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RE: Carnivorous Plants #3: Aquatic Bladderwort
I love bladderwort! I'm Irish so we also have lots of butterworts and sundew on our boggy areas.
I love bladderwort! I'm Irish so we also have lots of butterworts and sundew on our boggy areas.
That is pretty amazing. I am from South Africa and carnivorous plants are hard to find unless you go into the mountainous areas. I have only ever seen sundews in the wild before.
I worked as an ecologist for 6 years in Ireland, so I guess I got to see more bladderwort than the average person who maybe doesn't go rooting about in muddy ditches regularly, unless maybe they're a fisher. They are so cool the way they suck in the little hapless daphnia. I love aquatic systems, it's like those massive NASA shots of the universe where they keep zooming in, at first it's a picture of stars but as you go in to unveils more and more depths and detail to the texture. It's like that in ponds and rivers, at first glance you see water, zoom in, then you see there are some plants there, zoom in, then you see they are different types of plants, and pretty weird ones at that, zoom in, holy shit there's great big predator insects swimming about (e.g. water boat men), zoom in, what the, there's like a herd of daphnia bobbing about below that leaf, they're so tiny! - what the - that plant just ate it! Zoom in, plancton! Mate, have we gone to the electron level of what, plancton are weird!!!
Sorry, bit of flight of fancy there :)
As for butterworts and sundews (there are various types of each), I semi-regularly see them even just walking down country lanes, and they are plentiful in boggy areas. But always a joy to see, so cute, so beautiful! Apparently there are also pitcher plants that were introduced but I've never seen them personally. here's a web page with some pics:
http://www.ipcc.ie/a-to-z-peatlands/carnivorous-plants-killers-in-the-bog/