Botanists uncover a flower's meaty secret

摘要

Gleaming, gluey, deathtrap hairs have betrayed the secret identity of a well-known wild flower: It's a carnivore. A species of false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis) uses enzyme-secreting hairs on its flowering stem to snare and digest insects, researchers report in the Aug.17 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists have known about T. occidentalis since the 19th century, but the wild flower's taste for meat has gone undetected until now. Sticky hairs by themselves aren't unusual - many non-carnivorous plants use such hairs to defend against pests. But T. occidentalis has qualities that some meat-eating plants share: a love of bright, boggy, nutrient-poor habitats and the absence of a gene that fine-tunes how plants get energy from light. Together, those features felt like pieces of a puzzle hinting at carnivory, says botanist Sean Graham of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. To solve the puzzle, Graham and colleagues needed to know if the wild flower pulls nutrients from insect corpses. Luckily, T. occidentalis grows along North America's West Coast, from Alaska to California, and can be found on hikes near Vancouver. "They're right on our doorstep," Graham says.