↑ White-rimmed pitcher plant (Nepenthes albomarginata) This Indonesian pitcher plant is recognizable by its white ring, which specifically attracts termites.

Sarracenia pitcher plants, found in eastern North America, look like trumpet-shaped flowers. But the “flowers” are modified leaves that form a cup containing digestive enzymes and entrap insects.

Making these “complicated leaves” cost pitcher plants “a lot of metabolic resources,” says Barry Rice, an astrobiologist and botanist at Sierra College in California, who has grown more ...

Carnivorous plants come in a variety of shapes and colors—and it’s often their looks that help them attract their prey. However, these floral tricksters may use a different scene to attract ...

A study suggests that pitcher plants tailor the smells they produce to woo particular kinds of insects. By Veronique Greenwood Pitcher plants supplement their diets with this one strange trick ...

“Plant carnivory is something of a hunt for fertilizer,” Albert says. In a 1992 study, Albert and colleagues discovered that the Asian, Australian and American pitcher plants possess similar features ...

The tropical pitcher plants don't want blood, only insects, and they are nondiscriminating about which ones. Russell Studebaker is a professional horticulturist and garden writer.

Finding the fungus on other carnivorous plants as well hints that “the relationship is a more widespread evolutionary strategy in botanical carnivory” — a match made in insect-gobbling heaven.