My Science School

The sundew plant is a carnivorous plant that lures little flies to it, and digests them. These brightly coloured plants can easily attract little insects to them. Once an insect is trapped, it has no escape from the plant.

Sundew traps insects by deception. The plant has glands that stick out of the stem. These glands are covered with a honey-like substance. In fact, these glands are bait. When the hungry insect sees them, it believes that the substance is indeed honey and flies to it with all its might.

However, when it touches the plant, it gets the shock of its life, and realizes that all is not well! The shiny fluid is a powerful adhesive that keeps the insect glued to the plant. As the insect wrestles with death, the glands slowly clutch the insect and suffocate it.

As the insect slowly near its end, the plant produces an enzyme that would digest it. In a short span of time, nothing but the scruffy shell of the insect remains, and the glands return to their normal position.

 

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While there are a variety of carnivorous plants on land, most species of insect-trapping plants are found in water. Bladderworts are a genus of carnivorous plants consisting of more than 230 species. Most of them are aquatic plants.

Bladderworts are called so be cause of the tiny bladder-like structures on the plants. These bladders appear on the branched underwater leaves of the plant. Bladderworts trap insects with the help of these bladders. They are, in fact, small vacuum traps that can catch tiny aquatic insects and animals.

Bladderworts are strange plants. They do not have roots! They feathery leaves of the plant always remain submerged in the water.The plant has beautiful, tiny flowers that appear on top of thin stems a few centimetres tall. These plants look like miniature orchids. These brightly coloured flowers attract tiny insects to the plant. However these plants often go unnoticed by bigger animals as they usually appear in the bottom of shallow waters. In summer and spring, they float to the surface of the water and send up shoots of small, attractive yellow snapdragons like flowers.

Not all bladderworts are water-bound. Some of these species are found on damp mosses and some others are found on trees.

 

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Carnivorous plants are similar to other plants in many ways. They reproduce just like other plants. Reproduction of these plants takes place either through seeds or by dividing themselves.

Some carnivorous plants have flowers. Such plants have seeds and they reproduce through them. Much like other plants, when the seeds fall on suitable soil, they germinate and grow into new plants. However, some carnivorous plants have special shoots. These shoots develop into new plants. Sometimes, one single plant turns into several small plants. This happens when a common clump of the plant with many roots and stem separates and grow into new plants.

Carnivorous plants, although strange in their way of trapping insects, are not very different from other plants when it comes to other features.

 

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Carnivorous plants are freaks of nature as they live a semi animal life! However, unlike animals, these plants cannot move around looking for their prey; and therefore, nature devises strategies to attract insects to them!

Fly-trapping plants are various techniques in order to attract insects. Usually, these plants are brightly coloured. Insects are easily attracted to the plants due to their arresting colours. Such plants have fleshy-coloured flowers with nectar too.

Some plants have a certain scent in them. For some insects, such sweet perfume is irresistible. Sometimes, it works differently. Insects trapped in the leaves decay over a period of time and thus start stinking. The rooting smell attracts flies to the plant. Thus, the fly trapping plants get their food.

 

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Plants are considered the most peaceful organisms on Earth, primarily because they cannot move. They hardly harm any other life forms as they prepare their food through photosynthesis. However, have you heard of plants that trap insects and eat them?

Much like a gecko or a frog that eat up a fly in a flash, some plants give a nasty surprise to some insects that fly past them. They are carnivorous plants that live on insects and are found across the globe. However, these plants are not much different from other plants. Their developmental pattern and physical structure, is similar to other plants. They too need sunlight, water and other nutrients in order to be healthy. One of the most essential elements for them is nitrogen. Most plants absorb nitrogen from the soil in which they grow. Most insect eating plants grow on warm and marshy soil that contains little nitrogen. Therefore, these plants have to resort to acquiring the vital elements they need, by grabbing insects and devouring them! It is from these insects that the plants get the necessary nourishment.

 

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Deserts contain some strange and curious plants. The Namib is a coastal desert in Africa. Extending over 1931 kilometres along the Atlantic Ocean, the desert is considered to be the oldest desert in the world.

The Namib Desert is home to a strange variety of plant life. One of them is the welwitschia plant. The plant looks wilted to ordinary people. The welwitschia plant has only two main leaves and they are spread out over the desert. The plant has a tired it sprouts on the ground.

The halfmens plant is another curious plant in the desert. It has a strange resemblance to a human being from a distance. That is the reason behind its African name, which means ‘half plant and half man’! Yet another plant, the kokerboom, has smooth branches. These branches have a light powder that reflects sunlight. The kokerboom has blue leaves that bloom during the months of June and July.

The lichen, the most common plant in the vast desert region, has the ability to draw moisture from fog and stay alive during the hot season.

 

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Although there are hundreds of cactus species, the saguaro cactus stands out among them all. The largest cactus in the world, these plants are found in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

Like some trees that live long, saguaros can have a long life spanning from 150 to 200 years. They can grow very tall too. A saguaro cactus normally reaches the height of 40 metres. Their growth, however, is extremely slow. The plant continues to grow taller until it completes its life cycle; and thus it takes up to 200 years to reach its full height.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the plant is its arms. They spread out like raised arms of a human being and a fully developed plant looks spectacular from a distance.

A saguaro cactus is fully equipped to meet the harsh climate of the Sonoran Desert. The plant’s skin is covered with a thick wax coating that waterproofs the plant. This wax coating reduces the plant’s water loss significantly. The hard and sharp spines and the flexible bristles of the plant help it to ward off the animals that look for water in the plant. There is a sponge like tissue within the plant, and this helps the plant store water. The stem gets larger and larger as more water is stored within the plant. The ability of the plant to store water in this manner can make it quite heavy. Sometimes, at its full height, a saguaro cactus may weigh around a tonne.

 

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Human beings have a life span of seventy two hundred years. History, for us, is what is written down in books by people who lived before us. Now, if there were someone who lived a thousand years, he would be able to tell us if these stories were true. Unfortunately, only trees and their seeds, which are mute beings, live that long. Therefore, seeds have the ability to travel through time.

Seeds can live for years after the death of a plant. Some of them will grow into plants after thousands of years too. In 1954, in the Canadian Arctic, Harold Schmidt, a mining engineer, discovered some seeds in burrows several metres below the ground. With the help of the local people, he gathered the seeds, and preserved them in a dry place.

Years later, Dick Harrington, a scientist, tested the seeds by placing them in a conducive environment. The seeds germinated within 48 hours! Six healthy plants grew out of them. The plants were identified as Lupines Arcticus. Scientists estimate that these seeds were 10,000 years old. They had defined time, only to sprout after being dormant for thousand of years.

 

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