Royal Botanic Gardens showcases rat-eating plants

BY EMMA KEMP It’s not quite the feeding frenzy of The Little Shop of Horrors, but if you’re a rat you should probably be a bit nervous.
A carnivorous plant big enough to devour a mouse or baby rat is among the plethora of rare and exotic carnivorous plants that went on display at the Royal Botanic Gardens over the weekend.
Botanic Gardens Trust Executive Director, Tim Enwisle, said both kids and adults are fascinated by this striking yet slightly gory flora.
‘It’s that slightly gruesome aspect where they catch animals, digest them and eat them which we don’t expect plants to do so it’s sort of turning the tables on what we normally expect,’ Dr Entwisle said.
‘They’re beauty sometimes belies their lethal ability to consume copious amounts of flies, insects and small animals.’
These green flesh-eaters ‘ called pitcher plants ‘ are most common in the south-east Asian region, in places like Borneo and Sumatra. But there are also a few species in Australia and New Caledonia, including the Cephalotus follicularis, or the Albany Pitcher plant, found in Western Australia. Dr Entwisle said about 100 species are already known, but one or two new ones are described each year.
The biggest in the world, the Nepinthis raja comes from Borneo, and boasts a pitcher or trap the size of a football which can easily demolish a rat.
The display housed a few of the Nepinthis’ slightly smaller relatives, which Dr Entwisle said would probably not get a full grown rat in, but could take out a baby one or a small mouse.
And it all fits nicely into the story of evolution, he says. ‘The reason these plants eat animals is because they live in places where there is very little nutrients or food in the soil, and their way of getting all the goodness they need is to get things inside their traps and to eat them.’