List of 5 Common Insectivorous Plants

List of 5 Common Insectivorous Plants: An insectivorous plant is a rare type of plant that has adapted to capture, kill, and digest small insects. These plants are also known as carnivorous plants. They used to kill them to fulfill their nutritional needs.

They consume such small insects to get supplements like phosphorus, nitrogen, and other important minerals that are required for their development and growth.

List of 5 Common Insectivorous Plants

Insectivorous plants have adapted various kinds of mechanisms to attract, capture, and digest their prey. Due to their special body mechanism, first, they trap the insects and digest them outside of their body, then absorb the nutrients that are required for their growth.

How they trap: They produce some odd smell that is similar to meat. So insects came to the plant as attracted by the odd meat smell. Sometimes they also attract their prey with shining colors. Then the prey falls into the digestive liquid filled with digestive enzymes and becomes immovable there. After some days these enzymes digest the entire insect and the plant absorbs the nutrients easily.

Type of Trap: There are basically 5 types of trap mechanisms works in the case of Carnivorous plants, they are as follows

1. Lobster-pot Traps
2. Lobster-pot Traps
3. Pitfall Traps
4. Snap Traps
5. Bladderwort Traps

Here are some of the most common types of insectivorous plants

Pitcher Plants: These plants are the most common type of insectivorous plant. They have modified their leaves as pitchers or pitfall traps. This trap is filled with digestive enzymes and the surface is slippery. These slippery surface help to capture their prey as while sitting on this surface, insects fall inside the pitcher. Then the digestive liquid digests the insects after some days. 

Sundews: The Sundew plants have more than 194 species and are the largest groups of carnivorous plants found on the earth. This plant has thin, small leaves covered in glandular hairs that secrete sticky substances. When an insect comes on the leaf surface, those hair-like structures trapped them as the sticky droplets made the insects immovable. Then the tentacles present on the leaves slowly move toward the prey to trap it easily. After the secretions of digestive enzymes, the plant extracts nutrients from it to fulfill its demands.

Bladderworts: Utricularia or Bladderworts are terrestrial or aquatic plants. These plants have small bladder-like structures with a trapdoor mechanism. These bladders create a vacuum space when triggered by prey and suck them inside the bladder which contains digestive enzymes. After that digest them to full fill their demand.

Venus Flytrap: The Venus Flytrap is the most well-known insectivorous plant. This plant modified its leaves into a trap that is similar to human pam. These traps consist of two lobes or modified leaves with sensitive trigger hair-like structures. When an insect touches these hairs then the trap immediately closes automatically and traps the prey inside. Inside the trap, it secrets digestive enzymes that help to digest the insect or any small organisms. 

Butterworts: Butterworts or Pinguicula is an insectivorous plant. The leaves of this plant have glandular hair-like structures that are very sticky which attract small insects. Just after the prey lands on the surface of the leaf the sticky surface traps the insects and digests them to full fill their required nutrients demand.

                                 Here is the list of some insectivorous plants but many other species of such plants can also be found on the earth. This is a mode of adaptation, modified and accepted by the plants to full fill their need. Not only plants but also many animals adapt to something to survive, even after many unfavorable changes.

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