During a recent trip to the Garo Hills in Meghalaya, I was standing next to a stream along with a group of friends, searching for butterflies.
“Watch out on your left side. Don’t fall over; you might get eaten up!” I said, in jest. My friend had just stumbled against a carnivorous plant. India’s only pitcher plant — Nepenthes khasiana — grows in the north-eastern state of Meghalaya. This plant, believe it or not, devours insects!
This plant has a cylindrical-shaped “pitcher” that grows at the end of its leaf. The pitcher, about six inches long, has a sticky liquid inside it. If an insect falls into the pitcher, it drowns in the liquid. At the bottom of the pitcher are glands, which are used to absorb nutrients from captured insects.
ADVERTISEMENT
The pitcher plant has numerous tricks up its sleeve to attract and capture insects. To begin with, the top of the pitcher has a flap, which is brightly coloured. This flap is used to attract insects, which might believe that the bright red flap is a lovely flower with some tasty nectar for it to feed on. Next, the flap surface and the inner surface of the pitcher are coated with a substance that makes it slippery. Once an insect falls into the pitcher, it has little chance of escaping!
Peering into one of the pitchers, I found numerous dead insects floating in the fluid at the base of the pitcher. A few were still alive; and they were struggling to survive.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Garo tribe, which lives in this area, call the pitcher plant memang-koksi meaning “basket of the devil”! For, once in the “basket”, you cannot escape! The Garo tribe uses the pitcher plant for medicinal purposes. The juices inside the plant are used as ear and eye drops, while the roots are powdered and used to treat skin diseases.
Unfortunately, this plant grows only in a few areas in the Garo, Jaintia and Khasi Hills in Meghalaya, the only places in the world that this threatened species grows in the wild.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature prepares the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which assesses the threats to the world’s plants and animals. The pitcher plant in Meghalaya is listed as “Endangered”, mainly on account of over-exploitation, habitat degradation — human habitation, roads, and coal mining.
I have been seeing the lovely pitcher plant in the Garo Hills for the last five years. And on each of my annual visits, I wonder, will we let this lovely plant live? Or will this be my last sighting of the plant in the wild. Only time will tell...
This series on Conservation and Nature is brought to you by Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group. (www.kalpavriksh.org)