What is a carnivorous plant?
Hi everybody! Welcome to our first lesson in CP Heaven's learning lab!
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Today we will be learning about:
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Discovery of carnivorous plants.
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How can we determine that a plant is carnivorous by looking at 5 different traits.
Since ancient times, we have been surrounded by myths and legends about plants that attack animals and even humans! Are they true? Do they exist? Let's find out!
A long time ago in the scientific world, people had considered that a plant that can move quickly and attack an animal is purely fictional and only exists in fantasy stories. But in the year 1769, everything is forever changed. A man named John Elis who was a member of an East India Company, that specializes in shipping plants, discovered the very first scientifically documented plant which does exactly what had been determined impossible. He discovered a plant in North Carolina which has leaves that resembles bear traps. It closes in fast on animals that wander into them. Today we named the plant Venus Flytrap (muscipula dionaea).
He wrote a letter to the then-renowned botanist Carl Linnaeus. In the letter, he described a plant he discovered in North Carolina and had sent to England, he also described the anatomy of the plant and that it's found in a shady wet area and flowers in July and August. The plant perhaps discharges sweet liquid on the inner side of the trap to lure its prey, it grabs the victim that wanders into it fast and squeezes its prey to death, and never opens again.
Today, after hundreds of years, we have learned how the plant grows and how its intricate mechanism works. Furthermore, we now know many of the points that he had stated in the letter are not exactly right. We will soon learn more about them in future lessons.
In the description of the letter above, we can get a few hints of the key component which makes a plant carnivorous.
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The plant lure and captures its prey.
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The prey is killed after being captured.
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These are the baseline of what makes a plant carnivorous at the start of the discovery. But as of today, botanists had came up with 3 more criteria to make sure that a plant is indeed carnivorous.
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They are:
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Lure and capture pray.
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Prey is killed after being captured.
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Able to digest captured prey.
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Nutrients from the digested prey are absorbed by the plant.
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Absorbed nutrients are used to build into themselves as growth and development.
The 3 additional points are crucial when it comes to determining whether a plant is carnivorous because if the plant doesn't, the prey is killed for other reasons and not mainly to eat them like how an animal would usually do.
Well done! We have now reached the end of today's lesson! Pat yourself on the back, you have now successfully learned something new about carnivorous plants! 😄
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