Despite roots, some plants can really move

Priya Rao, 8, third-grader and class representative to the student council at Townline Elementary School in Vernon Hills, asked, "Do jumping beans really jump?"

It might seem impossible, but some plants can move.

Seeds from the Sebastiana bush wiggle when warmed. Called jumping beans, these seeds are tiny homes for a Cydia moth egg. When it feels warmth from the sun or from your hand, the bean doesn't exactly jump, but it does squirm.

Jumping beans get their motion from moths. Other plants move in other ways.

Some of those movers live among us in the Midwest.

"There are a couple of neat carnivorous plants that occur in the Chicago region that have moving parts," said Andrew Hipp, plant systematist and Herbarium curator at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.

Carnivorous means meat-eating. Locally found plants like sundew and bladderwort depend on tiny insects and other critters for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They each have moving parts that help them to grab and digest a bite.

Sundews, in the genus Drosera, are plants with oblong-shaped leaves spiked with slender hairlike red stalks. "When insects land on their leaves, they are trapped by sticky hairs and the leaves fold slowly inward to trap them. Then they are digested and absorbed by the plant," Hipp said. Two species grow in area wetlands.

Another bog dweller, bladderwort, doesn't just wait around for its meal. "They have little bladders with a trapdoor," Hipp said. "Fine leafy projections at the opening of the bladder set off the plant when an insect floats by. The bladder sucks in the insect and the trapdoor slams shut. Again, the insect is digested and absorbed."

Find out more about local plants on Virtual Herbarium, a Web site assembled by the Morton Arboretum, the Field Museum and the Chicago Botanic Garden, vplants.org.