Posted on 11/24/2007 4:17:25 PM PST by blam
Carnivorous Plants Use Pitchers Of 'Slimy Saliva' To Catch Their Prey
ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2007) — Carnivorous plants supplement the meager diet available from the nutrient-poor soils in which they grow by trapping and digesting insects and other small arthropods. Pitcher plants of the genus Nepenthes were thought to capture their prey with a simple passive trap but in a paper in PLoS One, Laurence Gaume and Yoel Forterre, a biologist and a physicist from the CNRS, working respectively in the University of Montpellier and the University of Marseille, France show that they employ slimy secretions to doom their victims.
Pitcher of N. rafflesiana showing a Calliphora fly collecting extrafloral nectar in a perilous position (Brunei). (Credit: Gaume L, Forterre Y, Image courtesy of PLoS One)
They show that the fluid contained inside the plants' pitchers has the perfect viscoelastic properties to prevent the escape of any small creatures that come into contact with it even when diluted by the heavy rainfall of the forest of Borneo in which they live.
Since Charles Darwin's time, the mechanism of insect-trapping by Nepenthes pitcher plants from the Asian tropics has intrigued scientists but is still incompletely understood. The slippery inner surfaces of their pitchers have -- until now -- been considered the key trapping devices, while it was assumed that the fluid secretions were only concerned with digestion.
Gaume and Forterre were able to combine their separate expertise in biology and physics to show that the digestive fluid of Nepenthes rafflesiana actually plays a crucial role in prey capture.
The pair took high-speed videos of flies and ants attempting to move through plants' fluid. Flies quickly became completely coated in the fluid and unable to move even when diluted more than 90% with water. Physical measurements on the fluid showed that this was because this complex fluid generates viscoelastic filaments with high retentive forces that give no chance of escape to any insect that has fallen into it and that is struggling in it.
That the viscoelastic properties of the fluid remain strong even when highly diluted is of great adaptive significance for these tropical plants which are often subjected to heavy rainfalls.
For insects, this fluid acts like quicksand: the quicker they move, the more trapped they become. Its constituency is closely akin to mucus or saliva, which, in some reptiles and amphibians, serves a very similar purpose.
The exact makeup of this fluid, apparently unique in the plant kingdom, remains to be determined; however, it may point the way to novel, environmentally friendly approaches to pest control.
Citation: Gaume L, Forterre Y (2007) A Viscoelastic Deadly Fluid in Carnivorous Pitcher Plants. PLoS One 2(11): e1185. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001185
Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.
I’m sure we’ve all known one or two women like that.
Sarracenia alata clump of plants in habitat. Hillside bog, western Louisiana.
Flowers
An outstanding S. alata with burgundy colored inner pitcher and lid. Seen in an open savannah, southeastern Mississippi late June, 1992
Hillside seep bog in the Angelina National Forest in east Texas. This site was in desperate need of burning. Plants were in a declining condition with heavy overgrowth in summer 1992. Note reddish coloration in upper pitchers by summer
are vegans allowed to eat these plants?
This is great stuff for a sixth grader ... at least when I was going to school. I wonder what a sixth grader is being tought in this day and age?
Haven't seen any Venus fly-traps here but there are a good many patches of sundews (also carnivorous...but small).Unless you're looking for them and know what you're looking for, they are very easy to miss.This is larger than life:
We’ve got a type of pitcher plant in boggy areas here in the north as well.
Maybe these plants can eat the vegans.
I don't know. It would appear that they are intelligent plants and meat eaters (bug meat)too. I always did think plants were living intelligent things, So vegans shouldn't eat them either. They should live only on clean air.
http://www.pfmt.org/wildlife/endangered/al_can.htm
Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plant
(Sarracenia rubra ssp. alabamensis)
Description: Like all pitcher plants, this one is carnivorous, trapping and digesting insects in its tubular leaf. The tube of the Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plant is 8 to 16 inches tall in the spring and may be curved in shaded conditions. The flower is maroon and droops from a 2 foot stalk. The flower appears in April through June. The summer leaves are also tubular and may be up to 27 inches long. They are light green and covered with white hair. The plant grows in wet areas and seeps along with grasses, sedges, sweetbay, poison sumac, bayberry, and sparkleberry.
Forestry Considerations: Pitcher plants are sun loving, so fire, which releases them from shade and woody brush is beneficial. They are very dependent on the moist soil conditions where they grow, so any activities which affect the water table or drainage of the site, including construction of firelines, site preparation, or harvesting is potentially harmful and should be carefully planned to avoid this impact.
Distribution by County: Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plants are known to occur only in Autauga, Chilton, and Elmore Counties.
If you have feedback or ideas for useful components for the PFMT web site, please contact us.
Most Recent Revision: 09/20/06
Private Forest Management Team
Auburn University, Alabama
If the plants were larger you could invert that question to "are these plants allowed to eat vegans?"
An idea worth considering.
Thank you for posting this article, blam. Whenever I get tired of the political scene, I find it refreshing to think of carnivorous plants that trap their victims in pitchers of slimy saliva.
They are also abundant in parts of Mobile County, AL.
Ahem, that's where I live. On the route to Bellingrath Gardens and Dauphin Island.
Stapleguns...
That's also where I lived in throughout 1960's when I worked at WABB radio, only I lived in town at the Chateau Rouge Apts. (hate to think of what might be left of them by now) about two blocks from the studios at Springhill Ave. & Catherine St.
* and back then we had a "Freeman House" diner adjacent to us in the same building.
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