What is carnivorous plants and how to grow them easily ?
Carnivorous plants are very unique and rare plants and almost every one whats these in there hobby of plantation but by little mistake they kill them. There are thousands of grower in this hobby.
Let us know what are carnivorous plants and how they survive in soil which has poor nutrition.Carnivorous plants are predatory flowering plants that kill insects/animals in order to derive nutrition from their bodies. They have three main specifications which separate them from other plants.
Carnivorous plants:
1. They attract insects/animal by there fragrant nector and trap them to kill.
2. They produce digestive enzyme to digestion of the prey.
3. They digest there pray and get nutrients form them for there growth.
Commonly carnivorous plants eat things like insects, spiders, crustaceans and other small soil and water-living invertebrates and protozoans, lizards, mice, rats, and other small vertebrates. Carnivorous plants pull off this trick using specialized leaves that act as traps. Many traps lure prey with bright colors, extra-floral nectaries, guide hairs, and/or leaf extensions. Once caught and killed, the prey is digested by the plant and/or partner organisms. The plant then absorbs the nutrients made available from the corpse. Most carnivorous plants will grow without consuming prey but they grow much faster and reproduce much better with nutrients derived from their prey.
We do not call these plants “insectivorous plants” because no self respecting carnivore is going to check the ID of a potential prey to make sure it is an insect. Some carnivorous plants do specialize in capturing insects, but they will consume whatever they can. Not all plants that trap or kill animals are considered carnivorous. Some Aroid and Aristolochia species capture insects in their flowers to facilitate pollination. They don’t kill the pollinators and if some of the pollinators do die in the flower it is not to the advantage of the plant. Carnivorous plants never use their flowers as traps. Because this is nature, there are a lot of cases where it is unclear to us whether a plant is a true carnivore or just has some of the features of a carnivore. Until recently it was thought the three species of Devil’s Claw in the family Martyniaceae are carnivorous. Ibicella lutea, Proboscidea louisianica, and P. parviflora are large plants that typically catch some small flies. They are now considered non-carnivorous because they do not derive much if any nutrition from the prey. They probably have sticky leaves as a predator defense. Drosera commonly known as sundew are carnivorous have sticky dews on there leaf and they trap insects on there leaf drosera roll there leafs when they catch insects.there are atleat 194 species of drosera’s.
Another plant that has generated a lot discussion about what it takes to be a carnivore is Roridula found in western cape province of south africa. Roridula rely on assassin bugs to perform the digestion of prey. The plant captures the prey. The bugs suck out the juicy insides of the prey and defecate on the leaves. The plant absorbs the nutrients in the poop. If the assassin bugs are not present there is a fall-back for the plant but it is unclear how much this fall-back is used in the wild. Bacteria in the gut and on the prey can digest the dead prey and Roridula leaves will absorb the nutrients released quite efficiently. That make its unusual carnivorous plant.
Nepenthes, Sarracenia and Darlingtonia species have also lost the ability to digest prey themselves. These species rely on bacteria and other organisms to make the nutrients in the prey available to themselves. To put it unscientifically, why should a plant go through all the bother of digesting the prey itself when other organisms will do it for them? Or scientifically, if there is no selective advantage to expending the energy for digestion, mutations will accumulate eliminating digestion. It should be obvious here we have carefully crafted our definition of carnivory to include these plants as carnivores and to exclude purely murderous plants.nepenthes dose not have movable parts(lid). Nepenthes hamata leaf. This is an example of a pitfall trap with a pool of water at the bottom. Besides the “teeth” at the top of the pitfall the inner surface is covered with wax that fouls the feet of insects so they can’t climb out. You can see nectar glistening between the “teeth”. The trap also has nectar glands on the underside of the lid to attract prey which fall into the trap.
Venusflytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is the most famous carnivorous plants and widely cultivated for sell. When an insect or spider crawling along the leaves contacts a hair, the trap prepares to close, snapping shut only if another contact occurs within approximately twenty seconds of the first strike. Triggers may occur with a tenth of a second of contact. The requirement of redundant triggering in this mechanism serves as a safeguard against wasting energy by trapping objects with no nutritional value, and the plant will only begin digestion after five more stimuli to ensure it has caught a live bug worthy of consumption.
Pinguicula, commonly known as butterworts, is a genus of carnivorous flowering plants in the family Lentibulariaceae. They use sticky, glandular leaves to lure, trap, and digest insects in order to supplement the poor mineral nutrition they obtain from the environment. Of the roughly 80 currently known species, 13 are native to Europe, 9 to North America, and some to northern Asia. The largest number of species is in South and Central America.
