Thursday, May 3, 2012

Guest Post: In the Garden with Nathan, Part Four

View Parts One, Two, and Three. Or just start with Four...it's not like there's a story line here or anything. Part Four might be my favorite plant that Nathan's told me about:


Nathan: This is a portion of my Nepenthes collection. They are also commonly called tropical pitcher plants and I believe all the ones in this photo are from the island of Borneo. I've got these guys hanging out in the skylight above our breakfast nook. They seem to like it up there and have doubled in size in just the past couple of months. I think they might have been a little too immature when I bought them so it took them a while to get accustomed to their perch and get established.

These guys are really cool. Bugs are enticed into their pitchers by the sweet juices inside of them and then they cant get out because of the slick walls inside. The juices slowly dissolve the bug and that is how the plant gets its nutrients. For fun I catch moths and drop them in. I'm a little sadistic like that.



Me: I just read this and said "WHOAAAA!" out loud at the bug part. That's amazing! How many other plant species eat bugs? I previously only really knew about the Venus flytrap. And that's because of Little Shop of Horrors. (See, you know things about plants, I know things about movies. But sometimes my movie knowledge lends itself to regular knowledge!)




Nathan: Haha! You had the same reaction that the neighborhood kids had. :)
The other plants(I'll use common names) that are carnivorous are:
Cobra plants
American pitcher plants
Sundews
and Butterworts
There many be one or two others, but I cant remember and they are definitely not common.

I bought my co-worker a venus fly trap. It sits on his desk. We named it Norm.

I also have a sundew. Annie and I feed it spiders. When a spider lands on its sticky paddle arm, the arm wraps around it and slowly sucks the life out of it. SO COOL!

One last interesting fact, some Nepenthes pitchers are so large, scientists have found drowned mice and rats in them that it was feeding on.  Crazy.

No comments:

Post a Comment