Some carnivorous and amazing plants

Carnivorous Plants

Those plants which eat small animals and insects are called carnivorous plants. Carnivorous plants trap and digest small animals More than five hundred different carnivorous plants are found in the word.

Carnivorous plants tries to grow in places where the soil is thin or lacking in nutrients. So these plants must get some of their nutrients by trapping and digesting animals, especially insects. Some of the carnivorous plants are bladder worth, butter word, pitcher plant, cobra lily, sundew etc.

 BladderWorth

A bladderwort’s trap works by pumping water out through its walls, which builds pressure and sets the trap like a spring. Long hairs attached to the trap act like levers and , when an insect touches one of them , the bladder’s door will open and suck in a stream of water and the insects along with it. When the trap is full of water, the door closes again and plant digest its prey.

Pitcher Plants

Pitcher plants are shaped like a pitcher. The top and inside of the pitcher is covered with slippery and sweet smelling nectar.  A pitcher plant lure insects with its fragrant odour. When insects come to take a sip, they slip and fall in to the pitcher. There, the plant breaks them down. A powerful digestive acid is then released from the pitcher walls which consume the prey. The strange leaves of pitcher plants develop from the tips of leaves. At first they are full of air , but soon they begin to fill will digestive juice.  The shape and size of the pitcher plant varies with their species.

Some pitcher plants are so large, they can catch rat or frogs.

Cobra lily

The cobra lily attracts insects with its scent and the sweet nectar on its tongue which is cleverly highlighted by sunlight shining through a transparent area on its upper lid. Once an insects has ventured inside the lily’s tube like leaf structure, the plant’s slippery secretions and downward hairs cause the insect to fall in to the lily’s trap, where it is then slowly digested.

Sundew

Sundews get their name from glistening, sticky, glandular hairs with secrete enzymes that digest insects that come in the contact with the plants. The sundew plant produces a sweet, sticky fluid that coats the tiny hairs covering the leaves. This dew glistens in the sunlight and attracts insects. As insects land on the sundew plant, they stick to the dewy liquid on the leaf hairs and are unable to free themselves. This plant can differentiate live prey from non living things like stones that fall on its leaves. The sundew eats all kinds  of insects including files, spider and mosquitoes.

Butterwort

The bright yellowish green leaves of a butterwort plant have numerous glands that secrete a sticky fluid which attracts insects. When the insects become trapped, the leaves slowly curl inwards and digest the insects.

Venus Flytrap

The venus flytrap is the first plant that was thought to be carnivorous. It catches and digests insects. It can even catch and digest small frogs. Each trap this plant is good for four to six catches. After that the trap withers, turns brown and falls off. This plants also can differentiate live prey from non living things like stones that fall on its leaves.

Amazing Plants

Cocoa tree

Chocolate is made from the cocoa beans of a cacao tree. Cocoa beans are little beans found in the pods that grow on cacao (cocoa) trees. The pods are orange and about as big as football. They look like a football with some of the air out of it. The inside of the pod is packed full of between twenty to sixty seeds.

Banyan

A banyan tree is native to india and part of the mulberry family. It is an enormous tree that puts forth roots, which form secondary trunks to support the expansive limbs. The biggest known banyan is in the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta. It has more than 1500 hanging roots, and its huge canopy covers an area the size of a small forest. It is over two hundred and fifty years old. Alexander the Great is said to have camped under a banyan tree that was big enough to shelter his whole army of seven thousand (7,000) men.

Maple tree

The maple tree is best known for two things. First, it has helicopter seeds which fall to the ground spinning like the blades of a helicopter, and the syrup or sugar which is made from its sap. The helicopters are actually the fruit of the maple tree. Second, the leaves of the maple tree change colour from green to different shades of yellow, orange, and red during the autumn.

Fruit salad tree

A fruit salad tree is a tree that grows up to six different types of fruits all on one tree. They are multi-grafted trees with different fruits from the same family grafted together and all the fruits retain their own flavour and appearance.

Rafflesia

The world’s largest bloom is the rafflesia. It can grow to be three feet across and weight up to seven K.G. It is a parasitic plant, with no visible leaves, root or stem. When in bloom, the rafflesia emits a repulsive smell, similar to that of rotting meat. This smell attracts insects that pollinate the plant. The rafflesia was found in the Indonesian rain forest by a group trekkers and was named after Sir Thomas Raffles, the leader of the expedition. The rafflesia does not have chlorophyll, as the green plants have and so it cannot undergo photosynthesis.

Titan Arum

Titan arum is a flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. This flower is found in the rain forest of Sumatra, Indonesia. It stands three meter high and the single leaf grows to the size of a small tree. While it is in bloom, the flower emits a strong smell similar to rotting meat. So this plant is also called a decaying corpse.

Victoria Amazonica

Victoria Amazonica is a giant water lily. It is the largest of water lilies. It is huge circular leaves that can grow up to three meter in diameter. It is mainly found in the Amazon River. Its flower are white at the first night they are open and become pink at the second night.

Do you know: (Fact file)

*   One pomegranate can hold more than thousand seeds. The fruit is good sources of fibres, vitamins, and other nutrients. Fresh fruits make fantastic refreshing juice.

*   It is believed that jackfruit and grapefruit can cause dangerous reactions with some prescription medication. So it is advisable not to eat these two fruits when you are using medicine or other drugs.

*   Apples float in water because 25% of an apple’s volume is air.