When lunchtime rolls around in the Great Outdoors, plants are frequently at the bottom of the food chain. A carnivorous plant, however, can flip that script.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska - The vast majority of the plant kingdom sustains itself with nutrients from the soil and sunlight; but for a handful of carnivorous plants, meat is on the menu.“And the bladders trap aquatic organisms when they brush against trigger hairs,” explained Associate Professor of Natural History Bob Armstrong , demonstrating with a video, “sort of like a trapdoor thing. It’s immediately sucked into the bladder, and it happens in just a matter of a few milliseconds.
Mosquito larva are the bladderwort’s most frequent food. Since Alaska’s other carnivorous plants live on land, flying insects make up most of their diet. An especially pretty example is the butterwort flower, named for its greasy, sticky leaves. “They are very common throughout most of Alaska,” Armstrong affirmed, “and that shimmering that they give actually attracts insects to the leaf so they can capture them.”
A similar capture method is used by the sticky asphodel, by entrapping insects with a substance along its stem. “It causes them to stick to the stem, and then they eventually absorb it through their stem,” Armstrong said. “Probably our most abundant one that we can watch are these sundews.”“They have sticky hair on their leaves and they certainly make up one of the largest groups of carnivorous plants that we have here in Alaska,” he added. “But I think we’re very fortunate to have these plants in Alaska.
Plant Cooperative Extension Service Spooky Science Bob Armstrong Science Sundew Butterwort Bladderwort Asphodel Mosquito
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