112 



HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



A critical and microscopic examination of the contents of the bladders 

 will show, not only that the habits of the Utricularia come nearer to the 

 animal than that of any other of the carnivorous plants, but that the 

 bladders with which they are furnished are, in truth, so many little 

 stomachs, digesting and assimilating animal food. 



Besides containing Bladderworts of the British type, the West Indies 

 possesses some of a type not found in this country. During his stay 

 in those islands, Charles Kingsley came upon certain specimens, grow- 

 ing out of the damp clay, which " were more like in habit to a 

 delicate stalk of flax, or even a bent of grass, upright, leafless or all but 

 leafless, with heads of small blue or yellow flowers, and carrying, in one 

 species, a few very minute bladders about the roots, in another none 

 at all. A strange variation from the normal type of the family," con- 

 tinues the eloquent canon, " yet not so strange, after all, as that of another 



variety in the high mountain woods, which, 

 finding neither ponds to float in nor swamp 

 to root in, has taken to lodging as a para- 

 site among the wet moss on tree-trunks; 

 not so strange, either, as that of yet 

 another, which floats, but in the most un- 

 expected spots namely, in the water which 

 lodges between the leaf-sheaths of the 

 wild Pines [TUlandsia], perched on the tree- 

 boughs, a parasite on parasites * ; and sends 

 out long runners, as it grows, along the 

 boughs, in search of the next wild Pine 

 and its tiny reservoirs." 



We must not quit this subject without 

 offering a few remarks on the Pitcher- 

 plants. If the little bladders of Utricularia, 

 which measure scarcely an eighth of an 

 inch in length, are so many stomachs, 

 digesting and assimilating animal food, 

 what shall we say of the pitchers of 

 Nepenthes and Sarracenia, which fulfil a 

 similar purpose, and occasionally measure, 

 in the case of Nepenthes edivardsiana 

 twenty inches from lid to leaf attachment, 

 and in that of Sarracenia flava upwards 

 of three feet in height ? The pitchers 

 really form part of the leaf structure; those 

 in Nepenthes and Sarracenia are peculiar 



* None of these is parasitic in the botanical use 

 of the term. 



Photo 6y] [S. L. Baslv 



FIG. 146. PITCHER OF Nepenthes. 



The first known of these plants was Nepenthes 



aistillatoria, from Ceylon, which had much 



narrower pitchers than the above. The interior 



of this pitcher is shown in fig. 147. 



