This is not alarming at all

[james_davis_nicoll]

Deficiency causes rare tropical plant to develop appetite for meat

Comments

[jhetley]

Rare. We want the emphasis on *rare*.

[bunsen_h]

I'm guessing that the "traps" aren't strong enough to hold a large animal unless it's seriously entangled in the vines. But that exuded liquid is probably pretty nasty if it gets on one's skin.

[cyprinella]

There are more than 750 known carnivorous plant species in the world. It's not that fancy.

[viktor_haag]

"Say it with flowers. Send them a triffid."

[roseembolism]

It's triggered by phosphorus deficiency, so the obvious thing to do is splice the appropriate genes into our cereal crops and fruit trees....

[ffutures]

Feed me, Seymour...

James, make sure your garden has plenty of phosphorus or you'll be first into the gaping green maw...

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't there a story about a genetically engineered house tree -- that is, a tree with a large hollow inside living space -- which was supposed be "perfectly safe", but...

There was someone critical of the whole idea who agreed to spend some amount of time in one (a month? half a year?), but who, for some reason, maybe squeamishness, didn't use the toilet facility in the tree (or maybe just didn't use it enough?) (I think he used some building nearby, or where he worked or something). The tree was designed to take nutrients from waste in the toilet. Insufficient nutrients made the tree "hungry". So the guy was using the bed provided by the tree, and one night the tree started (and finished?) converting the bed into a "toilet" to digest the mass of nutrients that was just lying there...

I might be thinking of "Copernick's Rebellion", by Leo A. Frankowski. The cover does mention Tree Houses.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?7984

I don't think I read the whole book, but just that scene was mentioned somewhere.

[(Anonymous)]

The OP actually is not the first example of phenotypic plasticity in such plants.

There's also a pitcher plant that produces light-gathering, non-insect-trapping leaves under one set of conditions, and insect-trapping pitchers in low-nitrogen environments.

Summarized in this figure:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8389183/figure/F3/

Which uses this (full text available) as a reference:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC123661/


And another example of phenotypic variation (also full text):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7893253/