CARNIVOROUS PLANTS

 

                                      

There are over a quarter million plant species . only 600 or so are carnivorous . We call them this because they attract , trap and eat bugs . Like other plants they get their energy from the sun . But unlike other plants , they get their nutrients from their pray . carnivorous plants live in blogs and the places where the soil lacks nutrients. Most plants get nutrients from the soil . Carnivorous plants have turned to other sources.

                                         

The snap of the Venus flytrap is not the only way that plants eat bugs. pitcher plants trick their prey into landing on them . they offer nectar bribes to the foolish insects that would take them . 

                                          

True to their name , pitcher plants have deep chambers . Their landing surface is slippery . They have inward pointing hairs , making it hard to escape . The fly lands on the pitcher plant to eat but slips into a pit filled with digestive fluid and is eaten . 

                                           

Then there are sundews . We call them sundews because they sparkle in the sun as if covered in morning dew . Of course , that sparkle is from something much more treacherous . It is a sweet goo      (ooze) called mucilage that the bugs can't resist . The sundews create mucilage to attract bugs . As they fly into eat , bugs become trapped in the very object of their desire . They soon exhaust themselves by trying to escape the mucilage , or the sundew's tentacles , which respond to pray by curling around them and smother them . Bugs usually die in about 15 minutes . Then the plant dissolves its pray in enzymes the nutrients .