Buzz
The Venus flytrap is well-known, and many are familiar with common sundews, pitcher plants, and other insect-eating plants. However, the world of carnivorous plants is far more diverse and peculiar than most realize, with some species baffling even the most experienced botanists. Some plants have even moved away from eating flesh in favor of even stranger survival strategies.
10. Sun Pitchers
Sun pitchers, also known as Heliamphora, are not closely related to the typical pitcher plants, but they share a similar method of attracting and capturing insects. While only a few species produce digestive enzymes, most rely on symbiotic bacteria to decompose their prey. These plants are found in rain-soaked high-altitude environments and feature a small opening to drain excess water.
9. Protocarnivorous Bromeliads
Bromeliads are commonly known as houseplants, with their leaves forming a central basin to hold water. However, few are aware that some species are partially carnivorous, using the liquid they collect to attract and trap insects. Some of these plants seem to depend on the natural decay of their prey for nutrition, while others, like Brocchinia reducta, produce enzymes linked to active digestion. Over time, it's possible that these plants could evolve more complex mechanisms and become fully insectivorous.
8. Carnivorous Seeds
Capsella bursa-pastoris, also known as "shepherd's purse," doesn’t appear to be a carnivorous plant at first sight. In fact, its carnivorous nature remains speculative. The seeds of this plant, and only its seeds, release a highly adhesive substance when wet, which has been shown to attract mosquito larvae. These larvae die quickly upon contact, seemingly providing nourishment for the seeds. While these plants thrive in dry conditions, making it unlikely they would naturally consume mosquito larvae in the wild, their potential to trap or eat other prey remains uncertain. Much like the bromeliads, these plants may be evolving towards, or away from, a more carnivorous lifestyle.
7. Ant Pitcher
Nepenthes bicalcarata, like most pitcher plants, uses its fluid-filled, vase-shaped leaves to attract, drown, and digest unsuspecting insects. However, this particular species has a unique twist: it shares a close, symbiotic relationship with the ant species Camponotus schmitzi. These ants inhabit the plant’s thick, hollow stem and are capable of submerging themselves in the water-filled traps for long periods. They assist in capturing much larger insects, overwhelming them as the insects struggle to escape the trap.
For a long time, it was believed that this relationship was parasitic, but it's now understood that Nepenthes bicalcarata benefits greatly from the presence of the ants. The ants make the trap even more deadly and efficient, processing prey much quicker than the plant’s natural digestive enzymes could. The colony’s waste products, including feces and dead ants, provide additional nutrients for the plant, ensuring that every captured insect eventually serves as fertilizer in some way.
6. Nepenthes lowii—The Toilet Plant
This unusual pitcher plant may remind you of a toilet, and for good reason. Although it can capture and digest live prey, it has evolved to utilize a far more plentiful and rather unpleasant food source. Its sweet, sticky secretions attract tree shrews and seem to have quick-acting laxative effects. A 2009 study showed that certain specimens of Nepenthes lowii were subsisting primarily on tree shrew feces and also benefited from bird droppings that fell into their open traps.
5. Bat House Pitcher
Nepenthes rafflesiana is another pitcher plant that primarily relies on animal feces, but it does so in a much more unusual way compared to Nepenthes lowii. The pitchers of this plant have become ideal roosting spots for Hardwicke’s woolly bats, with up to three bats fitting into a single pitcher. While still a deadly trap for insects, this feature also provides the bats protection from blood-sucking parasites. As this symbiotic relationship developed, bat guano became an increasingly valuable and nourishing food source for the plant.
4. Veggie-loving Pitcher
Nepenthes ampullaria, like the dung-eating species, remains a carnivorous plant, but has adapted to gain much of its sustenance from alternative sources. It has evolved to digest leaves, petals, and other plant matter that falls into its trap. Unlike other pitchers that would simply become clogged with such debris, ampullaria has transformed its death-trap into a personal compost bin, thriving on very little else. In fact, mosquito larvae and other aquatic insects may even inhabit these living trash cans, aiding in the breakdown of the collected waste.
3. Roridula, the Bug-Plant
Roridula, one of the largest carnivorous plants in the world, can grow to an impressive height of over six feet, with its surface covered in dense clusters of short, glue-tipped tentacles, similar to those of a sundew. However, it’s not the plant itself that poses a threat to insects. Instead, Roridula’s sticky leaves are home to a unique species of predatory assassin bug. Any insect caught in the plant's slimy embrace becomes prey to these ruthless creatures, who work together to subdue and drain even much larger prey of their nutrients.
Roridula is not only defended from small pests by its deadly army of assassin bugs, but it also benefits from the bugs' waste. Every time the bugs defecate on the plant’s leaves, Roridula absorbs nutrients indirectly from their slain victims.
2. Worm-catching Fungi
Fungi, neither plants nor animals, have long been regarded as another form of 'foliage.' The concept of a carnivorous fungus, however, seems even more bizarre than that of a predatory plant. Certain fungi, including some common mushrooms, are carnivorous on a microscopic scale. Their underground mycelia are equipped with noose-like hoops. When a nematode worm encounters these lethal rings, specialized cells cause them to inflate, trapping and slowly consuming the helpless creature. These fungi only produce these intricate rings when they detect the presence of suitable nematodes, essentially laying traps after 'scenting' their prey in the soil.
1. Snapping Sundews
Sticky sundews are typically patient predators, allowing their gooey droplets to do most of the work while the plant slowly curls around its prey. However, some species come equipped with long, sensitive 'snapping' tentacles. When an insect steps on them or otherwise disturbs them, these tense appendages snap into action with astonishing speed, generating enough force to fling small prey into the plant's stickier trap-tentacles, almost like tiny catapults.
