{"id":772467,"date":"2026-09-16T11:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/772467\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T11:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:54:11","slug":"plantwatch-the-insect-eating-alpine-plant-that-proves-darwin-was-right-wild-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/772467\/","title":{"rendered":"Plantwatch: The insect-eating alpine plant that proves Darwin was right | Wild flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1875, Charles Darwin<\/a> predicted that Saxifraga candelabrum, a small alpine plant, could eat insects.<\/p>\n

Its leaves, petals and stems are smothered in tiny, sticky hairs and \u2013 just as the evolutionary biologist suspected<\/a> \u2013 the sweet glue on the hairs can lure and trap midges before digesting them with an enzyme.<\/p>\n

The nitrogen from their remains is absorbed into the plant, which is essential for it to survive in the nutrient-poor soils of the Hengduan mountains in south-west China. The plant was also found to have genes related to those found in carnivorous plants.<\/p>\n

The study findings may point to other killer plants that trap insects with sticky hairs and feed off their remains.<\/p>\n

The leaves of the wild potatoes<\/a> Solanum berthaultii and Solanum polyadenium are covered in sticky hairs and trap aphids and some other small pests, potentially opening the way to combine pest control with plant fertiliser.<\/p>\n

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Other sticky-haired plants may follow a similar approach<\/a>, according to a study in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1875, Charles Darwin predicted that Saxifraga candelabrum, a small alpine plant, could eat insects. Its leaves, petals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-772467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}