Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1884 — Flesh-Feeding Plants. [ARTICLE]

Flesh-Feeding Plants.

We have seen that the objects which I the sun-dew can act upon are precisely i the things which an animal could use i for food, and that those matters—such as hair, stones, the hard skin of. insects, etc. —which the animal cannot use are just those which the sumdew also rejects. When an animal has put food into his stomach the food is acted upon chemically, or what is called digested, by the gastric juice, which consists of a ferment, called pepsin, and an acid, neither of which alone by itself has the power of digestion. But we have proved by our experiment with litmus paper that the secretion of the tentacles of the sun-dew contains an acid when it is acting; and if we compare the action of animal gastric juice on bits of meat with the action of the secretion of the sundew, it seems clear that some ferment similar to, if not identical with, the ferment pepsin, must be present in the sun-dew secretion. It has, moreover, been found that the secretion of the sun-dew gives out, under certain circumstances, a strong smell of pepsin. But the reader who desires to learn more about this will do well to consult Mr. Darwin’s “Insectivorous Plants,” or some of the other works that have been written on the subject. We noticed as we dug up the sun-dew plants how small the roots are, and how poor the moist soil in which they grow. The use of the roots seem to be merely, in addition to anchoring the plant in the soil, to suck up water (of which the leaves with their copious secretion require a great deal), and not, as in most plants, to provide food. Besides the round-leaved sumdew, two other kinds grow in Great Britain, and about a hundred elsewhere, and all seem, without exception, to have the same insectcatchinghabits as the one we have been studying, and to be, like it, dependent upon animal food. There are also some other plants of the same family which are of a like nature, though the mechanism by which they secure their insect food is rather different.—- Science for All.