A cute flower that eats insects: Is it dangerous?

There is nothing new or frightening about the western false asphodel. It’s a small white flower, quite pretty, growing along the Pacific coastline of North America, especially on marshy grounds. It was labelled and described in scientific terms as far back as 1879. But in August 2021, a stunning new discovery was made about it – it eats insects!  

Is this flower dangerous? 
It is not dangerous at all, unless you are a very tiny insect. The false asphodel draws nutrition form insects that get stuck to its stem. But it’s not a ‘hunter’ plant like the carnivorous Venus Fly Catcher or Pitcher Plant. While they clearly thrive on sucking juices from insects stuck to their stem, they do not have any other trapping mechanism or anything attractive to specifically draw insects to them.  

But doesn’t this affect pollination?  
Nature is clever in her designs. Pollination happens through insects. If a plant ate insects, how would it propagate further? But in the case of false asphodel, it looks like the stem is only able to entrap tiny insects such as midges, not honey bees or butterflies involved in pollination, since those are much larger.  

How did the discovery happen?  
The credit goes largely to a research student at the University of Toronto, Canada. Qianshi Lin had noticed dead insects around the false asphodel. The plant has a very sticky stem and he knew stickiness is one of the ways carnivorous plants entrap and consume insects.  

To be sure, Lin tried out an experiment. He captured a batch of fruit flies nitrogen-15 isotopes, so that this nitrogen could be used as a tracker. He then personally went and stuck these flies to stems of this plant. Analysis showed that nitrogen from the dead insects was getting into the plants. In fact, false asphodel was getting more than half of its nitrogen supply from prey.  

What's more, the researchers found out that the sticky hairs on the flower’s stalk produce a digestive enzyme that's known to be used by many carnivorous plants. And finally, when the research team looked at specimens of this plant preserved in herbariums, they found small dead insects stuck to the stems of these plants as well.