Wolffia angusta
Along with the other members of the Wolffia family, the Wolffia angusta is the smallest flowering plant to be found anywhere on Earth. They are an aquatic plant and float on the surface of fresh water.
The minute Wolffia is also good to eat, being extremely high in protein; it contains proportionately as much as a soya bean! In many parts of Asia they are a valuable food source.
Wolffias are so tiny that, after being swept up by tornados, they have been found in the melted water of hailstones.
Drosera capensis
Drosera, more commonly called sundews, are an attractive carnivorous plant found on every continent but Antarctica.
By supplementing their diet with digested insects, captured in a gluey mucus coating on their leaves, Drosera are able to grow in soils with relatively few nutrients, hence their wide dispersion.
Hydnora africana
The Hydnora africana is a parasitic plant that lives underground attached to the roots of the Spurge shrub.
When it flowers, a fleshy bloom resembling a snake-head emerges from the ground. Hydnora africana flowers smell like faeces and they use this scent to attract and imprison its main pollinator, the dung beetle. Once the flower is fully opened and the dung beetle has been coated with pollen it is released alive.
Butterwort
The pretty Butterwort is a deceptive little flower. It might look delicate and innocuous, but an extremely effective carnivore.
Look beneath the flowers and you will find sticky, tongue-shaped leaves lying close to the ground. They are slightly wet in appearance, which is in fact a sticky mucus designed to attract and capture insects. Once they are stuck in place, special glands release enzymes and acids to digest the hapless insect where it stands.
Night-blooming cerus
The Night-blooming cerus is actually a species of cacti found in the Sonoran desert in North America, to the South of the better known Mojave desert.
It is also known as a moon flower or lunar flower, and blooms just once or twice a year – usually in late May – before closing again in late morning. As the flowers are a favourite food of the pack rat, which tend to eat them before sunrise, these beautiful flowers are rarely glimpsed.
