PITCHER-PLANT FAMILY 89 



PITCHER-PLANT FAMILY (Sarracenmceae) 



Low plants of marshy places. Leaves hollow, trumpet-shaped. 

 Flowers yellow or purple, solitary, on long stalks. Fruit a 

 capsule. 



Pitchee-Plant. Spotted Trumpet-Leae. Indian 

 Dipper (Genus Sarraxenia) 



The most common of this genus in Florida, and the 

 most interesting of all our insect-catching plants, is the 

 spotted trumpet-leaf, S. minor, whose hollow leaves are 

 deadly traps for wandering insects. The clustered leaves 

 are locally abundant in low pinelands in spring and sum- 

 mer, their color ranging through shades of green and 

 yellow, veined with crimson, and tinged with pink above. 

 With the young leaves rise the long-stemmed flowers, with 

 stiff calyx, drooping petals of light yellow, and odd, 

 parasol-like expansion of the style. 



In this species no rain can enter the pitcher, for the tip 

 of the leaf expands as a dome over the opening, covering 

 and partly concealing it. A winged border leading from 

 the ground to this opening is edged with a nectar that 

 lures insects to ascend. The inside of the dome, too, has 

 a sweet secretion, and the trap is not only well baited, it is 

 also well formed to keep its prey. On the back of the 

 leaf, opposite the opening, are white, translucent spots, like 

 windows, through which winged insects, once they have 

 entered, vainly try to escape. The way by which they en- 

 tered being darkened by the overarching dome, or hood, 

 they seek the light, and as flies in a house dash against 

 the windows so these trapped insects try to find a way 

 out through the light spots in the leaf. Exhausted, they 

 fall at last into the base of the leaf, where a fluid is se- 

 creted that soon stupefies them, and in which they perish, 

 yielding in dissolution food to their treacherous host. 



