Capturing Your Attention with Alluring Carnivorous Plants

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Rick Schwartz.

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Speaker 2: When is the s World?

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Speaker 3: I'm Marco went Welcome to Amazing Wildlife, where we explore unique stories of wildlife from around the world and uncover fascinating animal facts. This podcast is a production of iHeartRadio's Ruy Studio and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance in international nonprofit conservation organization which oversees the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park. All Right, Marco, our last episode was about one of the larger species of carnivorous cat, the lion, And at the end of that show, you had an idea tohead of the zoo for this episode.

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Speaker 4: That's throughout, amigo, and that is because I have fallen in love with a different kind of connivor.

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Speaker 1: My friend.

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Speaker 3: Let me guess, it's got to be some sort of bird of prey, right, Oh uh stork?

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Speaker 1: No, no secretary bird.

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Speaker 4: All super good guesses. Bet believe it or not, Dude, it's not a bird.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'm honestly surprised us not a bird.

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Speaker 3: We haven't done an episode about birds since what seven, when we learned all about the milky stores, which also happened to be carnivores.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, man, And you know that does remind me.

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Speaker 4: Although the species we're talking about today does have the word carnivorous in its name, it tends to be more of an insectivore, with only a few eating things like small mammals, amphibians, you know, things like that.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I know.

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Speaker 3: Now we're heading to the zoo to check out an insect of some sort like oh, those giant spiders or something.

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Speaker 4: Right, that is an awesome guest, Rick, and also good at it for an episode.

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Speaker 2: But that's not it. I know, you know what.

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Speaker 4: We are going to head to the San Diego Zoo to meet up with well, you know, maybe I'm gonna let our guests tell us.

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Speaker 2: So where are you going? Man, Let's go to the zoo.

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Speaker 5: I am Adam Painter, and I am lead horticulturist at the San Diego Zoo.

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Speaker 4: Friend, thank you so much for being there, by the way, you appreciate it. You know, as our listeners out last time, we talked about lines and got into how amazing these carnivores are, and it got us thinking, like, you know, there's some of the carnivores around the world the right night, friend, and you represent the horticulture team, So can you hint.

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Speaker 2: To our listeners right now what are we going to be talking about today?

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Speaker 5: So today we're going to talk about carnivorous plants and definitely some of the coolest plants that we have the San Diego Zoo. I've been lucky enough to work with them for about last eleven years and it's a collection, definitely, but it's a collection that we have found so much passion that our guests have for and so we're really been expanding it and we're excited about the future.

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Speaker 3: Before we get into it, because there is so much just to explain to our audience. We are in the Horticulture team room office where there's a meeting table.

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Speaker 1: Adam has brought in.

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Speaker 3: It looks like at least eight ten plants.

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Speaker 5: Oh more than that.

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Speaker 1: We filled one down on the floor. And this is this is He has brought the jungle into this room.

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Speaker 2: Now there's a venus flight trap staring at it right, it's looking at it.

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Speaker 3: But before we get into all the cool things, I mean, this is gonna be a long episode, folks, So hold on, it's gonna be a lot of fun. Where at the San Diego Zoo when people show up here where can they see some of these carnivorous plants.

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Speaker 5: So if you guys are Heaver heading through Elephant Odyssey, heading towards Polars, or if you're coming across the bridge from Monkey Trails when you get to where main wolves and the Skyfari area is right across from the bathrooms is our carnivo's garden and our pollinator garden, which is ironic that the plants they eat the bugs all right next to the plants that attract the bugs. But it's working well.

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Speaker 1: For our food truck.

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Speaker 2: It's Mother Nature, right.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, if you know the zoo, our botanical collection is throughout the entire campus, but there's very few spots that are just horticulture based spots. And we were so lucky that, gosh, maybe about six years ago Entomology gave us the greenhouse over there that was just sitting blank wow, and it just has expanding into what it is. So now guests can go see our carnivous collection and our pollinator collection and they can stay as long as they want and kind of free flow in and out of that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and you also have a plant tour that you offer once a month.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, so as long as we're here. I'll plug that right now.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: So we do Plant Day. It's the third Friday of every month here at the San Diego Zoo, our Orchid House, which is world classes open to the public from ten to two. Just outside that, we do a plant sale, which some stuff that we've propagated here at the Zoo. So it's a fun way to take home a little piece of the zoo and grow it yourself. And I have some carnivorous plants over the last few plants sales, so that's cool. We do two plant tours bus tours now, which we used to just do one, but it was selling out so much that we do two and I believe that is eleven and twelve, don't hold me to that. And then over at the Carnivorous Garden, we set up a booth, we bring our plants out and we hang out with the guests from about ten to one, answering all the questions and talking about just carnivorous plants.

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Speaker 1: I've seen it.

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Speaker 4: It's an awesome tour. And just remind you check out our website San Diego Zoo dot or. All that information is out there. And to your point out, I mean, we're we're botanical gardens. Right, over a million plants are thriving at the zoo and the Safari Park on.

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Speaker 5: That end, right, one of the most visited botanical gardens in the United States, for sure, And we're an amazing zoo. But we're even more special because of the palette of plant material that's here. I mean, you go to Eo and you feel like you're in the desert, you go down through monkey trails, all of a sudden you're in the jungle. It's a great place. We are lucky, You're totally lucky.

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Speaker 3: Not only that, the topography of the zoo and the climate we have here in San Diego offers so many.

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Speaker 1: Opportunities for these different species around the world to thrive.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so diverse what we can grow here. Oh yeah, we're lucky.

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Speaker 2: I mean I love the succulent garden.

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Speaker 4: I mean trees, the fig trees were talked about, bamboo, which I and Panada. So what's unique about these plants? I mean other plants you know there getting nutrients in other ways? Can you give me in like the basic version for people who don't know what makes carnivorous plants carnivorous?

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Speaker 2: Like the why of it?

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Speaker 5: Right?

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Speaker 1: How do they chase down their friend? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: That tell me that because I'm looking on it right now. I got to be a little careful. Yeah, let me know, friend, what's going on with So.

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Speaker 5: What they have in common is they come from an area where all the nutrient soil has been washed away. So a lot of these plants are bog plants and water has just washed all the nutrients away. So you find them in a lot of peat bogs, very silty. It drains really well, but there's no nutrient values. So over millions of years, these plants have learned ways to evolve and adapt to lure bugs in and then trap them and digest them.

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Speaker 1: And that's where their nutrients come from.

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Speaker 5: And that's where mainly nitrogen, but some of their micronutrients too, but basically nitrogen is the main one. So these plants are all very sensitive in their roots, and so lots of people like to try to grow these at home.

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Speaker 1: They fail.

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Speaker 5: I failed, But it's so easy to not fail. We just have to know the few rules. And the first one is because their roots are so sensitive, we can't give them tap water. Okay, so our water has salt and chlorine and other stuff in it, and so we give them reverse osmosis water. You can give them rain water, but it has to be down to about under one hundred parts per million.

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Speaker 1: Wow. So even just still water, distilled waters will use at home.

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Speaker 5: That's fine. That's fine. So yeah, you bring one home and you just can't give it water off the hose or out of us. The first thing. The second one is they're very touch sensitives. We leave them alone and some of the plants go dormant. So what we find a lot of times is that people get one home and then come the winter time, it goes to sleep and they think their plant dies and they go ahead and throw it away, or they bring it home and they give it water out of the faucet and it slowly poisons it. Of course, the next few months, you know, it just doesn't well. Or if it's the Venus fire trapt, you bring one home, you play with it because you love watching, and it just can't handle that amount of damage and it takes a while to recover.

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Speaker 2: You and I we've talked about these before.

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Speaker 4: You know, we always want to get plants in the conversation, and it was easy to get plants, especially carnivorous plants and some of this guys in the past, right, because these things.

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Speaker 2: Don't you guys remember a little soaperha I was singing, suddenly see you more athough drive down here.

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Speaker 4: But looking at these, I thought it'd be kind of cool to mention how nuances really are, right, I keep referencing the venus fly trap.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, let's start there. I think regeneral public. We've seen these in stores. Most people understand what a venus fly trap looks like. As we're going through these, I want to encourage our audience, So kids, ask your parents Google search with image clicked for these species. A adam mentions them because they all look so beautiful, so different, and the nuances between how they capture their prey. But let's start with the venus flight trap. I think that's probably the one most people can picture in their minds.

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Speaker 1: And we'll go down the row here.

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Speaker 5: Of everything you brought, it's the one that everybody identifies with, right. We've seen it in Mario Brothers. Oh, you've seen movies. It's in cartoons, and everybody always thinks it's a lot bigger.

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Speaker 2: Does it get any bigger?

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Speaker 5: And it's funny because this is how we've started telling our stories with the kids. Kids really identify with kind of rist plants, and they love plants, they eat bucks. But the venus fly trap is definitely the most popular, and so they're found here in the United States, right along the coast between North and South Carolina. There's about one hundred square miles where you'll find these. People always think that you're gonna find these in the middle of the Amazon, you're tracking through the forests down there. Nope, nope, nope. We got them right here in the United States. But it's a small area, so it's a protected area. When I first started, you could go poach venus fly traps and you got a thirty five dollars fine, and it doesn't matter how manywhere in your bag. Now you get caught with one, it's like thirty five hundred dollars.

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Speaker 1: And I just really quick.

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Speaker 3: We've talked about poaching and wildlife trafficking on this show a lot. I love that you're bringing this up because I don't think people realize plants can be poached in trafficked as well.

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Speaker 1: They're part of the whole thing where.

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Speaker 3: It's like taking things from the wild illegally. When they're protected, comes with fines and jail time and everything else.

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Speaker 1: Exactly exactly right.

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Speaker 5: These guys are to penthes the tropical pitch bround to talk about a little bit, and orchids are probably in the top three that you find. So we are a receiving point for border confiscations. So there was a time about four years ago that it must have been either five or ten thousand venus fly traps got stopped at the San Francisco border and it got broken up through a few facilities, but we got a few hundred of them in yeah, and it was basically it wasn't that they were necessarily brought in illegally. They didn't have the right paperwork, right, and so they got stopped. And what you find out is by the time it takes to get the paperwork, the plants would perish. So they just gave it up.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I could see the need, right, I mean, just can we talk about the mechanism because all these I mean I know that they well I don't know want to use hunt, but they entice plants in other ways and maybe we can use I don't know, you guys tell me, right.

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Speaker 5: So it's described call an active trap, and I mean that is it's one that actually moves, and it moves pretty quickly.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 5: So there's a few different things that draw the bugs in. There is a nectar gland that runs right along the rib where those eyelashes are. Okay, Okay, you're gonna see the bright colors. They throw flowers, So those draw them in. But we never have to feed these guys. These guys draw the bugs in on their own. They catch so many bugs.

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Speaker 2: Let's say I'm a fly buddy, right and I'm cruising around.

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Speaker 4: Oh, I see a little flower in there, and I'm gonna crawl one of these little Is it a leaf?

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Speaker 2: Is that I'm looking at the mouth of air?

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Speaker 5: So the trap is a modified leaf. That's going to be true as we talk about the different varieties. Okay, So you go ahead, and you're in there, and you see all that nice bright red and you're all excited about you can smell the nectar gland. You land in there, and then on either side of that trap, and that trap is is already opened up, spring loaded like a bear trap. And on either side of that leaf is three little trigger hairs trigger okay, and so what it wants is you to walk around and hit one of those trigger hairs.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so what if I did?

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Speaker 1: What happened?

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Speaker 5: So you bump that forst trigger hair and it sets off its timer. Yet you have ten seconds to hit the next trigger hair. If you walk around, you stumble, and you hit that next trigger hair, the trap's gonna close. And it's gonna close almost all the way, but not quite all the way. Okay, if you were a tiny little bug, you might be lucky enough to escape. But if you're a big juicy fly, all right, the.

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Speaker 2: Big juicy fly.

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Speaker 5: You're a big juicy fly. Okay, and it closes.

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Speaker 2: Get out.

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Speaker 5: Now you're you're gonna obviously try to get out, and in doing so, you're gonna trip those hairs a third, fourth, fifth time. The venus fly trap needs a live meal. And so what's gonna happen is once those hairs are hit a few more times and then the plant knows I've got a juicy live meal, and so it's gonna close up all the way. It's gonna seel like a ziploc bag. It's gonna fill up with its digestive juices, which are a little bit of cidic, and there's enzymes that are gonna break down all the soft parts of that bug of you.

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Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'm breaking down.

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Speaker 5: Breaking down. It's gonna look like a lima bean for about a week or so, depending on how big you are. Ok And then it's gonna suck up all those juices and now it's got all your soft art, it's liquefied, and then it's going to reopen and what you're gonna see is the exoskeleton, just your bones, and it's gonna wait for the rain or the wind to kind of wash that away. So what's really cool about this is it takes a lot of energy for a plant to move right, Okay and fast?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's the trigger hair, right, So I'm thinking like if a leaf or something, yes, yes.

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Speaker 5: So you know in a rain storm, oh yeah, you know, a couple droplets could get this to close. But it's not gonna seal and fill up with fluid because there's nothing alive moving around in there. So it has a couple of fail safes to make sure it doesn't waste any of that energy because each trap can only close about six times, let's say, and then it's used up all its energy and traps will die, and if you you look at the one on the table, you'll see some of the traps are browning out. So that one's done, it's spent all its energy. So when we buy one and it's got two or three traps on it and you go home, you play with it and it closes, it can only close about five or six times and then it's done. So it's always producing more and more traps. So what it does is remember how I said two trigger hairs got hit and it closed almost all the way. It stays like that for twenty four hours before it reopens. It's not gonna let something mess with it and waste of it. So it's like I said, they're reopen and the close boom, boom boom, So it waits till tomorrow. Darwin has said that this is the smartest plant on planet Earth. It can count to ten, and it can tell time, and it's pretty accurate on the ten second rule and the twenty four hour They've done studies.

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Speaker 4: And dude, we're just talking about one so far, right, the first one and the mechanism, right, I'm looking at the others, and you mentioned this is one specifically in the United States.

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Speaker 2: But we've talked about these affo A. I was gonna say, there's a couple others.

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Speaker 4: Right, one is my favorite, the sundew, But yeah, there's two others we can talk about, right, the American picture in the sun.

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Speaker 2: Do can you describe to us the difference in what they do?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, So we have another picture plant. It's the North American picture plant. Those guys are found from Florida all the way up the eastern seaboard almost into Annada. Yeah, exactly, and the varieties change. These are vase like shaped leaves and again it's the trap is the modified leaf. Everything from two inches tall to three feet tall. These pictures feet and it's like a big two it's like an open face shapes. Some of them have lids. The lids don't close, but it helps keep the rain water from filling up the vase where it would fall over and not be successful and trapping. We have some on the West coast. It's called the Darlingtonia that's found northern California and up in those parts.

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Speaker 3: One observation I want to make real quick for our audience too, that I think is fascinating about picture plants is you said they're the vase shape.

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Speaker 1: But to actually look at it and think this is a leaf.

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Speaker 3: And for the most part we think leaves. We think flat and either grass like like the bamboo leaf, or broad like a maple leaf, or you know, even pine.

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Speaker 1: Trees with their needles. That's a type of leaf. But to think that this leaf is tubular.

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Speaker 3: To a certain extent, and then as you mentioned, some sort of extra piece it looks like it could be a lid or a flap. It's really just amazing to think how these plants came about.

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Speaker 1: This is a leaf structure.

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Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, And they vary so much. And beautiful colors.

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Speaker 2: I say, I fum a fly and I see this beautiful color? Is it the color I'm enticed at?

00:16:24
Speaker 1: Or what? Also?

00:16:25
Speaker 5: And and bugsy and ultra violet. So some of these plants are like a glowing me onside dinner. You can see the one that I have kind of on the floor there there's a leucidendrin the type, Yeah, exactly. So these guys are living in the bog along with venus fly traps and sundews and basically there are passive traps. So they sit there looking beautiful. Where's flowers involved? It's been said that some varieties of saracenia, so the North America pitch plant is called. If the kids want to look this up, a field of sarasenias would smell like cat urine, smell like the exactly. So I always tell the kids it's not always the good smells. The bus in. Yeah, so there's the odor that goes with them. They also have a nectar gland underneath their lid that the bugs are interested in. Some of the varieties have a little powder along the lip, and the lip is very slippery. So between that and all the flowers and smells, the bugs are drawn in. They see that neon sign, and a bug, you know, is after that nectar gland lands on the lip, and the powder that's on there is almost like a neurotoxin makes them a little woozy, and it's very slippery, like we said, and they fall in. Now, the first third of that picture is very slippery shingles like you'd find on your roof overlapping. Yeah, and so as the bug is trying to crawl out, those are kind of like just the roof is falling in on them. Yeah, So they fall a little further and then they're going to encounter these downward fears hairs that keep them from being able to crawl back out, and they just sit there until they die and then the next bug lands on top of them.

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Speaker 2: What a beautiful story. It's like the ultimate slip inside.

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Speaker 5: And they slowly decompose and break down. And you've seen we've dissected these before and so if you open one up, they can just be riddled with bugs. And so these guys go dormant in the winter. So in the winter you're going to see these tiny, little, very flat leaf looking things that were popping out of the ground. And then they wake up in the spring and they throw the flower. That is amazing. Their flowers are so crazy. It looks like an upside down umbrella. But what's great about is is it has such a small window for pollinating. It doesn't want to trap the bees that it needs for parping. So here it is it's late winter, early spring, it wakes up, it throws its flowers, and it lets these jump into these upside down umbrellas. So if the pollen falls, it falls into the umbrella and they roll around in it and they jump around and it makes the pollination process really efficient. Yeah, okay, and then the flowers basically after they've been pollinated, they lift upright and they drop their seats around and they go away. And then this produces pictures, and so I would say by late March or starting to see varieties of the picture. And then it traps bugs those bees. It doesn't care. It eats bees all year long except for during pollination.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:19:32
Speaker 2: I can just see the story that one beingamed Bill.

00:19:34
Speaker 4: Hey, Tad, do you remember that delicious little flower? Let's go check it out.

00:19:37
Speaker 3: Late you had mentioned with the venus fly trap that there's some enzymes on liquid that goes in once they have sealed up around their prey. Is there anything at the bottom of the picture plant?

00:19:47
Speaker 5: Okay, yes, And that's the difference between these guys in the tropical There is fluid in the bottom of these guys in the American a ton though. I open them up, you'll get a huge oplets that you But it is damp and moist in there, and these bugs are basically breaking down and it just all funnels down. Like I said, it's very shaped, so all the nutrients just work their way down.

00:20:11
Speaker 1: And the plants just sucks that back.

00:20:12
Speaker 5: And this guy is going to trap from late March all the way until about November and maybe in December, and we usually cut them down at Super Bowl. That's my marker for Super Bowl happens. I go and cut all the pictures down because here in San Diego we don't have much of a winter, so I have to fake it. And so by that I just cut everything down.

00:20:35
Speaker 2: I mean it makes sense, right, species specific nuances.

00:20:38
Speaker 5: And then we open up the pictures for summer camps and we dissect them and see what kind of bugs we got in.

00:20:43
Speaker 3: Okay, so we've got flight frap. We got the picture plants next one of the center of the table. This is my favorite, Marco's favorite, and my daughter's favorite.

00:20:50
Speaker 1: Yes, the beautiful sun dew.

00:20:51
Speaker 3: Can you just describe it to those who don't know what a sundew looks like?

00:20:55
Speaker 5: So a sundew, how do you describe these tendrils?

00:20:59
Speaker 1: Right?

00:20:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, long little tendrils that glisten in the sun like and if you hold it up to the light, you just it's beaming. It looks sweet, It looks like something you would want to taste if you were a bug. They have beautiful flowers and they have probably the worst.

00:21:21
Speaker 2: A nice hug of death.

00:21:22
Speaker 3: You can.

00:21:24
Speaker 1: Sound as nice as you watch.

00:21:25
Speaker 5: It's a horrible way to go. So these plants are very sticky, and that glistening dew is basically inadhesive. And so again I relate.

00:21:40
Speaker 1: I see it.

00:21:40
Speaker 2: It's so sparkly, I see the light. You says, I'm gonna fly towards it. So I just landed. It's so sticky. What's what's going on now?

00:21:49
Speaker 5: So it's that glistening dew, like we said, is an adhesive, okay. And if you were to blow your nose into your hands okay, and you were to rub your fingers in it, that's about how sticky this guy is. So you're not it's not super glue. You're not stuck there for the rest of your life. But if you're a bug, stuck on that right, But it's just sticky enough to get on your wings and to clog your breathing ducks. And so this plant is touched sensitive, and as soon as a bug lands on it, it knows it, it feels it. If you look really close, there's tiny little hairs and those hairs are going to slowly start to lay down on the bug. And as the bug fights. The more the more mucous, the secrete like a spider web. Almost stick here, stick here. So I brought this guy in. This is philiformous and it is riddled with bugs. If you guys take a close look, and there's a moth. We did a talk with summer camp kids last week and I had a couple of bees that were stucking and for the kids to actually see the bees were still still fighting a little bit. There are versions of it where the will slowly start to curl over a bug, and if the kids look those up on YouTube, there's great sundew videos. The botanical name is dross and they come in all different shapes and sizes. They are found on every content except for antartic. Every content, and we always joke they are the weed of the carnivorous family. They pop up in everything.

00:23:22
Speaker 3: I was going to say, it looks like there's some.

00:23:25
Speaker 5: Some in there we don't that just is on its own. That's some of the ones that we do at our plant sale. This is a really easy one to grow. So you put it in a little dish and to still water. Stick it in your kitchen window. No more gnats and more fruits, hopefully, you don't have too many mosquitoes. And then as soon as you don't see any more bugs, you go ahead and put it outside in the full sun and you just never let it dry out. Remember these coming from bogs or swamps, and they want to stay wet. So as long as you have a little bit of water in a small little tray and you just keep it wet that way, you're going to be gone for a few weeks. Just put it in a deeper tray.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, just.

00:24:07
Speaker 4: So many different mechanisms for hunting, right, I mean, we got to be in this fly trap, the mouth clamping, those jaws.

00:24:17
Speaker 5: It's a crazy type of hunting because you want what I've got, you know what I mean, I don't have to go find you. You come to me. When we do our plant talks third Friday, all of a sudden, you notice there's just bugs are everywhere. Like I bring the plants out on the table, and over the course the next few hours, the bugs showing.

00:24:35
Speaker 1: Plants are soliciting that attention.

00:24:38
Speaker 4: There's another one I wanted to highlight really quick because we talked about the picture plants, right, But there's asiatic species, right that have a different variation or they're a little higher up, but still the same idea.

00:24:48
Speaker 5: It's a different species. They're called the penthees pentes, yes, and so it's a tropical picture plant. These guys are more epiphytic, so.

00:24:58
Speaker 1: It's not an animal, I don't know.

00:25:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, so these guys more live up in the crotches of trees. Oh faces on the side that are terrestrial, which means they live in the soil. So these guys don't have as much soil around their roots, and they will kind of cling to a tree and you can see some of the ones I brought. You can see how they would out yea and they.

00:25:21
Speaker 1: Would just edge of the table even.

00:25:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a good display over a tiger trail, correct, Like there's a new habitat there, so you're staring at a really cool orange or black predator. But then if you turn around and you get to see a different predator out there.

00:25:34
Speaker 5: So they have very niche climate zones that they come from. And so we have a whole bunch over by the Pollinator Garden. But we have some few very rare species that we were lucky enough to get donated to us in the last couple of years because our program has been doing so well, and those plants needed a lot more heat and a lot more humidity and so over by tigers. Yeah, we took over this nice little display and Rich takes care of our collection. Rich Riley, he's doing an amazing job. He set that all up and it's great. So another little spot of just horticulture over there. Yeah, a little gym.

00:26:11
Speaker 2: Tell me if I'm wrong, friend.

00:26:12
Speaker 4: But some of these species, the picture plant in particular, that instead of like trying to lure insects in and processing that with the en zemes and whatnot, there are some that are actually trying to encourage certain bat species and frogs right to sleep into the picture because you know, they eat something and something comes out right.

00:26:29
Speaker 5: And there's lots of insects and animals that have some type of symbiotic relationship where they they help each other out basically. So going back to the nepenthes, because he has a couple cool stories, but there's other ones that they do across the board. So just like the American picture plant, right, we have these amazing pictures that are the modified leaves and they come in beautiful shapes, beautiful look at what I see. I wish our guests could see.

00:27:00
Speaker 1: Gotta come to we're seeing.

00:27:01
Speaker 5: They come in all shapes and sizes, all different colors, from pictures that are just a couple inches tall to about the size of a two liter bottle. And so spiders love to lay a little web across the opening, maybe catch something that.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: That might go in.

00:27:18
Speaker 5: Spiders also drop a line go down there, steal side the back. These pictures actually have more of a reservoir of fluid, digestive fluid at the bottom of and before I said, if we opened one up, you get a few droplets. It's very moist in there. These guys actually if you poured it into your hand, you'd have several ounces of fluid in there. And so again it's acidic. There's enzymes, there's bacteria that live in there and help break down the bugs that fall in. They work the same way. They've got that nectar gland. There is a tree shrew in Borneo that loves to sit on the lip of the picture. He licks the nectar gland. It upsets his tummy. He goes to the bathroom in the picture. Breakfast helps fertilize, so that actually benefits the plant. Yeah right, yeah, And then they're like you're saying, they're been known to have bats, yeahs from there. Yeah, I haven't heard that one, but I'm sure.

00:28:13
Speaker 2: It's wild, right, Yeah.

00:28:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, there are moss that roosts in there, and then there's you know, little frogs and lizards that go in there thinking that they want to get some of that soup and then find that they can't get out. And so I've even found lizards in some of our pictures over the years.

00:28:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, folks, I mean you hear it right, not just great whites.

00:28:32
Speaker 2: Not just lions tying carnivorous plants.

00:28:36
Speaker 3: We're getting ready to wrap up here, but I want to just point out so our audience, if you don't get a chance to look somebody's up online the first set of North American picture plants. This is like a vase sitting on the ground, a cluster of vases sitting on the ground open up.

00:28:47
Speaker 1: Whereas more of the asiatic species.

00:28:49
Speaker 3: They remind me almost of a spider plant in that not the leaf structure necessarily, but you have these strands or shoots that come off and the pictures hanging down below that. So you'd mentioned they're up in trees around rock out croppings. So these things are hanging down low. They're really trying to cover as much space as possible to get out.

00:29:04
Speaker 5: There have a very orchid kind of low and I brought one that is kind of cool. It's a species that there's only a few in the world and we've got one. And it is a carnivorous vermeiliad. It's in the pineapple family and it does but its pineapple family, well, pineapples are in the vermilion.

00:29:26
Speaker 1: I learned something.

00:29:28
Speaker 5: And if you guys know vermilions, they have a shape where they collect water themselves, and this one collects water and leaf material and some bugs and it breaks it down and I have that on the chair over there. So that was a cool one.

00:29:42
Speaker 3: Well, there's one other one you brought into that you said is similar to a related.

00:29:46
Speaker 5: To in its own family. Don't works like the sundew that it's a sticky trap and it's a pinglaris and we call them pings and they live in rocks in these little spots, but all the surfaces of of them are sticky, not super sticky, just a little bit sticky. We call them the velcrow plant. And so a little net lands on it and can't move, and it just dissolves the net where it stands.

00:30:11
Speaker 1: Here's what I want to audience to know. He's bringing in all these these picture.

00:30:14
Speaker 3: Plants and the sundewes and the venus fly taps, and these are all like, yeah, these are clearly there's traps, so there's a way for a bug to get eaten.

00:30:21
Speaker 1: He brings us when it and there's like three little not much.

00:30:24
Speaker 3: Bigger than a small rose as far as diameter, and they're.

00:30:28
Speaker 1: Flat to the rock. They look just like little flat petals. Oh it's pretty. But I'm like, I thought it was a succulent when I walked in there.

00:30:35
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe it grows something later bugs And he's like, no, it's like a velcrow plant.

00:30:40
Speaker 1: Never heard of that. It's so cool.

00:30:42
Speaker 3: Again, the diversity within the carnivorous plants.

00:30:45
Speaker 1: I think we all initially think venus fly.

00:30:47
Speaker 3: Fap, but they get all the other diversity of how plants have figured out to find nutrients and spaces that otherwise not dense with nutrients for them.

00:30:55
Speaker 5: There is carnivorous moss and they actually carnivorous moss. Yeah, and it eats them tooads that are in the soil so they're eating stuff below the surface of the soil. There is one called a bladderword that lives in the water, and this is a cool one if kids ever want to look up a Yeah. So it is basically almost like a penthes in shape and it has little trigger hairs like a venus fly trap, and a little little bug underwater bug hits that hair and it works like a vacuum. It just opens up about and sucks it in.

00:31:28
Speaker 2: It's like a plant a lot, right.

00:31:32
Speaker 5: We just haven't had a way where we can incorporate them into our collection. We would need some fish tanks, yeah tell me, but yeah, and then you know, there's other plants that we don't even think of. Are you guys familiar with the birdcatcher plant? The personia? So we have them throughout the zoo. A beautiful foliage. It's kind of a white and clearly aviary though, and when they flower, we try to collect the flowers because we don't want any of our native birds. But it's crazy about it is a very sticky, sticky flower, and our bird keepers love our birds so much that throw like at and get those flowers out of it. But it's not so much that a bird sticks to the flower as What happens is these flowers drop and they line the jungle bed with this very sticky material. A baby bird falls out of its nest lands in there and gets this all over him and basically dies. But guess we die at the base of base of the plant and decomposes. So this plant plant birds, it's breaking down and it's going into the soil and it's fertilizing.

00:32:34
Speaker 2: I've never heard of this one before.

00:32:36
Speaker 5: That's incredible. We don't consider it necessarily your traditional carnivor, but.

00:32:42
Speaker 1: That work. Yeah, exactly whoa I know?

00:32:48
Speaker 2: Can we do another episode? So much?

00:32:50
Speaker 5: I know?

00:32:51
Speaker 2: And oh there's so much to talk about you.

00:32:53
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean, I'm a horticulturist. I've been working with plants since I was eighteen years old. But I am so lucky that I get to work here, you know what I mean, Like I could be I could be your gardener, mowing and your lawn. But I'm lucky enough that I get to work with some of the most amazing plants in the world and some of the most amazing people. And I get to talk to you guys. Sweet.

00:33:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, this is great, Adam.

00:33:19
Speaker 3: I think seriously, might have to revisit place yeah next season or something.

00:33:24
Speaker 2: But this episode maybe too.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: This has been so much information. Thank you so much, appreciate your time.

00:33:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can come visit me on third Friday of the month. You got to see what was on the table?

00:33:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yes, thanks again, thank.

00:33:39
Speaker 1: You, Marco.

00:33:41
Speaker 3: We absolutely must go back and talk to Adam next season. That was fascinating.

00:33:46
Speaker 2: I know what you mean.

00:33:48
Speaker 4: I mean, I thought I already knew a lot about carnivorous plants, but now I feel like I have so much more to learn. Like you know, I had no idea there was a plant out there that can actually trap the words so they could tea at the base of the plant and become fertilizer.

00:34:03
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me?

00:34:03
Speaker 1: Seriously? Mind blowing?

00:34:05
Speaker 3: And what about the bladder work these little underwater carnivorous plants. I mean always thot carnivorous plants eight you know, flying or terrestrial insects of some sort. I had no idea there are aquatic ones that eight little underwater critters too.

00:34:17
Speaker 4: Okay, Okay, I know we're having fun geeking out about this.

00:34:21
Speaker 1: This is the last one, I promise, I can.

00:34:22
Speaker 4: Promise the fact that the venus flytrap is so precise with its timing and can actually tell the difference between say a rain drop or a leaf falling into it versus an insect.

00:34:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I mean plants technically don't have a brain and nervous system like animals. But the venus fly trap does make me wonder if we haven't maybe given plants enough credit when it comes to the whole brains department hundred percent.

00:34:45
Speaker 4: And it's funny, you know, I was just thinking out hard of culture and taking care of all these diverse plants is as unique as all the different mammal, bird, and reptile care specialists. You know, there were so many nuances and specialties within each animal group. It feels like it's the same way for these amazing plants too.

00:35:03
Speaker 1: Oh, I know exactly what you mean, Marco.

00:35:04
Speaker 3: There are so many different things people do when it comes to plant and wildlifecare. For example, did you know there are wildlifecare specialists that work night shifts?

00:35:11
Speaker 2: You know what? I didn't know that.

00:35:13
Speaker 4: Of course, although most people might think it's just to take care of nocturnal animals, there's actually a lot more to it than that.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: Wait, a minute.

00:35:20
Speaker 3: Are you saying there's a topic about wildlife care that is unique and most people don't know about it.

00:35:26
Speaker 4: I am sir, and I bet our audience would enjoy learning more about it.

00:35:30
Speaker 1: Well, there it is.

00:35:31
Speaker 3: Be sure to subscribe and tune into our next episode, in which we learn more about the nocturnal behavior of the nighttime Wildlifecare specialist team.

00:35:42
Speaker 1: I'm Marco Went and I'm Richwartz. Thanks for listening.

00:35:50
Speaker 3: For more information about the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park, go to SDZWA dot org. Amazing Wildlife is a production of iHeartRadio. Our supervising producers are Nikkia Swinton and Dylan Fagan, and our sound designers are Sierra Spreen and Matt Russell. For more shows from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.