Tomato, potato is deadly carnivorous'
Dec. 5: Believe it or not, garden vegetables like tomatoes and potatoes, are deadly carnivorous plants that kill insects for "self-fertilisation", British botanists have claimed.
In a first such research, scientists from Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and Queen Mary, University of London, found that these plants capture and kill small insects with sticky hairs on their stems.
They absorb nutrients through their roots when the insects decay and fall on the ground, said the study which appeared in the ‘Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.’
Professor Mark Chase of Kew and Queen Mary said: “The cultivated tomatoes and potatoes still have the hairs. Tomatoes in particular are covered with these sticky hairs. They do trap small insects on a regular basis. They do kill insects.”
It was earlier believed that plants developed the technique in the wild to supplement the nutrients in poor quality soil, but domestic varieties grown in gardens also retain the ability on par with Venus fly trap — the most well known species of carnivorous plants, they said.
The killer plants have been identified as among a host of species that are thought to have been overlooked by botanists and explorers searching the world's remotest regions for carnivorous species, reported ‘The Telegraph’.
“We suspect, in the domesticated varieties they are getting plenty of food through the roots from us so they don't get much benefit from trapping insects but in the wild they could be functioning in the way that could properly be considered carnivorous,” Prof Chase said.
The number of carnivorous plants is thought to have been underestimated by up to 50 per cent and many of them have until now been regarded as among the most benign of plants. Among them are species of petunia, ornamental tobacco plants, some varieties of potatoes and tomatoes, and shepherd's purse, a relative of cabbages.
These researchers said: "We may be surrounded by many more murderous plants than we think. We are accustomed to think of plants as being immobile and harmless, and there is something deeply unnerving about the thought of carnivorous plants.”
The study said that the meat-eating qualities of plants have gone unrecognised because they are missing some of the prime characteristics associated with carnivorous species.
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'Tomato, potato is deadly carnivorous' | Deccan Chronicle
Article also in TIMES OF INDIA PAGE 21 6TH DECEMBER,2009
