Pitcher plant

The plants themselves are often climbers, accessing the canopy of their habitats using the aforementioned tendrils, although others are found on the ground in forest clearings, or as epiphytes on trees.

The North American genus Sarracenia are the trumpet pitchers, which have a more complex trap than Heliamphora, with an operculum, which prevents excess accumulation of rainwater in most of the species.

The single species in the California genus Darlingtonia is popularly known as the cobra plant, due to its possession of an inflated "lid" with elegant false-exits, and a forked "tongue", which serves to ferry ants and other prey to the entrance of the pitcher.

[citation needed] The purple pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea, is the floral emblem of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Unlike in Nepenthes, in Cephalotus follicularis the petiole is attached to the rear of the upper trap rim rather than to the base of the pitcher.

[citation needed] A few species of bromeliads (Bromeliaceae), such as Brocchinia reducta and Catopsis berteroniana, are known or suspected to be carnivorous.

The walls of the pitfall may be covered with waxy scales, protruding aldehyde crystals, cuticular folds, downward-pointing hairs, or guard-cell-originating lunate cells, to help prevent escape.

This may occur by bacterial action (the bacteria being washed into the pitcher by rainfall), or by digestive enzymes secreted by the plant itself.

[7] Whatever the mechanism of digestion, the prey items are converted into a solution of amino acids, peptides, phosphates, ammonium and urea, from which the plant obtains its mineral nutrition (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus).

It is widely assumed pitfall traps evolved by epiascidiation (infolding of the leaf with the adaxial or upper surface becoming the inside of the pitcher),[10][11] with selection pressure favouring more deeply cupped leaves over evolutionary time.