66 MORPHOLOGY 



till they are sessile in the middle of the blade. The 

 leaves are green, the tentacles light-red, and the 

 glands at their head dark-red. The terminal flowers 

 open in the morning with a conspicuous milk-white 

 spreading corolla, and are thus very attractive as they 

 render the otherwise inconspicuous plants highly con- 

 spicuous. The glands secrete a viscid transparent 

 liquid which sparkles in the morning sun like dew- 

 drops. The manner in which the leaves catch flies 

 is very similar to that of Drosera Burmanni. Often 

 whole flies or remnants of them are seen lying on the 

 upper surface. The mode of digestion is also similar. 

 Venus's Fly-trap (Dioncea muscipula) (see fig. 184), 

 the well-known insectivorous plant of North America, 

 has a representative in Bengal in the floating weed 

 known by the name of Malacca-jhangi {Aldrovanda 

 vesiculosa). It lives, like the Uiricularia, floating in 

 water, and is devoid of roots. The stem is thin and 

 articulated, and the leaves are in whorls. Each leaf 

 consists of a petiole flattened towards the top, and the 

 lamina is simple, roundish, but notched at the apex, 

 and terminating in bristles. The two halves of the 

 lamina are inclined inwards, forming an angle at the 

 mid-rib, and the two margins are involute and covered 

 with conical points. On the surface of the blade, 

 especially along the mid-rib, there are a number of 

 pointed hairs, not six hairs as in Venus's Fly-trap. 

 Moreover, the blade is studded all over with sessile 

 glands. If minute animal larvae, &c., that swim 

 about in water happen to touch the hairs on the 

 upper surface of the blade, the two halves of the 

 blade immediately close, forming a sort of tem- 

 porary stomach, as it were, and any attempt on the 

 part of the insects to escape from the trap is effectu- 

 ally prevented by the involute margins, which are 



