For more than a century, botanists believed that only a small group of plants had evolved to eat insects. But a new study suggests that list may be far from complete. Researchers have confirmed that Saxifraga candelabrum , an alpine flowering plant found in China's high mountains, is a true carnivorous plant—and say many other species previously dismissed as merely "sticky" could possess the same hidden appetite.
The findings, published in Nature Communications , show that Saxifraga candelabrum attracts insects with scent, traps them using sticky glandular hairs, digests them with specialized enzymes and absorbs nutrients from their bodies, fulfilling all the criteria required to classify a plant as carnivorous.
