Don’t let pretty flowers fool you — this plant found on Texas beach craves meat

Sunshine and a little water are all most plants crave, and there’s plenty of both on Texas’ Padre Island, but a specimen recently spotted near the beach has cravings of a different sort.

Members of Padre Island National Seashore staff saw its purple flowers sticking up amid the coastal prairie grass during an April 11 walk, officials said in a social media post. But on closer inspection, it was clear this is no “regular” plant, but a carnivorous sundew.

Those pretty petals crown a thin red stem, stretching up from a base of “red rosette leaves” like shriveled strawberries arranged in a circle, each seed replaced with sticky stalks that produce false drops of dew to lure prey crawling or buzzing nearby.

Tempted by the dew drops, insects finds themselves caught, experts say. The stalks bend toward the struggling prey, further immobilizing them until suffocation or exhaustion finish them off. The plant releases chemicals to break down and digest the bug, absorbing the nutrients through its leaves.

That is how the carnivorous sundew feeds.

“That’s so cool in a totally creepy way!” one person commented on the Padre Island post.

“Good thing they only come in small sizes,” wrote another.

Different species of sundew can be found throughout most of the U.S., generally in bogs or areas where soil is low in nitrogen, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

They can kill a trapped bug in as little as 15 minutes, the NWF says, though digestion can take weeks.

This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 4:23 PM with the headline "Don’t let pretty flowers fool you — this plant found on Texas beach craves meat."