A Carnivorous Plant Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight in North America
- Thread starter Klyde O'Scope
- Start date
Chameleoking
Chameleon Enthusiast
Amazing!
Lindasjackson
Chameleon Enthusiast
I bet you all didn’t know that we have Venus fly traps in Maine! When I was a kid I found some growing along the edge of the water at our camp.
"Triantha is unique among carnivorous plants in capturing prey solely with sticky traps adjacent to its flowers, contrary to theory. However, its glandular hairs capture only small insects, unlike the large bees and butterflies that act as pollinators, which may minimize the conflict between carnivory and pollination"...
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/33/e2022724118
It doesn't even look like a carnivorous plant to me...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triantha_occidentalis
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/33/e2022724118
It doesn't even look like a carnivorous plant to me...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triantha_occidentalis
dinomom
Chameleon Enthusiast
I just saw this a while ago and emails are flying all over the world-asking my friends who we know in Vancouver LOL
Klyde O'Scope
Chameleon Enthusiast
You'd win. I can't find any confirmation of that, but I do find there are Pitcher Plants & Sundews in Maine.
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Gardening/2008/0725/insects-beware-these-plants-want-you
If you could find those fly traps, you may have discovered something significant.
Lindasjackson
Chameleon Enthusiast
No, I read somewhere that they are native to Maine but that was years and years after finding them as a child. I didn’t know we had pitcher plant and sundews here either!
Chameleoking
Chameleon Enthusiast
Cool, they are a native to north Carolina also. They have pitcher plants and sundews also.
Chameleoking
Chameleon Enthusiast
Here are some carnivorous plant of Indiana. They are from the blatterwort family if I'm spelling this correctly. They are the horned, zigzag, small purple, floating, purple, flat-leaved, lesser, giant, hidden-fruiter and creeping. Two of these are listed as extirpated in Indiana, while two others are on the endangered list, and two others are listed as rare. So it looks like they are slowly disappearing. As you can see, most are not what one can call common in Indiana.
dinomom
Chameleon Enthusiast
OK here comes the obnoxious CP expert!
Five hundred dollars says those VFT were planted by a person-they are only native to about 100 square miles in NC/SC. But there are colonies planted and surviving in Ca and Fla. Not the same as being native. There is only one species but tons of cultivars/mutations, I keep around 60 different types of VFT alone.
And there are CP's in every state in the US as well as every continent except I believe Antartica. I have to use a combo of chillers, heaters, humidity tents etc. not to mention varying levels of light to mimic every climate around the world so it makes keeping chams seem simple LOL.
A few of my VFT below
Sorry but I try to find the good fight against misinformation regarding CP's
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Lindasjackson
Chameleon Enthusiast
Well the only thing I can think of is possibly I mistook a sundew plant as a Venus fly trap. I remember seeing it and it looked like a Venus fly trap to me but the pictures of them I just went and looked at the colors were wrong so I looked up the sundew plant and we have these here in Maine as well and they had the colors I remember so maybe that is what I saw. I do remember them being bright green with the red hairs along the edges and folding in half. I was a child when I saw them and that was many years ago. I’m sorry if I mislead anyone, that wasn’t my intention.
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dinomom
Chameleon Enthusiast
Makes total sense! Those little tentacles will close over the bugs, albeit not as fast as a 'trap and then the entire leaf curls around it. Either way, I am sure it was fascinating to see them and made a big impression since you remember it to this day
Lindasjackson
Chameleon Enthusiast
It sure did!
