This Carnivorous Plant Has a Rain-Powered Trap
Carnivorous plants’ peculiar strategies for snagging live prey have long captured the public imagination. But even within this strange group, in which food-trapping mechanisms have evolved multiple times independently, some oddities stand out. For example, the visually striking pitcher plant Nepenthes gracilis, native to Southeast Asia, can harness falling rain’s energy to ambush animals. A new study in Biology Letters demonstrates how the structure of the plant’s pitcher component, itself a modified leaf, makes the…