Mucilage

The plant genera Drosera (sundews), Pinguicula (butterworts), and others have leaves studded with mucilage-secreting glands, and use a "flypaper trap" to capture insects.

[5] The inner bark of the slippery elm (Ulmus rubra), a North American tree species, has long been used as a demulcent and cough medicine, and is still produced commercially for that purpose.

[11][12] The presence of mucilage in seeds affects important ecological processes in some plant species, such as tolerance of water stress, competition via allelopathy, or facilitation of germination through attachment to soil particles.

[16] The amount of mucilage produced per seed has been shown to vary across the distribution range of a species, in relation with local environmental conditions of the populations.

The Sierra Mixe is a tall variety that survives in poor soils without fertilizer in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the mucilage has been shown to support nitrogen fixation through bacteria that thrive in its high-sugar, low-oxygen environment.