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The plant is found in swampy but bright areas of the Pacific coast of North America, from California to Alaska. Carnivorous plants are usually found in nutrient poor areas like peatlands, so plants must feed on live prey.
“Carnivorous plants have fascinated people since the Victorian era because they upset the usual order of things: they are an animal-eating plant,” said co-author Dr Sean Graham, in the press release. “We are delighted to have identified one that grows right here in our own backyard on the West Coast.”
Researchers studied plants growing on Cypress Mountain in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
Researchers identified the plant as carnivorous using fruit flies labeled with nitrogen-15 isotopes, the statement said.
Dr Qianshi Lin, lead author of the study, said the nitrogen acts as a tracking device. The researchers would collect the plants where the flies have landed and compare the amount of nitrogen in the plant to other plants in the area.
They realized that Triantha occidentalis had a slight increase in nitrogen, which meant that it absorbed the element of flies. The researchers also found that the sticky hairs on the plant’s flower stem produce phosphatase, a digestive enzyme used by many carnivorous plants to obtain phosphorus from prey. This confirmed that the plant is carnivorous.
“What’s particularly unique about this carnivorous plant is that it traps insects near its insect-pollinated flowers,” Lin said. “On the surface, it looks like a conflict between carnivore and pollination because you don’t want to kill the bugs that help you reproduce.”
But scientists have found that the size of the insect matters when it comes to prey for the plant.
“We believe that Triantha is able to balance carnivore and pollination because its glandular hairs are not very sticky and can only trap midges and other small insects, so bees and butterflies much larger and larger. forts that act as its pollinators are not captured, ”said co-author Dr Tom Givnish.
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