John Breen, age 10, of Biltmore, N.C., for his question:
How does the flycatcher plant catch flies?
The flycatcher plant hugs close to the ground. It looks like a small rosette of innocent dewy pink leaves. But actually.. each one of those leaves is a living, long handled spoon. It is stretched out there on the ground to receive a helping of food. .end its favorite meal is a fly. we are so used to the old, old story of animals eating plants that it comes as a surprise to learn that there are soma plants which eat animals. Or at any rate, they dissolve the goodness from insect meat and take this nourishment into their cells which is almost the same as eating,
Another name for the flycatcher plant is the sundew. This is a poetic way of describing the hungry little plant. Its long stemmed leaves fan out like the rays of the sun and they are covered with what looks like drops of glistening dew. A closer look shows that each leaf is covered with furry spikes. These are really little grasping fingers and there are about 200 of them orb the upper side of each leaf.
The roots of these hairs connect with glands which make the glistening dew drops. This material is sticky and syrupy and insects find it very attractive. Actually it is the bait which traps the flies and every sundew leaf sparkles with hundreds of tiny drops of it. Any fly zooming around is bound to notice these tempting drops. Chances are, he will coma in for a landing, hoping to sip up a meal of sweet syrup.
The fly lands on the outstretched leaf. Too late, he finds his dainty feet stuck in the gooey dew. He tries to free himself, perhaps beating his gauzy wings. This only makes matters worse, for more and more of his body touches and becomes trapped in the sticky goo,
As soon as the leaf traps an insect, it goes into action. The hairy tentacles near the struggling fly roll inwards. The edges of the spoonlike leaf curve around the little captive. The spoon becomes a tight little fist with the fly held tight inside. Now the hairy tentacles give off a liquid which contains acid. This liquid acts somewhat like the digestive juices in our stomachs. It dissolves the meaty parts of the fly and breaks them down into simple chemicals. The sundew lives in regions where the soil is poor in nitrogen, so this is the chemical it takes from the fly.
It takes a sundew leaf about two days to dissolve all the goodness from the fly. Then it opens up and the useless wings and husk blow away. A new batch of dew then oozes out among the hairy tentacles and the little spoon is baited for another helping of fly meat.