Tentacled, Carnivorous Plants Catapult Prey Into Traps
Sundew evolved special leaves to fling insects, study shows.
A type of rare sundew, Drosera glanduligera has long puzzled scientists because it has two types of thin, leaf protrusions that radiate outward.
One type, the sticky, bug-ensnaring glue tentacle, is common on carnivorous plants. But the second type, the snap tentacle, lacks glue and makes jerking movements that had until now gone unexplained.
New experiments in the lab reveal that D. glanduligera's snap tentacles—which can sense moving prey—catapult insects directly onto the glue tentacles at the plant's center, where the prey is digested.
What's more, the catapult system is very effective—the insect almost never escapes, noted study co-author Thomas Speck, of the Plant Mechanics Group at Germany's University of Freiburg.
If the plant were about a hundred times larger, Speck quipped, "I
