There are lots of species of plants that don’t directly rely on photosynthesis. Many are essentially sub-terrestrial parasites, getting their “food” from fungi and sometimes even other plants. It’s seemingly more common in orchids, in part because the family generally already has a strong reliance on fungi as part of their general reproductive strategy.
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FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What’s cool to me about carnivorous plants is that they do need sunlight. A Venus flytrap would die if it had no light. It just also needs to kill things.
Now there is a plant that doesn’t photosynthesize. It’s a species of orchid in Japan. It doesn’t need light because it’s parasitic, getting its nutrients from fungi.
numberfour002@lemmy.world 6 months ago
QuinceDaPence@kbin.social 6 months ago
In the US there is the 'Ghost Flower' or 'Indian Pipe' which is parasitic to fungus which is parasitic to the host tree. It is totally white with no chlorophyll.
It's parasites all the way down.
MightyGalhupo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Huh, neat
gigachad@feddit.de 6 months ago
A small add-on:
Usually, plants get most their nutrients from the soil, most importantly nitrogen (but also P, K and some others).
In some locations, such as swamps or very sandy soils, there is not a lot of nutrients for the plants to get and these “nutrient-poor” soils are usually those where carnivorous plants live. They simply get the nutrients from insects, which consist of yummy proteins made of nitrogen.
So basically one should not really wonder why carnivorous plants need sunlight. They do photosynthesis by taking up CO2 from the air and using energy from the sunlight in order to produce C6H12O6, Glucose. And I guess this is also what the japanese orchid steals from the fungi - sugar.
Of course these processes do not work completely independent from each other. But Glucose, the product of photosynthesis, is not really considered a nutrient, that would be carbon.
ivanafterall@kbin.social 6 months ago
Whoa. It even looks mushroomy. It's like a Last of Us orchid. That's wild.