete sour, clear juice. In 1–3 weeks, the flycatcher eats the insect, and its lobules return to their previous position. After two or three meals, the leaf dies. Why is this Venus flytrap? They say that it was given this name because the trap leaves are shaped like sea shells, which have long been considered a symbol of the feminine.
An experiment with a plant showed that if you touch the bristles with a stick, the trap slams shut, but when it discovers that there is no food in it, the plant opens again. It reacts even if the victim weighs only 0.0008 milligrams. It is curious that the trap slams shut only when the victim touches two or more hairs. If only one bristle is disturbed, the trap will not work. So some lucky ones manage to carefully crawl towards the nectar and enjoy it.
Aldrovanda
Using the same principle as the Venus flytrap, the underwater plant aldrovanda from the sundew family catches its prey.
The favorite delicacy of orangutans is digestive juice from large pitchers of Nepenthes (a genus of insectivorous plants, part of the petiole of which is turned into a pitcher). It tastes sour and is very refreshing in the heat.
Nepenthes - bushy vines
Under the forest canopy in the tropics of Madagascar, South Asia and Indonesia, New Guinea, Northern Australia, the Seychelles, bizarre nepenthes - bush-like vines - grow in warm and humid jungles.
This carnivorous plant uses another plant instead of support, developing on it. Thus, trees and shrubs growing nearby are entwined with petioles of nepenthes leaves, and blue, red, and green pitchers, which are the “hunting organs” of the plant, hang between the branches. Having evolved, the nepenthes leaf turned into a brightly colored jug with a lid, and its middle part into a tendril. Length of jug-traps various types ranges from 4 to 60 cm.
These insectivores catch insects passively. In some of these plants, the jug holds up to one liter of liquid, so not only large insects, but even small birds. In addition to its bright color, insects are attracted to Nepenthes by its fragrant nectar. It stands out along the edge of the jug and looks like a smooth waxy coating. The victim sits on the jug, then gradually moves onto it, which is slippery due to the coating inner side and slides down it to the bottom, into a viscous liquid.
The coarse hairs inside the jug prevent her from getting to the top. These sharp hairs are directed downward, which allows the caught victim to easily slide to the bottom, but makes it difficult to escape from the jug. After 5–7 hours, the Nepenthes prey is digested. The stomach jugs work all the time. These vines are also called “hunting cups”: you can drink from them clean water, however, only from the top, because there are undigested insects at the bottom. Giant Nepenthes grow on Borneo island, sometimes pigeons, other birds, as well as small animals get into their jugs.
Giant Byblis
Residents of Australia have found good use for the leaves of another famous carnivorous plant - the giant biblis. The narrow leaves of this low shrub secrete a substance with such a strong adhesive effect that at times frogs and small birds stick to them. Australians use this substance as glue.
Why do the victims of these plants voluntarily climb into deadly traps? Cunning plants share their secrets.
The Venus flytrap slams its trap shut when you touch its tiny hairs twice.
A hungry fly is looking for something to eat. Sensing a smell similar to the aroma of nectar, she sits on a fleshy red leaf - it seems to her that it is an ordinary flower. While the fly drinks the sweet liquid, it touches with its paw a tiny hair on the surface of the leaf, then another... And then walls grow around the fly. The jagged edges of the leaf close together like jaws. The fly tries to escape, but the trap is tightly closed. Now, instead of nectar, the leaf secretes enzymes that dissolve the insides of the insect, gradually turning them into a sticky pulp. The fly suffered the greatest humiliation that can befall an animal: it was killed by a plant.
Tropical nepenthes attracts insects with a sweet aroma, but as soon as the unlucky ones sit on its slippery rim, they immediately slide into its open womb.
Plants versus animals.
The swampy savannah, stretching 140 kilometers around Wilmington, North Carolina, USA, is the only place on Earth where the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is indigenous. There are also other types of carnivorous plants here - not so famous and not so rare, but no less amazing. For example, Nepenthes with jugs that look like champagne glasses, where insects (and sometimes larger animals) find their death. Or the sundew (Drosera), which wraps its sticky hairs around its prey, and the bladderwort (Utricularia), an underwater plant that sucks up its prey like a vacuum cleaner.
Many predator plants (there are more than 675 species) use passive traps. The butterwort bristles with sticky hairs that hold the insect while the digestive fluid works.
Plants that feed on animals cause us inexplicable anxiety. Probably the fact is that this order of things contradicts our ideas about the universe. The famous naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who in the 18th century created the system of classification of living nature that we still use today, refused to believe that this was possible. After all, if the Venus flytrap actually eats insects, it violates the order of nature established by God. Linnaeus believed that plants catch insects by chance, and if the unfortunate insect stops twitching, it will be released.
The Australian sundew attracts insects with dew-like droplets and then wraps its hairs around them.
Charles Darwin, on the contrary, was fascinated by the willful behavior of green predators. In 1860, shortly after a scientist first saw one of these plants (it was a sundew) on a moorland, he wrote: “The sundew interests me more than the origin of all species in the world.”
The silhouettes of captured insects, like shadow theater figures, look through the leaf of the Philippine Nepenthes. The waxy surface of the inner wall of the jug prevents insects from getting free, and enzymes at its bottom extract nutrients from the victim.
Darwin spent more than one month on experiments. He placed flies on the leaves of carnivorous plants and watched them slowly tighten the hairs around their prey; he even tossed pieces to the voracious plants raw meat and egg yolk. And he found out: in order to cause a plant reaction, the weight of a human hair is enough.
Sensing the smell of food, the cockroach looks into the jug. Insectivores, like other plants, engage in photosynthesis, but most of them live in swamps and other places where the soil is poor in nutrients. The nitrogen they get from feeding on their victims helps them thrive in these difficult conditions.
“It seems to me that hardly anyone has ever observed a more amazing phenomenon in the plant kingdom,” the scientist wrote. At the same time, the sundews did not pay any attention to the drops of water, even if they fell from a great height. Reacting to a false alarm during rain, Darwin reasoned, would be a big mistake for the plant - so this is not an accident, but a natural adaptation.
Most plant predators eat some insects and force others to help them reproduce. In order not to catch a potential pollinator for lunch, sarracenias keep flowers away from trap jugs - on long stems.
Subsequently, Darwin studied other species of predatory plants, and in 1875 he summarized the results of his observations and experiments in the book “Insectivorous Plants.” He was especially fascinated by the extraordinary speed and strength of the Venus flytrap, which he called one of the most amazing plants in the world. Darwin discovered that when a leaf closes its edges, it temporarily turns into a “stomach” that secretes enzymes that dissolve prey.
Their buds hang like Chinese lanterns, luring bees into intricately constructed pollen chambers.
After long observations, Charles Darwin came to the conclusion that it takes more than a week for the predator's leaf to open again. Probably, he suggested, the denticles along the edges of the leaf do not meet completely, so that very small insects could escape, and thus the plant would not have to waste energy on low-nutrient food.
Some predator plants, such as sundews, can pollinate themselves if volunteer insects are not available.
Darwin compared the lightning-fast reaction of the Venus flytrap - its trap slams shut in a tenth of a second - to the contraction of the animal's muscles. However, plants have neither muscles nor nerve endings. How do they manage to react exactly like animals?
If the sticky hair does not grab the large fly tightly enough, the insect, albeit crippled, will break free. In the world of plant predators, says William McLaughlin, curator of the US Botanical Garden, it also happens that insects die, and the “hunters” remain hungry.
Plant electricity.
Today, biologists studying cells and DNA are beginning to understand how these plants hunt, eat, and digest food—and most importantly, how they “learned” to do it. Alexander Volkov, a specialist in plant physiology from Oakwood University (Alabama, USA), is convinced that after many years of research, he has finally managed to uncover the secret of the Venus flytrap. When an insect touches a hair on the surface of a flycatcher's leaf with its foot, a tiny electrical discharge is generated. The charge accumulates in the leaf tissue, but it is not enough for the slamming mechanism to work - this is insurance against a false alarm. But more often than not, the insect touches another hair, adding a second to the first, and the leaf closes.
A flower is blooming on the South African royal sundew, the largest member of the genus. The leaves of this lush plant can reach half a meter in length.
Volkov's experiments show that the discharge moves down liquid-filled tunnels that penetrate the leaf, causing pores in the cell walls to open. Water rushes from the cells located on the inner surface of the leaf to those located on its outer side, and the leaf quickly changes shape: from convex to concave. The two leaves collapse and the insect is trapped.
The tiny, thimble-sized, insectivorous plant of the genus Cephalotus from Western Australia prefers to feast on crawling insects. With guiding hairs and an alluring smell, it lures ants into its digestive bowels.
The underwater trap of bladderwort is no less ingenious. It pumps water out of the bubbles, lowering the pressure in them. When a water flea or some other small creature, swimming by, touches the hairs on the outer surface of the bubble, its lid opens, and low pressure draws the water inside, and with it the prey. In one five-hundredth of a second the lid slams shut again. The cells of the vesicle then pump out the water, restoring the vacuum in it.
The water-filled North American hybrid lures bees with the promise of nectar and a rim that looks like the perfect landing pad. Eating meat is not the most effective way for a plant to provide itself with the necessary substances, but, undoubtedly, one of the most extravagant.
Many other predatory plant species are like fly tape, using sticky hairs to capture their prey. Pitcher plants resort to a different strategy: they catch insects in long leaves- jugs. The largest ones have deep jugs up to a third of a meter, and they can even digest some unlucky frog or rat.
The jug becomes a death trap thanks to chemicals. Nepenthes rafflesiana, for example, growing in the jungles of Kalimantan, secretes nectar, on the one hand, attracting insects, and on the other, forming a slippery film on which they cannot stay. Insects that land on the rim of the jug slide inside and fall into the viscous digestive fluid. They desperately move their legs, trying to free themselves, but the liquid pulls them to the bottom.
Many predatory plants have special glands that secrete enzymes that are strong enough to penetrate the hard chitinous shell of insects and reach the nutrients hidden underneath. But purple sarracenia, found in swamps and poor sandy soils in North America, attracts other organisms to digest food.
Sarracenia helps to function a complex food web that includes mosquito larvae, small midges, protozoa and bacteria; many of them can only live in this environment. Animals grind up the prey that falls into the jug, and the fruits of their labors are used by smaller organisms. The sarracenia eventually absorbs the nutrients released during this feast. “By having animals in this processing chain, all the reactions are accelerated,” says Nicholas Gotelli of the University of Vermont. “When the digestive cycle is completed, the plant pumps oxygen into the pitcher so that its inhabitants have something to breathe.”
Thousands of sarracenia grow in the swamps of the Harvard Forest, owned by the university of the same name, in central Massachusetts. Aaron Ellison, the forest's chief ecologist, is working with Gotelli to figure out what evolutionary reasons led the flora to develop a penchant for a meat diet.
Predatory plants clearly benefit from eating animals: the more flies the researchers feed them, the better they grow. But what exactly are sacrifices useful for? From them, predators obtain nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients to produce light-trapping enzymes. In other words, eating animals allows carnivorous plants to do what all flora do: grow by getting energy from the sun.
The work of green predators is not easy. They have to spend a huge amount of energy creating devices for catching animals: enzymes, pumps, sticky hairs and other things. Sarracenia or flycatcher cannot photosynthesize much because, unlike plants with regular leaves, their leaves do not solar panels, capable of absorbing light in large quantities. Ellison and Gotelli believe that the benefits of a carnivorous life outweigh the costs of maintaining it only under special conditions. The poor soil of swamps, for example, contains little nitrogen and phosphorus, so predator plants there have an advantage over their counterparts who obtain these substances in more conventional ways. In addition, swamps have no shortage of sun, so even photosynthetically inefficient carnivorous plants capture enough light to survive.
Nature has made such a compromise more than once. By comparing the DNA of carnivorous and “ordinary” plants, scientists discovered that different groups of predators are not evolutionarily related to each other, but appeared independently of each other in at least six cases. Some carnivorous plants, although similar in appearance, are only distantly related. Both the tropical genus Nepenthes and the North American Sarracenia have pitcher leaves and use the same strategy to catch prey, but they come from different ancestors.
Bloodthirsty, but defenseless.
Unfortunately, the very properties that allow predatory plants to thrive in difficult environments natural conditions, make them extremely sensitive to changes in environment. Many wetlands in North America receive excess nitrogen from fertilization of surrounding agricultural areas and emissions from power plants. Carnivorous plants are so perfectly adapted to low nitrogen content in the soil that they cannot cope with this unexpected “gift”. “Eventually they just die from overexertion,” Ellison says.
There is another danger emanating from people. The illegal trade in carnivorous plants is so widespread that botanists try to keep secret the locations where some rare species are found. Poachers are smuggling Venus flytraps out of North Carolina by the thousands and selling them from roadside stands. The state Department of Agriculture has been tagging wild specimens for some time now. safe paint, invisible in normal light, but flickering in ultraviolet rays, so that inspectors, having found these plants on sale, can quickly determine whether they come from a greenhouse or a swamp.
Even if poaching can be stopped (which is also doubtful), predator plants will still suffer from many misfortunes. Their habitat is disappearing, giving way to shopping centers and residential areas. Forest fires are not allowed to run rampant, which gives other plants the opportunity to grow quickly and win competition with Venus flytraps.
The flies are probably happy about this. But for those who admire the amazing ingenuity of evolution, this is a great loss.