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Author Topic: The Fabulous Plant Kingdom  (Read 3686 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: The Fabulous Plant Kingdom
« Reply #15 on: July 16, 2017, 06:12:22 pm »
This looks like a plant you don’t want to mess with — especially if you’re an insect. Image credits: Monika

Agelbert NOTE: The Venus Flytrap is one of those irreducibly complex life forms that only survives when ALL of its subsystems are working perfectly AND the life forms it eats are available. This is a plant that eats mostly bugs, but isn't particular as to what it attempts to digest inside its exposed stomachs.  ;D

The evolutionist true believers never seem to be concerned with the alleged "fact" that the prey of this plant apparently "evolved" millions, if not billions, of years AFTER the plant did.

If these worshipers of Darwin's atheist fantasies had an ounce of integrity, they would, either question evolution as a viable scientific theory, or question the even more thorny issue for them of the possibility that the "millions and millions of years" thing doesn't fit with the evidence.

But, they are not prone to questioning their pet theories. no matter how irrational.  


Enjoy he article, but always take the "evolution" word, that seems to be mandatory in most science articles (included to avoid being attacked for "heresy" against Holy Darwin  ;)), with a hefty grain of salt.   



Plant Files: The Venus Flytrap

LAST UPDATED ON JULY 5TH, 2017 AT 8:37 PM BY MIHAI ANDREI

The carnivorous Venus flytrap is one of the most interesting and bizarre plants in the world. It evolved specifically to trap and digest insects, and we only recently learned just how it does that. Let’s have a look.

Contents

1 What is the Venus flytrap
2 The trap
3 Buy and grow a Venus flytrap
4 Venus flytrap facts


What is the Venus flytrap

The Venus flytrap, or Dionaea muscipula, is a plant native to the subtropical wetlands on the East Coast of the United States. Like other carnivorous plants, it developed this way because it grows in nutrient-poor soil and can’t support itself through photosynthesis alone. It needed to complement its diet, so it turned predatory.   

The plant has one leaf which basically turned into a trap, with two jaws that can shut quickly and strongly, rendering any insect unfortunate enough to wander into the trap unable to exit. The insects are then slowly digested and absorbed by the plant, which incredibly , manages to do all this without a nervous system, muscles, or a stomach! More on that a bit later.

The plant itself is quite small, so there’s no risk of damage to larger creatures, though it looks quite intimidating in its own right. The flytrap can exhibit several variations in shape and size, but all of them look quite similarly relative to each other. If you kneel next to one or have a close look, you’ll see a circular arrangement of four to seven flat green stalks. These stalks do perform photosynthesis, but that’s not enough to get the plant going. Even with the extra digested insects, the plant grows very slowly.

The trap
The trap! Notice the small, dark hairs on the inside? That’s where all the magic happens. Image credits: Noah Elhardt.

Without a doubt, the most interesting part about the Venus flytrap is the trap itself. The trap is a modified leaf: a hinged midrib, secreting sap to attract insects. Glands on the leaf also secret enzymes which help digest and absorb nutrients from the insects. The rims of each lobe flair out in a curved row of spikes to prevent the prey from escaping. Interestingly, the spikes are designed in such a way that they permit the escape of smaller prey. This is likely because there’s not enough incentive to eat very small insects — there’s just not enough “meat” to them. In fact, it’s been often documented that the plant actually releases smaller insects. Since trapping and digesting are quite taxing processes, it probably doesn’t want to invest all that effort if the reward is not big enough.

When the plant senses an insect, it shuts down in less than 0.1 seconds — but how does it shut down so fast, and how does it sense insects in the first place?

The two questions are actually interconnected. The inside of the trap is lined with a few sensitive hairs, with a bit of distance between them. If you only touch one of them, like a raindrop would do, for instance, nothing happens. Even if you touch several of them but only once (and that’s once every 20 seconds), nothing happens. You need to touch several of them more than once in 20 seconds (as a scurrying insect would) to shut the trap.

Agelbert NOTE: Read the full interesting article at the link below. I apologize for intruding upon your reading at this point, but, as you noticed  ;D, I increased the font size on that "20 second" plant reaction time frame mentioned above so you could ponder, at your leisure, the LACK of discussion in the article as to how such a precise bit of selective GROUP timing (several hairs have to be stimulated simultaneously for the thing to work) could "evolve" in one generation of a previously non-functional predatory mechanism (to avoid the entire species going extinct from natural selection), never mind a few million years.

This plant WILL NOT SURVIVE without PRECISE timing DESIGNED to capture insects BASED on the anatomy, physiology AND BEHAVIOR under stress, of said insects. The evolutionary true believers just never want to GO where the science ACTUALLY leads them.

THIS IS WHY, NO MATTER HOW MUCH PROOF YOU PRESENT TO THEM, THEY WILL NOT ACCEPT THAT THEY ARE WRONG:


But at least they are honest about describing what they actually know about the biochemistry of this plant's predatory behavior. We must be thankful for small favors. 8)

Quote
So, after an insect touches the trap twice in less than 20 seconds, sensitive hairs on the inside send an electric signal changing cellular water pressure in the lobes, shutting down the trap. The plant is then digested, and the trap only opens to reveal a digested exoskeleton.


http://www.zmescience.com/science/venus-flytrap/


Quote
“This plant, commonly called Venus’ fly-trap, is one of the most wonderful in the world.”  Darwin in Insectivorous Plants(1875)
Darwin loved predators and their "freedom" (in his atheistic morality free world view) to DO what they DO, which despite much modern Darwin apologist yammering to the contrary, was what his "survival of the fittest" meme was REALLY all about  .

Darwin had it backwards. Apex predators have since been recognized to be the LEAST adaptable of species because they depend on prey species populations that need to be several times as numerous (and adaptable) as the predators. The apex predators are the FIRST to die off (as evidenced by the most impacted species in this Sixth Mass Extinction) when resources are lacking, making an appropriate and well deserved mockery of Darwin's theory. 

It is ironic that he admired a plant that is a testament to finely tuned, DESIGNED complexity that only works when prey, TOTALLY unrelated to the plant's biology, is available. The amazing BALONEY about  a PLANT, "deciding" to turn bug predator because, uh, the "soil was poor", is an excellent example of fairy tales pushed as "science" by the Darwinian true believers.    

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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