Pitcher plant

“ If leaves did not perform this most important function to perfection, all animals, including man as well, would perish, and it would almost seem that their obligation to us and the plant world might stop there as long as their success in reaching the light is so overwhelming. But there are no union hours of labor, no regulation as to the kind of work leaves may perform, and some actually reach out for new tasks to do, and do them. In one, our common pitcher plant, the leaf, as is implied by the name, is formed into a slender hollow pitcher, wide at the mouth, but narrow at the base. ”

“ In another instant they have slipped into the water at the bottom of the jug. Do what they will, they cannot climb up the slippery sides of the pitcher, or pass the row of sharp hooks, whose points are turned against them. They are caught.
Now all this is very strange and wonderful, and it makes us wish to know why Providence has given the plant this clever machinery. We cannot help asking ourselves why the pitcher-plant entraps these insects. I am afraid that you would hardly be able to answer this question for yourself, however carefully you might watch a pitcher-plant. ”

“ Another, of small size and quaintly rotund form, has a mass of leaves and flowers in relief clustering round the body. A pitcher with a soft gray ground is lightly overrun with an ivy branch, which twines itself round the neck and handle as naturally as the plant creeps up and winds itself round the stem of a tree. ”

“ In the Nepénthes distillatòria, or pitcher plant, the case is different; and analysis proves it to be an evident secretion from the plant itself, independent altogether of the fact that it is found in the pitcher before the lid has yet opened. ”

“ Some grow in America; but they are altogether different from those in Borneo and Ceylon. One beautiful little pitcher-plant grows in Australia: but this is also very different from all the rest; for the pitchers, instead of being at the end of the leaves, are clustered round the bottom of the plant, close to the ground.
All these pitcher-plants, though very beautiful to look at, are very cruel enemies to insects: for the pitchers nearly always have water in them; and flies and small insects are constantly falling into them, and getting drowned. ”

“ If it seeks to fly away from the rim it flies towards the translucent spots in the hood, which look like the way of escape, as the direction of entrance is in the shadow of the hood. Pounding against the hood the fly falls into the water. This southern pitcher plant is known as a great fly catcher, and is frequently used for this purpose in the south.
The very largest of the pitcher plants is one which grows in the swamps of California, whose leaves sometimes become as much as two or three feet high, the huge pitchers forming the most capacious receptacle for insects of all kinds and sizes. ”

“ Prominent among the carnivorous plants are the pitcher plants, whose leaves form tubes, or urns, or pitchers of various forms, which contain water, and to which insects are attracted and drowned. There is a very common pitcher plant in our northern bogs, in whose urn-like leaves insects are found drowned, but which does not have such elaborate arrangements for their capture as other forms. ”

“ Pitcher-plants excited the interest of scientists and travelers over a century ago, but the meaning and mechanism of these "plant-saloons" was only discovered within comparatively recent times. Glandular hairs lead up the margin of the pitcher, and through its mouth to a field of such sugar-plums as grow everywhere in fairyland. Flies, ants, and sometimes moths, follow the baited path to feed on the sweets. But getting out is not so easy as going in. ”

“ Rivaling the snow plant in general interest is the singular Darlingtonia, or California pitcher-plant, indigenous to open, marshy places in the northern part of the State from Mount Shasta to the coast, and the only species of its genus, though it is related to the Eastern Sarracenias, or side-saddle flowers. The pitchers, which are said to be in reality the enlarged and hollowed petioles, or leaf stalks, average about three feet in height, and are terminated by an arching hood or crest, furnished with a pair of mustachelike appendages, which are the genuine leaves. ”

“ Hence a healthy pitcher-plant is considered useful in a house containing orchids or other tender plants, as cockroaches and such destructive insects are not unfrequently found dead in the pitchers, to which they have been attracted by the water, or by a sugary secretion said to be found in the inside of some species ”

“ The clear drops of gum attract insects to the leaf, and they are held by the feet or wings. Their struggles cause the leaf to fold together, when the hairs pierce the body of the insect and drink up the juices. When only a dry husk remains the leaf opens and the wind shakes the shell away.
The pitcher-plant invites insects by a honey-like secretion. They fall into the liquid stored in the pitcher and are thus drowned, because, owing to numerous downward-pointing hairs in the throat of the pitcher, they cannot climb back. ”

“ Its pitchers are at the bottom of the principal stem of the plant.
One species distils an intoxicant of its own; but owing to its small orifice, it excludes the majority of insects, and admits but a select few. The individual pitchers somewhat resemble an inverted parrot’s bill, with a narrow leaf-like expansion running along the top. The color is light green, beautifully shaded with crimson. The inside of the pitcher is divided into three parts: The first, nearest the entrance, is studded with minute honey glands, and is called the attractive surface ”

“ The lid then separates from the rim, excepting at the upper and outer side, where it remains more or less raised, and united as by a hinge to the pitcher. This pitcher, being attached at its base to the slender, tendril-like stalk, hangs suspended six inches or a foot from the point of the leaf with which it is connected. Forty or more pitchers sometimes hang around a single plant. In some species this order of successive development is not followed. In the early growth of some seedling plants examined by Dr. ”

“ Marvelous as are the adaptations of the insectivorous plants, they have not been all these years upon the earth without certain crafty insects having learned not only to escape falling a prey to them, but to use them to their own ends. The pitchers of the Californian pitcher-plant are the home of a small moth which is provided with sharp spurs on its middle legs, which enable it to crawl easily over the slippery surfaces of the interior. ”

“ Starvation soon ends its struggles. death is followed by decomposition, and in the absorption of the products of this the plant accomplishes the end for which it possesses the traps—it gets its needed nitrogen.
In the pitcher-plants the urns of water are set and all else is left to the curiosity of the insects, the inner structure of the leaf being such—as we shall soon see—that a secure trap-door is not needed. The half dozen species of pitcher-plant (Sarracenia) exhibit considerable variety in the form of their leaves. In the purple species, the only one growing north of Virginia, Fig. ”

“ The accompanying woodcut exhibits three of the species in most general cultivation. The central plant is the Nepenthes Rafflesiana, so called in honour of the late Sir Stamford Raffles, Governor of Bencoolen, producing the largest and most beautiful pitchers yet grown in Europe. The linear-acuminate leaves are sometimes a foot and a half long. The cirrhus, or stalk of the pitchers, is of equal length. The somewhat pear-shaped pitcher is six inches deep, and two or three inches in diameter towards the base. The lid is an inch and a half in length and an inch wide. ”

“ All sorts of flying and creeping things seem to have a natural curiosity to examine hollow caverns such as the pitchered leaves appear to them. Perhaps, too, they are drawn to the plant by its rich red coloration or the striking veins which mark the mouth of the pitcher; indeed, one botanist has found drops of honey arranged in a row up the side of the pitcher, a lure to guide the steps of the insect directly to the interior. ”

“ There are various kinds of pitcher-plants. Some are shorter and broader than others; but they are all green like true leaves, and hold water as securely as a jug or glass. They grow in Borneo and Sumatra, hot islands in the East. ”

“ It has a cup, or pitcher, hanging down very much as a pitcher does when you hold it by the handle; some of the plants are literally covered with these pitchers, and they will generally be found full of water, even when there has been no rain for weeks. The finest of them are in the mountain [Pg 30] regions of Borneo; there is one known as the Nepenthes Rajah that will hold two quarts of water in its pitcher, and there is another nearly as large. They are of great advantage to travellers, and many a man has been saved from suffering, and perhaps death, by means of this plant. ”

“ The whole group of pitcher-plants, for instance, cruelly manure themselves by means of living insects in the most treacherous fashion. These lovely and wicked plants live, without exception, in wet and boggy soil, where they cannot get enough animal matter for manure in the ordinary way by the roots: so they lay themselves out instead to capture and absorb the tissues of insects. For this horrid purpose, they twist their leaves into deep pitchers which catch and hold the rain water, and so form reservoirs to drown their prey. ”

“ Sometimes I almost wish they wouldn’t take quite such care of our things! There was the brown pitcher, for instance. I had been wanting a very large one for fetching the water from the spring outside the cottage gate. Of course, I know you can get big enamel jugs (painted duck-egg blue, or anything else in the art line that you fancy) ; but the latter seems so strident, so townified, so newly-rich, so over-dressed, when you see them beside our moss-grown wooden spout, where the mountain spring splashes down into a stony hollow, among ferns and long mosses. ”

“ All the pitchers hitherto seen are cauline ones, and as the plant has never yet been seen in a young state, it is an open question as to whether the radical pitchers differ in shape or size, as is the case with most other species. ”

“ The stem is erect or half-climbing, with long narrow leaves tapering to slender ends, which will twine like a tendril about any supporting twig or stick and then give rise to a single pitcher, or failing to find a support, will fail too to produce the pitcher. ”

“ Every fruit catalogue states which are pistillates, and their need of a perfect-flowering kind near them. Again, it is urged that this necessary proximity of two kinds leads to mixtures. It need not, and, with the plant grower, can only result from gross carelessness. The different beds may be yards apart. In order to secure thorough fertilization, it is not at all necessary to plant so near that the two kinds can run together. In a large field of pistillates, every tenth row should be of a staminate, blossoming at the same time with the pistillate. ”

“ Pulverised zoophytes and powder of dried meat and aquatic bulbs should be thrown into the pitcher for their food, and blades of grass and leaves of water-plants should be put into it for them to lie upon. The water and the edibles should be changed every second or third day, and the pitchers should be changed each week, (the leeches should be transferred to a new pitcher at the end of every consecutive seven days) . ”

“ The leaves and flower-stems grow directly from the root.
The curious leaf is in the form of a deep cup or pitcher, with a broad wing on one side, and a flaring top which answers to the lip of the pitcher; the outer surface is smooth while the inner surface is set with many short, downward-pointing bristles; the texture, especially of the old pitchers, is tough and leathery, and the color is a strong green more or less veined with dark red. A number of leaf-cups grow in a cluster close to the ground. ”

“ The pitcher-like leaves form a cluster, and are 1 to 2 ft. high, slender, erect, and end in a rounded hooded top, from which hangs a blade shaped like a fish-tail which guards the entrance to the pitcher. Insects are attracted to the leaves by the bright colouring, especially of the upper part; entering they pass down the narrow funnel guided by downward pointing hairs which also prevent their ascent. They form a putrefying mass in the bottom of the pitcher, and the products of their decomposition are presumably absorbed by the leaf for food. ”

“ Many of these are of a climbing habit, rooting in bark crevices where a little moist soil may have collected. To augment their food supply they have produced pitchers, which in some species are of great size. Indeed, in one kind of receptacles will hold as much as two quarts of water. In all cases these pitchers have a thick, corrugated rim, and it is this which plays a big part both in the luring and the capturing of the insects. On this rim, as well as on the lid of the pitcher, there are honey secreting glands, and these, of course, make the strongest appeal to hungry insects. ”

“ Pipings are portions of pinks and carnations pulled asunder at a joint instead of being divided with a knife, and afterwards planted, and treated exactly like cuttings.
Budding is taking off a single bud or eye, called a scion, from one plant, and inserting it in another plant called the stock. This operation is generally [Pg 274] performed in July or August. In the first place, a slit is made on each side and above and below a leaf which has a healthy bud in its axil, that is, just between the foot-stalk of the leaf and the branch on which it grows. ”