Insect-catching flowers (was Re: New CP????)

sportman@students.wisc.edu
Tue, 9 Jan 1996 15:38:02 -0600

>A webcrawler search on "carnivorous plants" turned up Sally & Co. Seeds page,
>an online catalog which lists a "Chinese Fly-Catching Vine"

As Jan pointed out, Aristolochia doesn't actually eat insects. Here's some
other interesting plants that have structures to trap insects but are not
cp's. Most are in cultivation:

Coryanthes - an orchid genus in which the flowers have an upside down basin
filled with an intoxicating liquid - a bee falls in, gets drunk, and picks
up pollen bundles as it staggers out. These can be grown with lowland
Nepenthes, if you use a fan for air circulation.

Aesclepiadaceae - many milkweed relatives temporarily detain insects in
their flowers. Good examples include some Ceropegias (haygarthii,
balleyana and others), Pseudomallum pectinarium.

Araceae - others know more about this than me, but there's a number of
aroids, including some Amorphophallus, which have collapsing flowers
designed to temporarily trap pollinators.

A little off the cp thread, but interesting anyway.