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Read that teasel is carnivorous

Adam

Sarracenia Collector
i read in a cp book (cps of US and canada i think) that common teasels are carnivorous. is this true? if so, today i will simply go out to the backyard, and get one for my cp area
 
Looked on Wikipedia and saw that it's under the category of "protocarnivorous", I would say yes, it's quasi-carnivorous.
 
whats quasi-carnivorous mean?
 
whats quasi-carnivorous mean?

That it has some of the traits that define a carnivorous plant, but not all of them. For example, heliamphora attract and capture prey but do not digest them. They rely on bacteria to do that for them. So heliamphora are quasi carnivorous because they meet some but not all of the requirements to be considered a carnivorous plant.
 
It means the plant catches the insects, but produces no enzymes to digest them. It indirectly benefits from catching things.
 
i love that avatar tyd, keyboard cat... too much :)
 
cool... cant wait to get one
 
quasi-carnivore is a dumb term IMO. Or misleading i should say. I tend to have rather "liberal" terms for plants to meet my cp requirement, but i believe if a plant can attract insects, and insects are somehow immobilized on/by the plant, and the plant somehow gets nutrients from them (directly, indirectly, etc...), its a carnivorous plant. If you require a plant to attract, kill, and directly absorb nutrients from an insect, you are discarding Darlingtonia, Heliamphora, Bronchinia, Catopsis, Probosidea, Ibecella, Stylidium, a few Nepenthes, S. purpurea, Roridula, Byblis, and a few Drosera. To me, that is simply not ok, those are all cps in my eyes!
 
:poke:obregon, I'm pretty sure Stylidium & S. Purpurea have documented enzymes, but you get the point across. If someone was that strict to exclude DARLINGTONIA.....:crazy::crazy:
awgaupp, if you have them in the back yard, wouldn't they do just as well there? When fellow CPers come over, you say, "Guess what?!?! I found out I have native CPs in my yard!" They'll turn green or think you're oulling their leg!:lol:
Teasels are semi-pitfalls, are they not? So technically, they're more advanced carnivores than Ibicella or Roridula! And the guts of the victimized bugs that drown stay in the pitfall, so they must go somewhere? But the downfall is that we'd have to include potatoes and all sticky plants if we included ALL plants that profited from bugs dying on them/close to them! That would number in the THOUSANDS, and I don't want ANYONE to add more CPs to the list until I catch up!:blush: Okay, untill I own a good part of them. The person who proved Stylidiums are carnivorous just made it at leat 900 species ALONE, not including at leat 3-400 hybrids & cultivars. My $0.02

Happy Growing!

Aslan
 
  • #10
I just ordered some mushroom starts (stropharia mycelium). Apparently they trap and digest nematodes. Its a CF. Carnivorous fungi!
 
  • #12
Teasel collects water and animals drown in it at a higher rate than in normal water, and the plants' seeds are heavier after the plant benefits from the nutrients. Would teasel be killing insects for protection, with nutrients being absorbed as a coincidence? Unless there are enzymes, a means of attracting the animals, or it can be shown that the plant encourages digestive bacterial growth more than normal, then it remains in the uncertain quasi-carnivorous plant category.
 
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