Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon

Author:Brian Capon
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2010-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

A. Topping the tubular trap (a modified petiole) of pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea), the fan-shaped leaf blade is covered with downward-pointing hairs that prevent the escape of captured insects.

B. Sundew’s leaves are covered with sticky hairs in which small insects become entrapped.

C. The leaf blades of Venus’ fly-trap (Dionaea muscipula) have evolved into ominous traps that snap shut on unwary insect victims.

Carnivorous plants, which reverse roles from being consumed to becoming consumers, seem better suited to the realm of science fiction than to life on Earth. But what better proof can be offered that, in nature, innovation has no bounds? Earth is blessed with a flora of inconceivable diversity, the outcome of millions of years of natural selection. There is hardly a place to which one or more species is not adapted, and there is hardly an adaptation that does not engender awe. From the simplest forms to the complex angiosperms and gymnosperm giants, plants are wondrously attuned to the environment—defending themselves against its onslaughts and taking advantage of good times, while they last. With only roots, stems, and leaves to work with, plants modify them, in limitless ways, to survive in environments over which they have no control.

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