Insectivorous Plants

Insectivorous plants or Carnivorous plants: There are the plants that derive some or most of their nutrients by trapping and consuming animals mainly insects. These plants grow where soil is deficient in some nutrients. Example: Pitcher plant. These are actually green plants which can make their own food. But, they gain some of their nutrition from insects, trapped by the plants themselves. These plants mostly grow in the soil which is poor in nitrogen. So, they trap insects to get nitrogenous compounds without manufacturing them. The examples are venus fly trap, sundew, bladderworf and pitcher plant.

Venus flytrap: Insects are lured by the nectar into the jaw-like leaf trap of the Venus flytrap plant. Once the insect sits on the leaves, the jaws clampshut and the insect is trapped in it. The plant immediately secretes digestive juices that first drown and then dissolve the insect.

Sundew: Its leaves are covered with hair-like structures (tentacles) that ooze a sticky dew like substance that glitters in the sunlight. When an insect lands on the sticky tentacles of a sundew plant, it struggles to free itself, but this struggling stimulates the tentacles tighten their grip. The tentacles then produce a digestive juice that dissolves the victim.

Pitcher plant: The leaves of the pitcher plants extend into tendrils and then swell like balloons. Pitchers have a lid that acts as a landing platform for insects. It also helps to prevent rainwater from diluting the digestive juices inside the pitcher. The inside of the pitcher is lined with downward pointing hair, which do not allow any insect to climb back and escape. Insects are attracted to the pitcher by its scent or colour. When they enter inside, the lid closes. They slide down the walls and drown into the digestive juices at the bottom, which dissolve the insect.

Bladderwort: The stem and slender leaves of bladderworts bear a large number of very small, pear-shaped bladders. The bladders have small membrane covers that act as doors. Their oval shapes create a vacuum that sucks in tiny insects within one-thousandth of a second, when they trigger the hair that are located around the doors. Digestive juices are then released inside the bladders to digest the prey.

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