The Perverse Pitcher Plant

I am just a tyro botanist! My knowledge of botany is limited to the size of my next-door neighbour's pea-sized brain. I am willing to learn considering my recent tryst with the subject!

Lulu and I were driving through the streets of our city, through peak-traffic, to reach our office. As is common among us, we resorted to banter, chatter and the like. Moments of driving insanity led to one strange thought: how does the pitcher plant poop? Lulu had not known that there were carnivorous plants. It was her strongest belief, for the longest time (until then of course), that such strange plants belonged to the world of Narnias and Rings. After having cleared her delusions, which took less than 10 seconds (This girl trusts everything I say. I was tempted to pull a fast one but the better me prevailed over the nuttier me.), she proceeded to badger me with 21 questions. Her first question, under different circumstances, would have made me laugh all the way to an asylum. She asked if such trees grew in our streets and in our city.Yes, they did and they're going to devour us all! A skeptical look from her later, she popped the second question that had me gobsmacked! What happens to the undigested remains inside the plant? This called for an expert! We decided to put this question forth to.... Ms. Pitcher-Botanist!

Ms. PB, was stumped. She had been fighting to sustain the climate and had to brush up her botanical roots again. Soon, we were to receive a pdf file. The answers were there! Now, maybe because I am not a science student, maybe because I see things for what they truly are, maybe because I call a spade as such or maybe because everything has a perverse connotation, I did not find the answers I was looking for in the pdf file.

Mercifully, it was lunch time and the office had only a few senior people strewn in. I called Ms. PB and bellowed in a stentorian voice! If truth be told, it happens when one is filled with mirth. When you cannot stifle your HOO-HOOO-HOOs, well, your decibel levels are bound to increase!!

I read the document, random lines, here and there! My, what perverse meanings they all held!

Sample these,
"we demonstrate that the two factors preventing insect attachment to the peristome, i.e., water lubrication and anisotropic surface topography, are effective against different attachment structures of the insect tarsus."

"We recorded the ants’ behavior on the pitcher (i) with an untreated (dry) peristome, (ii) after wetting the peristome surface using an atomizer, (iii) after drying it with dust-free tissue, and (iv) after rewetting it again."

"In one particularly dramatic case, a P. beccarii worker fell back into the fluid 48 times before it finally managed to escape from the pitcher."

"The analysis of friction forces of O. smaragdina ants on the peristome surprisingly revealed that surface anisotropy has hardly any effect on friction forces of the adhesive pads. However, when only claws were present, friction forces were smaller toward the inside of the pitcher but larger toward the outside,..."

Still wondering if we are discussing ants in the pitcher?

And the biggest joke of all? The name of this glorious website that housed the secrets of the Pitcher Plant was called - PNAS!

You think I kid you? Look it up! It is not my intention to vilify the pitcher plant but I am starting to believe it may as well be a strange plant indeed!

Source: http://www.pnas.org/content/101/39/14138.full.pdf

Lulu and Ms. PB, all for a good laugh, eh? ;)