Pitcher Plants Flowering
Pitcher plants are known for their unique, insect-trapping leaves, but their flowers are just as unusual. Their petals are a deep burgundy color and attract pollinating flies by looking like raw meat. The sepals, usually green structures that protect the bud and then become inconspicuous when the flower opens, are leathery and remain long after the petals fall off, well into winter. The pistil, or female part of the flower, has a typical ovary at its base, where seeds are formed, but the style (stalk-like in most flowers) expands into a large, star-shaped umbrella. This umbrella becomes the lowest part of the flower as it droops downward in its early open stages and collects pollen that falls off of the anthers surrounding the ovary. The stigmas, where pollen must land in order for pollination to take place, are located on the five points of the star-shaped style, where visiting insects land. A pitcher plant is designed to be pollinated by pollen stuck to the body of the insect before the insect descends onto the lower platform section of the style, where it crawls around gathering nectar, and inadvertently, pollen. (Photo: Northern, or Purple Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia purpurea.)
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Pitcher Plants Flowering
The flowers of Pitcher Plants are just as unusual and fascinating as their insect-luring leaves. These plants can be found blossoming during a two to three week period in the spring (late May-June). Although the maroon petals hanging down typically prevent you from seeing the structure of the flower, it more or less resembles an upside-down umbrella. Within one to two days of the flower opening, the stigmas become receptive and the anthers shed their pollen, which falls into the umbrella-like tray where insects travel on their way to the stigmas. Ants are almost invariably present in the flowers, attracted by the abundant nectar, but they are probably of little importance as pollinators. Bees and flies appear to be the primary pollinators of Pitcher Plants.
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Pitcher Plants Turning Red
Pitcher plant leaves are primarily green in the summer, tinged with red, but as summer turns into fall, many become deep red. Although this red color was thought to attract insects, it appears that this is not the case. The color change, according to research cited in the Journal of Ecology, is due to the level of phosphorus this carnivorous plant has received from its insect meals. There is a limited amount of phosphorus in a bog and plants living there acquire it in different ways. The pitcher plant acquires phosphorus from insects that it traps. It then utilizes the phosphorus to revitalize the (green) chlorophyll in its leaves for photosynthesis. The deep red color that the leaves turn in the fall indicates that the plant has not had a good meal in quite some time.
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Sundews Capture Their Meals
Sundews (Drosera spp.) are carnivorous plants often found in acidic bogs, fens and cedar swamps. They have numerous small leaves arranged in a circular, or rosette, pattern and they are covered with reddish, glandular hairs, or tentacles, that exude a sticky secretion at their tips. Insects, attracted to the glistening sticky droplets which resemble dew, land on a leaf and become stuck. The movement of the struggling insect triggers cell growth in the glandular hairs and they begin folding over the insect within 60 seconds. An anesthetic is released by the plant’s hairs, causing the insect to become motionless. Digestive enzymes are then secreted which liquefy the insect’s internal organs so that they can then be absorbed by the plant’s hairs. Although insect prey is not vital to sundews, the nitrogen the plants receive from the insects enables them to thrive in environments where nitrogen is in short supply. The damselfly pictured has been captured by a Round-leaved Sundew’s glandular hairs which have rendered it motionless and have started to grow and fold over the tip of the damselfly’s abdomen and its wings.
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Round-leaved Sundew Flowering
Sundews are familiar to most people because of their carnivorous life style, trapping and dissolving insects with the glandular hairs that cover their leaves. As amazing as this ability to supplement their diet is, there is even more to admire about them. At this time of year, Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) unfurls a single curled-up stalk with flower buds running up one side of it. The buds open in succession, one at a time, when they reach the apex of the bending flower stalk, revealing tiny white or pink flowers.
Pitcher Plants in Winter
The pitcher plant flowers that bloomed in bogs last June persist through the winter. Their maroon petals are gone, as is their scent, and they are withered and somewhat drab-colored, but the upside down flowers are still on display, supported by long, graceful stems protruding above the surface of the snow. Pitcher plants flower for about two weeks at the beginning of summer, during which time their pollen is distributed (primarily by bees). After fertilization, 300 – 600 seeds form within each ovary. This is when the carnivorous pitcher leaves develop. In late fall, the “pitchers” begin to wither and the seed pods turn brown and split open, scattering seeds. In three to five years, the plants which these seeds grew into will begin flowering.
A Great Christmas Present!
If you’re looking for a present for someone that will be used year round, year after year, Naturally Curious may just fit the bill. A relative, a friend, your child’s school teacher – it’s the gift that keeps on giving to both young and old!
One reader wrote, “This is a unique book as far as I know. I have several naturalists’ books covering Vermont and the Northeast, and have seen nothing of this breadth, covered to this depth. So much interesting information about birds, amphibians, mammals, insects, plants. This would be useful to those in the mid-Atlantic, New York, and even wider geographic regions. The author gives a month-by-month look at what’s going on in the natural world, and so much of the information would simply be moved forward or back a month in other regions, but would still be relevant because of the wide overlap of species. Very readable. Couldn’t put it down. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the natural world, but there was much that was new to me in this book. I would have loved to have this to use as a text when I was teaching. Suitable for a wide range of ages.”
In a recent email to me a parent wrote, “Naturally Curious is our five year old’s unqualified f-a-v-o-r-I-t-e book. He spends hours regularly returning to it to study it’s vivid pictures and have us read to him about all the different creatures. It is a ‘must have’ for any family with children living in New England…or for anyone that simply shares a love of the outdoors.”
I am a firm believer in fostering a love of nature in young children – the younger the better — but I admit that when I wrote Naturally Curious, I was writing it with adults in mind. It delights me no end to know that children don’t even need a grown-up middleman to enjoy it!
Pitcher Plant Flowers
The Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea) is a well-known carnivorous plant of bogs. It gets some of its nutrients by trapping and drowning prey in rain water that is caught inside a modified leaf that forms a cup. While most people are familiar with the leaves of Pitcher Plants, unless you visit a bog in June, you’re not likely to see their unique flower. It is curved over when it’s mature and its sepals (modified leaves that protect the bud and are located above the petals in these photographs) are red-purple and pointed; the petals are red and rounded. An approaching insect would be guided into the flower between two of the sepals–it would land on a petal and climb into the flower onto the umbrella-shaped stigma (the sticky top of the female pistil) which I inverted in one photograph in order to show the male pollen-producing stamens. An insect entering the flower would brush against the stamens, collecting pollen on its back while pollen from a previously-visited Pitcher Plant would fall off the insect onto the sticky stigma on which it was standing, pollinating the flower.Naturally Curious wins National Outdoor Book Award
I am delighted to be able to tell you that this morning I learned that NATURALLY CURIOUS won the Nature Guidebook category of the 2011 National Outdoor Book Awards. I’m honored and humbled by this recognition. http://www.noba-web.org/books11.htm
Common Bladderwort
Common bladderwort is a carnivorous flowering plant – in amongst its finely-divided, submerged leaves, it possesses tiny sacs which were once thought to be flotation devices, but are actually highly specialized traps that capture, hold and digest food for the plant. These sacs have a double-sealed, airtight door on one end. When this door is closed, the sac, or bladder, expels water through its wall, creating a partial vacuum inside. A leafy, feather-like structure hangs down adjacent to the door and the instant an organism bumps against this feathery trigger, it twists and breaks the seal of the door. The vacuum inside causes water to rush in, pulling the victim along with it. As the bladder fills with water, the pressure is equalized inside and out and the door automatically closes, caging the plant’s prey. This entire process takes 2/1000ths of a second. As enzymes digest the prey, special cells in the bladder’s wall pump out the water and re-establish a partial vacuum inside, preparing the trap to spring again.
Naturally Curious with Mary Holland 
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