Pitcher Plant

1. The pitcher plant is a carnivore plant.It will eat every insect that slips inside its jug like leaves.Pitcher plants may also contain waxy scales, protruding aldehyde crystals, cuticular folds, downward pointing hairs, or guard-cell-originating lunate cells on the inside of the pitcher to ensure that insects cannot climb out.

2. TheSceintific Name for the pitcher plant is called "Nipenthes Distillatoria"

3. The pitcher trap evolved independently in three eudicot lineages and one monocot lineages,representing a case of convergent evolution.

4. Furthermore, some pitcher plants contain mutualistic insect larvae, which feed on trapped prey, and whose excreta the plant absorbs. Whatever the mechanism of digestion, the prey items are converted into a solution of amino acids, peptides, phosphates, ammonium and urea, from which the plant obtains its mineral nutrition (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus).

5. Pitchers grow on tendrils extending from the midribs of leaves and trap prey passively, collecting pools of water into which prey are lured (with bright colors and nectar secreted on the pitcher rim), drowned, and digested with no energetic active movement on the part of the plant. In some species a single plant may grow some pitchers that lie recumbent on the substrate and others that hang suspended in mid-air; this results in leaf dimorphism, in which ground pitchers are different in shape, size, and appearance from aerial pitchers. Though most prey are small nectarivorous insects, the largest Nepenthes species may produce pitchers capable of trapping small vertebrates such as lizards, rodents, and birds. A few species have evolved modifications of the prototypical pitcher morphology and behavior to collect leaf litter or animal droppings.

6. This is a picture of a pitcher plant eating a CRAB

7. The families Nepenthaceae and Sarraceniaceae are the best-known and largest groups of pitcher plants.

8. The Nepenthaceae contains a single genus, Nepenthes, containing over 100 species and numerous hybrids and cultivars.

9. In contrast, the New World pitcher plants (Sarraceniaceae), which comprise three genera, are ground-dwelling herbs whose pitchers arise from a horizontal rhizome.

10. In this family, the entire leaf forms the pitcher, whereas in the Nepenthaceae, the pitcher arises from the terminal portion of the leaf.

11. The species of the genus Heliamphora, which are popularly known as marsh pitchers (or erroneously as sun pitchers), have a simple rolled-leaf pitcher, at the tip of which is a spoon-like structure that secretes nectar. They are restricted to areas of high rainfall in South America.