What are carnivorous plants?
Carnivorous plants are the name given to a wide ranging group of plants which only share a single common factor, that is that they all have a method of trapping and digesting living creatures in order to provide a means of nourishment. How these plants do this varies widely from species to species. Most people think that all Carnivorous plants have traps which shut suddenly on unwary insects. However, the case is that most Carnivorous plants have ‘passive’ methods of catching their prey, most never move and simply wait for their prey to make a mistake. Stories of Carnivorous plants being man-eating fiends have also been greatly exaggerated. The majority of Carnivorous plants never grow above a few feet. Even the giant tropical Nepenthes restrict their intake to insects, albeit slightly larger insects. The cultivation of these plants has often worried newcomers, fearing that the upkeep of these amazing plants is difficult and that the plant rarely outlives a year. This is not the case,
Carnivorous plants are plants that attract, capture, and digest insects to obtain nutrients such as nitrogen. Carnivorous plants grow in nutrient poor habitats such as sphagnum bogs, where the ability to trap insects gives them an evolutionary advantage over other plants. Carnivorous plants use various methods to trap their victims: • Pitcher plants such as the genera Sarracenia and Nepenthes trap insects in fluid filled pitchers. • Genera such as Drosera and Pinguicula have sticky leaves which mire their victims. • Utricularia (blatterworts) use suction to pull tiny animals into bladders. • Dionaea muscipula (Venus fly trap) has a hinged leaf blade that folds around any victim that makes contact with two of six trigger hairs.
Carnivorous plants have modified insect-trapping leaves, and they usually live in places where the soil is deficient in some major element. The plant captures–via mechanized traps, pools of enzymes, sticky hairs or floating bladders–insects from which they can derive any desired elements. HOWEVER, these plants have been demonstrated to live and thrive just fine in their depleted soil environment without insect supplementation. there are plants that can feed on large insects and small animals on occasion, however, there are none that eat humans, or anything bigger than a mouse or a small rabbit–as that would take a lot of digestive enzymes Bladderworts have been known to decompose frogs, when caught, and venus fly traps have been known to catch small animals. Hope this helps!
In 1760 Governor Arthur DOBBS of North Carolina wrote to a European friend about a small, bizarre plant found in his colony’s southeastern lowlands. The governor described the plant’s leaves very accurately as “like a narrow segment of a sphere, consisting of two parts… upon any thing touching… or falling between them, they instantly close like a spring trap, and confine any insect or any thing that falls between them…” DOBBS called the curiosity “Fly Trap Sensitive” and he had not the faintest idea as to how the traps were set off, or of what value any captured insect or animal might be. In 1769 John ELLIS wrote to the famous Swedisch botanist LINNAEUS and he gave a more formal description of the species, adding the Latin name “Dionaea muscipula” better known as the striking “Venus Fly Trap.” A century later Charles DARWIN, fascinated by the rapidity of movement by the plant spoke of it as “one of the most wonderful in the world.” Throughout the world, from tropical swamp to upl
