All species › Caryophyllales
Caryophyllales | Caryophyllales
Anjerachtigen | Cariofilales
A large order of over twelve thousand species, including the pinks, amaranths, knotweeds and all cacti. Many of its members share the ability to live on extreme ground: salty, dry, acid or poor. Carnivory fits that pattern, and the largest carnivorous branch in the plant kingdom sits here: the sundews, the Venus flytrap, the tropical pitcher plants and the Iberian dewy pine all belong to one lineage, with snap traps, pitfall traps and flypaper traps side by side.
Families in this order
- Sundew family | Droseraceae216 speciesTwo genera in this guide, catching by movement in two very different ways. The sundews carry stalked glands with a droplet of glue in which prey sticks, after which the tentacles and sometimes the whole leaf bend around it. The Venus flytrap has turned that same leaf into a hinge with trigger hairs and snaps shut in a fraction of a second. Its closest relative is the waterwheel plant, which performs the same snap under water; as an aquatic it falls outside this guide.
- Tropical pitcher plant family | Nepenthaceae174 speciesOne genus, from Madagascar and the Seychelles through South-East Asia to New Guinea and northern Australia, with its centre in Borneo and Sumatra. The pitcher hangs from a tendril that continues the midrib of the leaf; the pitchers at the base of the plant differ from those higher up, often to the point of looking unrelated. The plants are dioecious, so a male and a female plant are needed for seed.
- Dewy pine family | Drosophyllaceae1 speciesOne species, on dry sandy soil and stony slopes in Portugal, south-west Spain and northern Morocco — the only carnivorous plant that does not grow in wet ground. The leaves unroll outwards as they expand, the reverse of almost every other plant, and carry two kinds of gland: stalked ones with glue and sessile ones that digest.