We're talking CARNIVOROUS PLANTS here, folks. Better stand back there, little fella, we're not quite sure just how far this Venus Fly Trap can reach! a sideshow barker warns.
Well, it wouldn't be Halloween without a creepy story or two, would it? So, why not picture a cast of meat-eating, botanical characters -- enough to inspire a series of "Little Shop Of Horrors"-style flicks.
Meat-eating plants, even if it's only bugs they're after, tend to inspire a sort of hypnotic, repulsion-attraction in us. We can sympathize with a plant that eats meat, but it does seem disconcertingly unplant-like.
First they offer that "come hither, check me out, baby" look to unsuspecting crickets, flies and such. Then it's snap or gooey slurp and goodbye bug.
While most people get their introduction to this world through the famous Venus Fly Trap, nearly 600 species and subspecies of different carnivorous plants have been described, says Barry Meyers-Rice, editor of the International Carnivorous Plant Society Web site.
"The genus with the largest number of species is Utricularia, the Bladderworts, with about 200," he says. "They also have rather nice little flowers."
Their carnivorous nature is inspired by a simple fact: They're hungry.
Carnivorous plants usually grow in boggy or swampy areas, which get a lot of rain and remain waterlogged. "The soils in these areas," says Thomas Hayes, owner of Dangerous Plants, a nursery in Falls Church, Va., "have a high percentage of sand, with a little peat from decaying organic matter."
Translation: There's nothing in the sand or peat to feed the plants, so the plants supplement their diet by catching and digesting insects.
This brings up a frequent question: Will carnivorous plants control my bug population? Generally no, says Meyers-Rice. He does say that "the Cape Sundew, Drosera capensis, is good to get rid of fruit flies or fungus gnats."
The interest in these plants has grown in recent years, as adventurous plant growers have found that you don't need a greenhouse to grow many of them, and as more species come into commercial cultivation. Poaching from the wild is now not only unnecessary to obtain a collection, but carries fines.
Most carnivorous plants are native to tropical and semitropical zones (9 and 10) along the Florida and Mexican Gulf coasts. The Venus Fly Trap (Dionaea) is indigenous to a 100-square-mile area in North and South Carolina.
