Mysteries remain
There are some basic unanswered questions about carnivorous plants out there. For one: how long have they been around? And it’s tough to get answers, because there’s not really a fossil record cataloging their evolution.
Which is something of a mystery in and of itself. Their wetland habitats are, in theory, “actually pretty conducive to fossils,” said Ellison. Yet, “very curiously,” few have been found. The oldest one documented thus far was found to be about 40 million years old, but carnivory in plants could be more than three times as ancient. All we know for sure is that the trait doesn’t precede the origins of flowering plants entirely, which emerged around 140 million years ago.
Another question that Ellison has: If carnivory has evolved so many times across different plant taxa, and it’s an advantageous trait—why aren’t way more bog plants meat-eaters? “If it’s so easy, why aren’t there so many carnivorous plants?” he asked. Sure, there are over 800—but that’s just a fraction of the more than 400,000 known plant species worldwide.
