Sarracenia psittacina, the parrot pitcher plant, is found in boggy low-lying areas of pine forests from Georgia to Louisiana. In the background of this picture, we se the standing water of a bog.
Here we see a typical plant of Sarracenia psittacina, with pine trees in the background. The leaves are like narrow tubes, with a prominent wing on the side facing the center of the plant.
Leaves of the parrot pitcher plant from old (left) to young (right). The leaf, when mature, has a balloon-like hood. In a mature leaf, there is a mouth-like opening in this hood. The younger leaves show that the wing develops early, but the hood increases in size later, as the leaf matures. The younger leaves cannot trap insects, therefore.
A mature leaf of Sarracenia psittacina often has a conspicuously red-purple hood, with the tubular part of the leaf greener closer to the ground. The opening of the hood faces downward.
Here's what an insect sees from below the hood: an opening edged with bright red--an opening that offers tiny drops of nectar.
Not all leaves of the parrot pitcher plant are bright red-purple. This one is somewhat greener and shows the mouth of the hood close to the top of the wing. The veining on the hood is purple, but there is also green, and--more importantly--numerous patches that are translucent, transmitting the sunlight into the interior of the hood. If an insect flies into the hood, it tends to respond by seeing these "window-like" patches as like the sky, and therefore tends to fly upward instead of downward and out of the hood.
A close-up of the transition from the tube to the hood of a leaf of Sarracenia
psittacina. Notice the "window-like" patches that appear
white and fool insects into flying toward them instead of
out of the mouth of the hood. The California pitcher plant,
Darlingtonia, uses the same device to capture insects.
A section down through the hood of a pitcher shows the wonderful trap. You can see the mouth into which an insect might fly, and then, the window-like areas above it that fool the insect into thinking that it is flying toward the sky. An insect often tires before finding the opening and attempts to crawl out. Not a good idea for it! The insect crawls down into the tube. But the really large, spike-like hairs point downwards, so that it can crawl downward easily, but not upward....