Still more
interesting is the fact, already noticed, that even among the green
tribes there are to be found many and various lapses from the stated
rules of their feeding. Thus what are we to say of the parasitic
mistletoe, which, while it has grown leaves of its own, and can,
therefore, obtain so much carbon food from the air on its own account,
nevertheless drinks up the sap of the oak or apple which forms its
host, and thus illustrates the spectacle of a green plant feeding like
an animal, on living matter? Or, what may we think of such plants as
the sundew, the Venus' fly trap, the pitcher plants, the side saddle
plants, the butterworts and bladderworts, and others of their kind,
which not only capture insects, often by ingenious and complex lures,
but also digest the animal food thus captured? A sundew thus spreads
out its lure in the shape of its leaf studded with sensitive
tentacles, each capped by a glistening drop of gummy secretion.
Entangled in this secretion, the fly is further fixed to the leaf by
the tentacles which bend over it and inclose it in their fold. Then is
poured out upon the insect's body a digestive acid fluid, and the
substance of the dissolved and digested animal is duly absorbed by the
plant.
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