Pitcher plants, flytrap plants, and sundew are well-known insect-eating plants. Now, this “insect-eating plant club” has welcomed a new member from China.
According to a report from the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences on August 5th, a team led by Academician Sun Hang of this institute, in collaboration with researchers from home and abroad, has confirmed that the Lamprolechia plant found in the Hengduan Mountains along the southeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau has a complete insect-eating function: it can attract, capture insects, digest them, and absorb their nutrients.
This is the first insect-eating plant confirmed in the order Saxifiliid among terrestrial plants, and it provides direct evidence for Darwin’s scientific hypothesis from 150 years ago that some saxifilids may be insectivorous.
In his 1875 work "Allelomixis," Darwin studied the glandular hairs of European species of Alpinia and Alpinia neglecta, and speculated that insectivorous plants might exist within the genus Alpinia. However, due to the limitations of technological conditions at the time, Darwin was unable to obtain conclusive evidence. As a result, whether there truly existed insectivorous plants in the genus Alpinia remained unresolved.
Research shows that the entire plant of Lamprocapra sativa is covered with sticky hairs, creating a sticky trapping mechanism similar to "sticky paper". Small insects find it difficult to escape once they come into contact with this structure.
It is understood that the relevant research findings were published in Nature Communications on the 4th.
