Insectivorous plant?

[MereDintofPandiculation]

This is a Nicotiana sylvestris leaf. The little flies are not infesting it, they’re all stuck to the sticky underside of the leaf. I wonder it the plant is able to absorb nutrients from them, making this a half-way house to being a fully carnivorous plant?

I’ve read that teasels get nutrients from the insects that drown in the little wells of water that collect in their inflated leaf bases.

Fascinating! Who knows?

Aww poor plant , I bet if it had a tongue it'd be trying to lick them off a bit like us licking our lips when we miss our mouths 😋 lol

I don't know about nicotiana, but tomatoes do this. They have sticky hairs on their stems, and insects get trapped on them. The insects die, drop off onto the ground under the plant and as they decompose, the tomato plant takes up the nutrients.

Weird or what?

There’s no sign that the trapped insects ever fall off Nicotiana, so it would have to absorb through its leaves.

I use them to catch whitefly

Good idea. Some sort of protection mechanism the plant has evolved by the looks of it, and very effective.

It could always be the nicotine that helps to kill the insects off (if they are that sort of nicotiana, I don't know).

I’ve sort of assumed that all species of Nicotiana produce it to some extent. Google supports this. Apparently many of the Solanaceae contain some nicotine, but Nicotiana has higher levels