The false asphodel, a plant known to science for over a century, has recently been found to trap and digest small insects with sticky hairs on its stalk
A close-up of the sticky hairs of false asphodel stained using a fluorescent die, which trap and kill small insects.“This kind of plant turns the tables on animals and eats insects, which is quite cool,” says Lin, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto.
But these bog flowers are in a family of small herbaceous perennials, Tofieldiaceae, that has no known meat-eaters. False asphodels also have a very short growing season: sprouting after the snow melts in May, flowering in June and July, producing seeds and withering away by early fall. One reason why this plant’s carnivory was overlooked is that these hairs are very small and grow only on the flower stalk—a feature unlike any known carnivorous plant, Lin says.
“For plant carnivory, in my opinion, the main criterion is not so much if the plant digests the insects ... but essential is the attraction of prey,” says Fleischmann, who was not involved in the paper. And he’s not sure the sticky hairs ofProving a plant is a carnivore is more difficult than it might sound.
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