Carnivorous plants of the Iberian Peninsula

A Greek legend from the 2nd century A.D. told the disturbing story of a group of young sailors who, tired of sailing, arrive at an unknown island of lush vegetation where, to their surprise, it was inhabited by a strange race of beautiful arboreal women. The boys, attracted by their irresistible charms, will end up lying with them, of course, without imagining that they would be devoured without the slightest compassion by their vegetable lovers. This popular myth was told by Luciano de Samosata in his most famous work True story, but it's not the only fable in which human beings are trapped by plant anthropophagi. There are numerous tribal legends both in Africa (The yacht I see), South America (The carnivorous tree) or Southeast Asia (El Duñak), all based on the same assumption: huge carnivorous plants that engulfed human beings.

Insect hunters. The plants that fascinated Darwin

Myths aside, when movies or television tell us about nature, the major documentary producers show lionesses on the African sheet chasing gazelles to death, Krait vipers that swallow rodents or jaguars ambushed in the thick of the jungle awaiting the passage of a trusting tapir, all scenes that release an exhilarating adrenaline rush on the spectator, creating the feeling that the natural world is built of chases and flees, murderous bites or claws and fangs; a vision of classical Victorian naturalism that has come to this day intact.

However, the paths of the food chain are inscrutable and are full of multiple relationships, some of them based on a fabulous universe of small traps of silence and stillness, on drops of rich sticky nectar, viscous hairs and aspirating vesicles, a silence barely broken by the flapping of a naive hexapod —almost always a hymenopter—which, without knowing it, will give up its nitrogen and phosphorus compounds to a fascinating group of plants that have been endowed by evolution with mechanisms for digesting animal tissues; insectivorous plants, commonly called carnivores.

There are about 650 species of insectivorous plants in nature, so called because they feed on invertebrates that they themselves capture, mainly insects, but, in other cases, arachnids or small mollusks. Almost all of them grow in peat bogs and wetlands, where the soil is acidic and poor in assimilable nitrogen; under these conditions, capturing insects is a way of obtaining nitrogen compounds without the need to synthesize them. At the same time, the green leaves of these plants produce carbohydrates, without giving up photosynthesis.

Its shape and appearance is very varied, but the strategy to attract insects is based on offering them irresistible smells and attractive flavors, grouped, depending on the form of capture, into 4 fundamental types:

• Dioneas: equipped with prehensile leaves shaped like 'trap' that close upon contact with the insect, holding them between modified hairs that will act as bars of a cell (Venus flytraps).
• Droseras: they have hairs and/or sticky droplets where the animal is attached (most species in the Iberian Peninsula).
• Nephentes: plants with inner cavities filled with a viscous liquid that retains the animal once it falls inside (jar plants).
• Utricularias: aquatic insectivorous plants with small aspirating vesicles that are activated when mosquito larvae are rubbed, absorbing them with the help of small streams of water into interior chambers where they are digested (aquatic lentibularies).

Nitrogen and phosphorus, the precious treasure

Insectivorous plants thrive mainly on soils that are very poor in nitrogen and phosphorus, so evolution has provided these plant species with a type of enzyme called proteases that are typical of animal biochemistry, especially two: chitinase to obtain nitrogen from the exoskeleton and phosphatase to extract phosphorus from animal tissues. Once the animal is trapped, specialized glands in these plants will secrete the enzymes that will process animal tissues into compounds that can be assimilated by plants. Nitrogen is essential for synthesizing the amino acids that make up proteins and also the nitrogenous bases of DNA. Phosphorus, on the other hand, acts as a “glue” between the nucleic acids of that DNA, being essential for its famous “double helix” structure, two essential elements for living beings that insectivorous plants, given the scarcity of these nutrients in their physical environment, obtain from the animal kingdom, giving a vertiginous turn of socks to the food chain.

Carnivorous plants of the Iberian Peninsula

Perhaps there is the impression that carnivorous plants are exotic species exclusive to the jungles and tropical climates of the planet, but in reality, they are widely spread around the world and, of course, there are also some 16 native species in the Iberian Peninsula. In our country, the largest families are lentibulariaceae (9 species) and droseraceae (7 species), with extensive presence in some species and others very small and endangered, with very few specimens, which thrive from peat bogs and swamps to crystalline high mountain springs, a variety of species, habitats and adaptations that make them true jewels of the plant kingdom and peninsular flora.

Image Name Habitat Distribution

Drosophyllum lusitanicum (Dew pine) Soils that are very rich in nutrients, but poor in iron, called herrizas.

Drosera intermedia (Sun dew) Natural springs and peat bogs starting at an altitude of 750 meters

Drosera rotundifolia (Fox tail) Wetlands and wetlands

Pinguicula vulgaris (Grasilla or Tyranha) Stagnant waters and wetlands

Grasilla Utricularia australis (Water Grass) Wetlands

Pinguicula dertosensis (Violet of water) Edges of streams and springs in mountains and mountains

Pinguicula longifolia

(Long-bladed Greasilla)

Mountains of the Central Pyrenees

Pinguicula mundiCalcareous rocks and travertines Sierra de Alcaraz and Sierra del Calar del Mundo (Albacete)

Pinguicula navadensisWaterlogged high mountain areas

Pinguicula alpina
Waterlogged high mountain areas

Source: Anthos Project. Ministry of Environment

Chema Fernández, Biodiversity