You will be surprised to know that there are some plants which catch and eat insects. Such plants are called insectivorous plants. Since they cannot prepare their own protein, they get it by eating insects and worms. Every plant of this kind uses it own technique for capturing insects. The leaves of these specialized plants are adapted to trap and digest insects – which supplement their food supply.
One of the famous insectivorous plants is ‘pitcher plant’. The upper part of its leaf resembles a small pitcher. Its colour is very attractive. It contains a sticky liquid. The opening of the pitcher has small fibres which allow the insects to go inside but obstruct their coming out. On being attracted by the beautiful colour, when some insect enters this pitcher, it is unable to come out. It gets entangled in the juice of the pitcher and the plant produces certain enzymes and digests it. The ‘cobra plant’ of America which appears like a snake, also eats insects. It also has pitcher-shaped mouth.
The ‘sundew plants’ have hair on their leaves. The tips of these hairs have droplets of a liquid which appear very attractive. As soon as some insect is attracted towards a leaf, these hairs bend forward, capture the insect and digest it with the help of their own juice. The digested flesh is absorbed through their leaves. After that the hairs again become normal.
There is a plant called ‘venus-fly trap’ which is found in America. Its leaves have beautiful red coloured elevations on both sides. Whenever an insect sits on a leaf it closes like a fork and the plant digests the trapped insect by digestive juices. The ‘uticularia’ is a water plant. It is found all over the world. The roots of this plant which are submerged in water have bulbous bladders. When some aquatic insects enter the bladder, the hairs on its opening do not allow it to come out. The walls of these bladders give out digestive juices which suck the proteins out of the bodies of these small insects.
Similarly, a plant called ‘Indian pipe’ is found in the hills of Shimla. It also eats insects. In addition to these, there are many other insectivorous plants all over the world.