Digestion of Plants.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 29

Digestion of Plants.

It is well known that certain plants, of -which the Sundew and the \ onus's F].\-trap are examples, capture insects for food and digest them T>otam.sts h.i-\e discovered that the leaf which captures the prey throws out a digi'sti\e (hud upon the insect, and that this fluid exhibits a composition analogous to that found in the gastric juice of our own stomach Certain other plants capture insects by means of their pitcher-like lilacs, the best-known species of these latter plants belonging to the group known under the name of Nepenthes In Uie pitcher-like leaves the insects are drowned, and their bodies undergo a decomposition. Professor S. H. Vine, m a recent communication to the Laimsden Society, points out that in the Nepenthes' the digestive ferment is not so much like that of the animal stomach as like that found in the pancreas or sweetbread. This latter organ furnishes a fluid which can digest all kinds of food, and one substance in its fluid, trypsin, to wit, acts specially on nitrogenous matter. It is this tryptic principle which is represented in the pitcher plants, and Professor Vine inclines to think that it is- also represented in other insect-eating plants. If this be the case we shall have to regard the .Sundews as also leaning rather to

the side of the sweetbread than to that of the stomach. Another likeness to the higher animal world might perhaps be found in the differences between the mode of feeding seen in the Sundews and in the pitcher plants The former take their food in a fresh state ; the latter, it •is commonly belio\ed, like their food rather 'hi eh '