John Miller, age 13, of Heber City, Utah, or his question:
What are carnivorous plants?
A carnivore, of course, is a meat eater and carnivorous animals such as lions, owls and weasels must be prowlers and pouncers. A carnivorous plant is also a meat eater, but being a plant, it is rooted to the spot: It cannot go off on hunting trips. The next best thing is to set a trap. There are several carnivorous plants and each is constructed as a little trap.
All these plants are quite small. Not one of them could digest anything as big as a mouse. So, if you read or see a thriller in which the hero is trapped by some man eating plant, you may be sure that this yarn comes straight from the land of imagination. These carnivores of the vegetable world trap and digest insects, wh tch is why they are also called insectivorous plants.
The sundew holds out a little spoon in which to catch its dinner. The Venus~s flytrap holds out a little fist and the pitcher plant holds out a begging bowl. Each plant, in its own way, is fitted with booby traps to attract and trap the passing insects. Certain chemicals which these plants need are taken from the insects as they are digested.
The spindly leaves of the sundew form a rosette a few inches wide. It hugs the ground and each spindly leaf ends in a fuzzy spoon a spoon held out for a helping of fly. The fuzz on the spoon is decked with glistening drops of dewy moisture guaranteed to catch the eye of any passing fly.
Mr. Fly zooms in for a landing to investigate. Too late his feet are trapped in the sticky dew. The leaf spoon senses the weight of the fly and the hairy fuzz begins to close in around the struggling little body. It takes the spoon about two days to digest the fly, then it opens out flat, all ready to trap another victim.
The leaves of the Venus's flytrap end in two flat lobes, each fringed with a row of spikes. The midrib of the two lobes is a hinge and in the middle of each lobe there are three very sensitive hairs. As in the sundew, there are drops of dewy moisture to attract the passing insect. When a fly or other insect lands to investigate, the sensitive hairs trigger off the hinge and the two lobes snap shut. The victim is trapped in a little fist and digested.
The pitcher plant has leaves which look like pitchers with open lids. Each pitcher is a booby trap and begging bowl combined. The rim of the pitcher is usually an attractive red or purple color. To add to the bait, the rim and the underside of the lid give off a sweet nectar. What insect can resist? The little victim goes inside the lip of the pitcher and finds it is covered with slippery goo. Down it slides into the bottom of the pitcher where it falls plonk into a little pool of digestive juices.