. Botany for young people : Part II. How plants behave ; how they move, climb, employ insects to work for them, & c. Botany. HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 41 CHAPTER III. HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 86. This is not a common habit of plants. Insects are fed and allowed to depart unharmed. When captures are made they must sometimes be purely accidental and meaningless ; as in,those species of Silene called Catch-fly, because small flies and other weak insects, sticking fast to a clammy exudation of the calyxes in some species, of a part of the stem in others, are unable to extr
. Botany for young people : Part II. How plants behave ; how they move, climb, employ insects to work for them, & c. Botany. HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 41 CHAPTER III. HOW CERTAIN PLANTS CAPTURE INSECTS. 86. This is not a common habit of plants. Insects are fed and allowed to depart unharmed. When captures are made they must sometimes be purely accidental and meaningless ; as in,those species of Silene called Catch-fly, because small flies and other weak insects, sticking fast to a clammy exudation of the calyxes in some species, of a part of the stem in others, are unable to extricate themselves and so perish. But in certain cases insects are caught in ways so remarkable that we cannot avoid regarding them as contrivances, as geuMvae flytraps. 87. Flower-Flytraps are certainly to be found in some plants of the Orchis Family. One instance is that of Cypripedium or Lady's-Slipper, which, being a contrivance for cross-fertilization, is described in the foregoing chapter (paragraph 62). Here the insect is entrapped for the purpose of securing its services; and the detention is only temporary. If it did not escape from one flower to enter into another, the whole purpose of the contrivance would be defeated. Not so, however, in 88. leaf-Flytraps. These all take the insect's life, — whether with intent or not it may be difiioult to make out. The commonest and the most ambig- uous leaf-flytraps are 89. Such as Pitchers, of which those of our Sarra- cenia or Sidesaddle-flower are most familiar. Fig. 37 represents one leaf, and a section of another, of the species most common in our bogs, especially at the North ; and the vignette title-page, at bottom on the right hand, shows the longer and more tubular pitchers of another species of the Southern States. S. flava, a common yellow-flowered species from Virginia southward, has them so very long and ^llnS^^^LlZi^^^Z^^:^. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digi
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1872
