The newly identified lineage of carnivorous plants is that of Triantha occidentalis , a species of flowering plant located in North America. A team of researchers from the University of British Columbia in Canada and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA have discovered this species of plant, with beautiful white flowers, which grows in soils with few nutrients in areas of the west coast of North America, from Alaska to California.
It is the first carnivorous plant discovered in 20 years.
What is most striking about her is her trap: unique among carnivorous plants and, according to theory, unexpected, since it places all its prey capture sites next to its insect-pollinated flowers.
This killer who uses her sticky stem to catch and digest unsuspecting insects, a new study reveals. The insects land on the stem of the plant and get stuck in its sticky hairs, before the flower absorbs its nutrients once they die. This method is quite unusual and curious, trapping prey with sticky hairs on their flowering stem, the team explains, and that their ‘dark side’ had gone unnoticed for almost 150 years.
“Carnivorous plants have fascinated mankind since Victorian times because they change the usual order of things: these are animals that eat plants,” said Professor Sean Graham, a researcher at the University’s Department of Botany and Botanical Gardens. from British Columbia. “We are delighted to have identified one that grows here in our own backyard on the West Coast.”
The plant in question grows in swampy but bright, nutrient-poor areas on the west coast of North America, from California to Alaska.
For the study, the researchers examined specimens growing on Cypress Mountain in North Vancouver, British Columbia. They placed fruit flies that had been fed nitrogen-15 isotopes onto flowers clustered on the plant’s stems, which are known as inflorescences and had previously been observed to have sticky hairs that could be used to trap insects. They later found this isotope within the plant in higher concentrations than before the fruit flies were introduced, indicating that it had consumed the fruit flies. “Something unique is that they catch insects with inflorescences,” says Gerhard Gebauer of the University of Bayreuth in Germany. “Most carnivorous plants catch insects with their leaves, so this is unexpected in a way.”
In addition, the researchers noted, the sticky hairs on the stems of T. occidentalis secrete a digestive enzyme called phosphatase that is also found in other carnivorous plants. The findings suggest that T. occidentalis uses its gleaming hairs to attract and trap insect snacks.
Interestingly, however, these hairs are found very close to the flowers of T. occidentalis . “That’s really weird, and it’s pretty unheard of to have the trap near the flower,” says Graham.
“The fact that Triantha’s carnivorous lifestyle has gone unnoticed for so long despite the plant’s abundance and its growth near big cities suggests that there are more carnivorous plants waiting to be discovered out of the ordinary,” they say. the authors.
Referencia: Qianshi Lin et al. 2021. A new carnivorous plant lineage (Triantha) with a unique sticky-inflorescence trap. PNAS 118 (33): e2022724118; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2022724118
