Carnivorous Plants in Quito’s Botanical Gardens

This month, the Quito Botanical Gardens opens the first permanent exhibition of carnivorous plants in the country. The exhibition boasts some 90 species on show from around the world, cultivated especially at a nursery in Sri Lanka and recently imported. The carnivorous plants exhibition adds to the Botanical Gardens’ already significant appeal, with its extensive orchid collections and its beautiful displays of Ecaudorian flora. Another reason to visit!

Carnivorous plants belong to a special group within the plant kingdom. Their strange appearance, diet based on insects and amphibians, and their strategies for catching them, are simply fascinating. In the field of science, they have drawn the attention of scientists from every field, from botanists to naturalists like Charles Darwin.

The past myths and fantasies about these plants are legion. In fact, this group mostly live in swampy wet lands with acidic soils poor in nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), and have simply adapted their feeding system to this particular niche over millennia.

In general the plants catch insects and some frogs, minnows, worms, juvenile rodents, scorpions and even small birds and reptiles – thus their appellation as “carnivorous plants". Generally speaking, the plants have the ability to digest various members of the animal kingdom in order to supplement their nutritional needs.