Carnivorous plants Halloween

A predator faster than the eye: the bladderwort

October at last! Are you ready for my traditional Halloween series? After unloved animals in the garden in 2022 and poisoned plants in 2023, the pressure was on! But I think I’ve found the perfect subject for my 2024 series: strange plants, worthy of Barnum’s Circus or a Museum of Horrors.

This October will be filled with curiosity and amazement as I invite you to the great plant circus of the Laidback Gardener!

But that’s not all! To get you in the mood, I’ve included articles with soundtracks specially chosen for each star. So start the melody, and let yourself be amazed, horrified – or something in between – by these originals from the plant world…

The Most Voracious of Plants

We’re off to a flying start with a carnivorous plant. In themselves, these plants are original in the plant kingdom, but the one I want to tell you about today holds a hitherto unrivaled record. Honored guests, this plant doesn’t train lions, isn’t the woman with the longest beard in the world, and doesn’t swallow swords… Its record is even more impressive!

It’s the fastest-moving plant in the world!

Your stage master calls before your astonished eyes, straight out of a wetland of some kind, and only a few centimeters high… the bladderwort!

Artificial intelligence doesn’t know how to write, or what a bladderwort is, but I give it a point for effort! Here’s our real star:

Innocent beneath its flowery exterior, so small that it goes unnoticed, it can be found on every continent except Antarctica. With over 200 species, it’s not surprising that it comes in a variety of colors: gaudy yellow, immaculate white, sapphire blue, delicate violet or brilliant red. But if its flamboyant colors catch the eye of pollinators, that’s not what fools its prey, for you see, it’s usually below the surface that this original captures its meal at the speed of light…

Beneath the Surface, the Trap

Photo: jeffpavlik

Once past its cute face, dive under its reflection, but keep your distance, dear spectators, because danger lurks. The world’s great botanists have described the bladderwort trap as the most sophisticated in the plant world.

Photo: olga_chernyagina

Don’t be fooled by those long, tangled filaments: they’re not roots. They’re actually stolons, horizontal stems that connect the plants together. An ideal hiding place for aquatic animals? That’s what they’d have you believe! These are the worthy bearers of the deadly tool that enables the plant to capture its prey.

Photo: Michal Rubeš

Shaped like beans or bags, these traps with their translucent membranes produce sticky, sweet substances worthy of the circus’s best sweets. But who would be suspicious of a cotton candy stand? Intrigued, the prey move towards what they imagine to be their next meal. Flexible wires, like antennae or tentacles, stand in the way, like the queue for a sweet treat. Nothing alarming, nothing disturbing…

But when you get impatient, and the promise of a sweet smell wafts through the air, the urge to get closer becomes stronger. And then you accidentally bump into an antenna…

If you were in line for your ice cream, a few apologies and all would be forgiven… But bladderworts are unforgiving. Barely enough time to realize (or not!) that one of its antennae has been grazed, and the poor prey is sucked into the trap, which has already closed.

Already? Yes, because the world’s fastest plant closes its traps in 0.01 seconds.

How Does It Work?

The mechanism of these traps is very ingenious. Unlike other carnivorous plants, such as the dionea, which must actively move to close a trap, the bladderwort doesn’t need to move at all, the action being purely mechanical.

Its traps are made up of small bags that are emptied of their liquids by the cell walls of the bag. This osmotic phenomenon is the same as emptying a glass of water by dipping the end of a paper towel into it. Once the trap is empty, the opening is closed, like a closed mouth.

All around this “mouth”, antennae await contact. Disturbing them also disturbs the tightness of the opening, resulting in a suction that is as rapid as it is fatal.

Image: Petr Dlouhý

I know, for non-vegetarians like us, this reality is hard to imagine, but let me make you LIVE how the trap works. Close your lips and apply slight negative pressure, as if you were trying to breathe in through your mouth. Using your finger, gently, very lightly, pull on one of your lips. As soon as a tiny hole appears, a surprising suction will rush the air into your mouth!

Once the prey is trapped in this sack that’s become full of water, the mouth seals itself off because of the pressure. Try inflating your cheeks: your lips are compressed and pressed together. You can’t inflate your cheeks and leave your mouth “soft”. It’s impossible for the prey to get out of the way it came in.

The prey is slowly digested, the trap empties itself of its water, which escapes through the walls, preparing without a press for its next victim… Without a press… within 15 to 30 minutes!

But don’t worry! Your stage master is in control of his plants, and you’ll be safe in my plant circus. That is, unless you’re a paramecium, or any other aquatic creature less than a few millimeters long!

Photo: zeebes

On Land and in the Water

While only 20% of the species are fully aquatic, 80% are terrestrial. Don’t look for them in dry environments, however, as bladderworts need moist soil, even flooded soil for a few days a year, to make their traps work. It can therefore be found in marshes and bogs.

In tropical zones, some species have even evolved to live on trees, in the damp forks of branches or mossy crevices of trunks. In fact, although its traps need water or humidity, the plant is so small that it can settle in the most unlikely places and take advantage of a tiny amount of liquid. It’s quite possible that you’ve seen them before without actually seeing them.

Such a voracious and efficient predator, so small and innocent it’s invisible… What a cute little nightmare this plant is, isn’t it?

Photo: megaplumosa

Dear viewers, this concludes our demonstration for today. I know, I know, it’s sad, but our star has to go backstage to resume his hunt.

Please collect your belongings and follow the guides out of the tent to the comments section. For those who wish, photos taken while you were making faces will be available at the exit, and the donation box is on your right.

Come back next week for a brand-new specimen of the Laidback Gardener’s great plant circus!

Audrey Martel is a biologist who graduated from the University of Montreal. After more than ten years in the field of scientific animation, notably for Parks Canada and the Granby Zoo, she joined Nature Conservancy of Canada to take up new challenges in scientific writing. She then moved into marketing and joined Leo Studio. Full of life and always up for a giggle, or the discovery of a new edible plant, she never abandoned her love for nature and writes articles for both Nature sauvage and the Laidback Gardener.

7 comments on “A predator faster than the eye: the bladderwort

  1. Great article. Really looking forward to the series.

  2. Amazing plant. Love the music———very BOMBASTIC.

  3. Lee Ann Smith

    Fantastic article! An intro to a new-to-me plant, scary music and a circus master’s commentary. Bravo, Audrey, looking forward to the rest of the series!

  4. What talent you have for story telling Audrey! I am sure you would have great success convincing many children that Biology is a very exciting career – you surely convinced me…

  5. Joan Murray

    And the music is perfect. We’ll done!

  6. Suzanne Gibson

    You’ve outdone yourself, Audrey! Thanks for the scintillating story!

  7. What an awesome read! I never knew plants could be such sneaky predators. The bladderwort sounds like a tiny, fast trap that’s scarier than most monsters! I love how it catches its prey in a flash. So cool!

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