We can all help to preserve these precious landscapes
In a shallow pool amid a mossy landscape is a trap, a tiny triggered vacuum that sucks in unexpected prey at great speed, absorbs what it needs, then ejects the empty husk of its victim. If you’ve sunk and splashed your way through a peat bog in summer, you may have caught a glimpse of the plant’s more alluring feature, the showy yellow flowers that wave above the water.
Bladderworts are free-floating aquatic plants that sink back in winter to tight buds, washed along in the currents of wilder weather. They are not alone in their bizarre eating habits. There are sundews whose hundreds of pin-shaped tentacles wrap their sticky digestive juices around their prey, and butterworts, which possess the strongest glue in nature to trap hapless insects wandering over them, among the heathers and layers of sphagnum moss that make up peatland.
Continue reading...* This article was originally published here
No comments:
Post a Comment