Ellen's Meat Eating Plants

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]Today, let's talk about Ellen's meat-eating plants.

[00:00:05]Right down here, you see a couple of sundews. One of them's an Australian form I've never seen before. I got one over here, too. This little guy, it catches gnats on the little hairs that are out there that stick off that plant. See these little sticky pads that form. There's nectar, and the critters get drawn to it, and they get stuck on the hairs. It digests them.

[00:00:31]Um something similar goes on with this one, although I don't really understand it yet. It's new to me. This one here is a Sarracenia. And uh this probably originates in bogs in Carolinas, I imagine. Uh Sarracenias uh one form or another.

[00:00:48]They're They're native uh mostly in the eastern US.

[00:00:53]Um down to Carolinas in bogs. Always in sphagnum bogs.

[00:00:58]Uh these are environments that have no nutrients. And so, they catch insects to get their nitrogen and other food stuff.

[00:01:07]Uh The range um various different species exist, but they go all the way up to Labrador.

[00:01:16]Um I know above the 45th parallel in Wisconsin, halfway to North Pole, we had uh Sarracenia forms that existed in moss bogs there.

[00:01:26]Old uh shallow glacial lakes that uh had grown in with sphagnum moss over time, and then these things get started on it.

[00:01:36]I recall a tourist from Chicago one time while we were walking on a floating moss bog covered in these pitcher plants.

[00:01:44]Uh he got thirsty. He looked down. He saw the pitchers were full of what he thought was rainwater. So, he picked one and drank it. Well, we informed him that's digestive fluid, and it's full of bugs.

[00:01:57]Oh, boy.

[00:02:00]Now, over here, we have Nepenthes.

[00:02:03]Nepenthes is the tropical pitcher. There are several kinds hanging in this tree.

[00:02:09]This is a lime tree, but the Nepenthes go actually all the way up to the top of the tree. Um they're vining. Uh they're epiphytic. They They grow on uh on trees, not on soil.

[00:02:21]Um They make pitchers that hang in the air like this.

[00:02:25]Uh here's some good-looking ones right there. Fresh pitcher.

[00:02:29]A lot of these here are dried out. Um What happens is that the insects will be drawn to the mouth of the pitcher.

[00:02:37]Um there's some downward-pointing hairs there and some nectar.

[00:02:42]Well, they'll go in after the nectar. It might be mildly narcotic. I'm not sure about that. But, they can't get back up against the uh downward-turned hairs.

[00:02:53]And so, they fall down into the bottom of the pitcher, sit down in here, and digest.

[00:03:00]>> [laughter] >> Now, we also discovered that the coqui frogs like to crawl into these things. I don't know if they're going after the bugs or what they're doing, but I'll go after coquis, and I'll try to figure out where are those bugs? Where are those frogs? Next thing I know, they're in the Sarracenias, they're in the Nepenthes.

[00:03:17]Uh inside the pitchers. So, uh I settle that one.

[00:03:22]We uh dispatch the frog and feed it to the pitcher plant. [laughter] And uh it seems to make them grow really well. Uh I see way up top over there. I can see the flower from one of these that's literally jutting out of the top of my lime tree.

[00:03:42]Well, from here, it looks to me like the rain's coming.

[00:03:47]Uh my fish haven't eaten yet, so I guess I'm going ahead and feed the fish.

[00:03:54]And uh say goodbye to the pitcher plants.

[00:03:58]Aloha.