How the bladder herb and the Drosera catch their victims - from a South African perspective

How the bladder herb and the Drosera catch their victims - from a South African perspective

bladder herb

Early in the summer swimming pretty little grapes of gold -yellow flowers with a diameter of about one centimeter on the water of ponds and trenches. This is the bladder herb or utricularia, a plant that keeps most of your body under water and looks very innocent. Under its leaves, however, the Utricularia has many small bubbles that turn into fatal traps if an careless insect is too close to it.

These bubbles have a small opening surrounded by short hair. When an insect explores the opening, the plant swallows the insect and closes the opening with a special lid. The plant then digests the captured animal by millions of microscopic tubes in its tissue.

The plant grows all over the world, both on land and on the water, but the majority of the species occur in tropical regions and only about four occur in Europe.

drosera

Droseros is the Greek word for "moist" and the first thing you notice of the drosa or sun dam is the sticky stem, which is covered with soft, fluffy hair and is littered with glittering small bubbles that look like dew drops. When insects see these "drips", they end up on the plant to drink something. As soon as you touch the stem, the insects get stuck and the fluffy hair of the plants curls like tentacles around them. The Drosera produces a liquid that brings the insect into food, which then absorbs the plant.

The drosera is therefore a carnivorous plant. It grows wild in damp places in Europe and North America and is about 20 cm high. A variety found in Australia and South Africa reaches a height of one meter