Hungry Plants - Mary Batten [3]
6. Hungry Plants and You
Some of these plants seem pretty scary. But can a meat-eating plant hurt a person?
No. The traps of most carnivorous plants are very small. Even the largest—on the monkey pot pitcher plant—are no bigger than a football. The biggest animal ever found in a monkey pot pitcher plant was a rat.
The rat may have been sick or weak because a healthy rat could easily claw its way out of a pitcher plant.
So there’s nothing for you to worry about. You could crush most carnivorous plants under your foot. But please don’t!
Some of these plants are endangered, just like certain animals. The bogs and wetlands where many of these plants live are being cleared for farms and houses. In other places, pollution from fertilizers and pesticides poisons the soil and kills the plants.
Venus flytraps are now extremely rare. They grow wild in only one place in the entire world—a narrow strip of land just ten miles wide and one hundred miles long on the coasts of North and South Carolina. It is against the law to pick wild Venus flytraps. Poachers who get caught have to pay a large fine.
Just as zoos try to save endangered animals, botanical gardens try to save endangered plants. They collect seeds and grow Venus flytraps, sundews, pitcher plants, and bladderworts.
If you want to see a hungry plant in action, try going to a botanical garden. Many have whole displays of insect-eating plants.
Or you can even try growing a carnivorous plant at home. Just let it catch its own buggy snacks. Some people try to help by feeding their plants hamburger. That’s a mistake. It can kill the plant! All the plant’s energy is used up digesting the hamburger.
Remember—the only kind of fast food these plants eat is the kind that flies.
SNAP!
Text copyright © 2000 by Mary Batten. Illustrations copyright © 2000 by Paul Mirocha. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by Golden Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2000.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Batten, Mary.
Hungry plants / by Mary Batten ; illustrated by Paul Mirocha. — 1st Random House ed.
p. cm. — (Step into reading. A step 4 book)
SUMMARY: Describes the structure and behavior of various carnivorous plants, including the Venus flytrap, sundew, pitcher plant, and bladderwort.
eISBN: 978-0-307-53122-3
1. Carnivorous plants—Juvenile literature. [1. Carnivorous plants.]
I. Mirocha, Paul, ill. II. Title. III. Series: Step into reading. Step 4 book.
QK917 .B38 2003 583’.75—dc21 2002014247
STEP INTO READING, RANDOM HOUSE, and the Random House colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter 1 - Gotcha!
Chapter 2 - Gulp!
Chapter 3 - Slurp!
Chapter 4 - Slip and Slide
Chapter 5 - Sticky Fingers
Chapter 6 - Hungry Plants and You
Copyright