The idea of carnivorous plants represents an immediate contradiction, and the fact that some plants can ‘eat meat’ is distinctly unsettling. Unquestionably, the best-known carnivorous plant is the Venus flytrap (first identified in 1759) and the index in this excellent book has 20 entries for dionaea muscipula. Its main diet is crawling creatures such as ants and spiders, and even small lizards, and the rapid action of the highly effective trigger trap is beloved by makers of natural history documentaries.
More than 700 plant species are currently recognised as carnivorous, although the definition has changed over time. A carnivorous plant must have the capacity to attract, trap and kill insects, and then derive nutritional benefit from them. They can be found in nearly every corner of the planet, occupying a unique space within the plant kingdom and the human imagination. There are numerous examples of rampaging homicidal monster plants in horror fiction and cinema. In 1887, a German explorer claimed to have discovered a man-eating tree in Madagascar, but it was Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story The American’s Tale (1880), featuring giant Venus flytraps devouring adult humans, that first popularised the idea of carnivorous plants. Nonetheless, the best-known fictional killer plant is in the title of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951), and the excellent 1962 film version established the triffid as a byword for any large and suspicious horticultural specimen. Triffids could move using their three root-like legs that could be pulled out of the ground. Armed with a poisonous and deadly whip, the triffid was a formidable enemy. The triffids could even communicate with each other using Morse code style clicks. Interestingly, people frequently find the idea of sophisticated communication within the plant and animal worlds more disturbing than any physical threat of violence. Unquestionably, humans are fascinated by plants that can kill and consume their victims, and Wyndham’s book pinpoints the truly outlandish behaviour of real carnivorous plants.
Carnivorous plants is superbly illustrated with botanical drawings, film posters, monochrome prints, and striking colour photographs of an alluring selection of plants. Let us hope the author is right to conclude that “as more of us recognise the beauty and extreme complexity of these carnivorous wonders of nature … the more we will begin to care for them.”
Paul Freestone
OxVeg 