Episode 5
In Episode 5 of The Seed Pod. Taylor shares stories about the fascinating world of carnivorous plants and native trees in Aotearoa. He speaks fondly of the giants of our forests, as well as the smaller alien-like carnivorous plant adaptations, native lizards, student leadership, environmental perfectionism, and teaching.
We are going to dive deeper into one of his stories in this Learning Pod using a Play - Observe - Discover - Share structure.
Observe
Taylor loves carnivorous plants, and describes them as the “UNO reverse card of plants” as they are so different to trees and non-carnivorous plants we see around us. Carnivorous plants can be fast, brightly coloured, waxy and almost alien-like!
Carnivorous plants are very unique because they live in areas that don’t have many nutrients, and have adapted (changed) to eat animals to gain more nutrients.
To start our learning journey we have created a quick fact sheet based on six different types of carnivorous plants.
Printable Carnivorous Plants Fact Sheet HERE.
There are five main methods carnivorous plants use for trapping their prey.
These include: snap traps, sticky traps, pitfall traps, suction traps and light traps.
Find out more about these trapping techniques and try to think of other things that work in similar ways in our trap type activity.
Discover
Investigate your local nature spaces to discover other parts of nature which have similar features to our funky carnivorous plants!
Find something that…
Feels sticky
Is fast
Has a waxy coat
Traps bugs
Things could fall into
Looks like an alien
Has vibrant colours
Makes no noise
Produces a smell
Use our resource linked below to learn more and to record your local observations!
Printable Scavenger Hunt resource HERE.
Share
Share your stories with us at: theseedpod@outlook.com
This is a place for sharing stories and contributions from our community.
Taylor’s Story:
"When I was little my dad had a sawmill. We spent a lot of time playing there and searching for skinks under the logs.”
- Taylor Davies-Colley
We hope you enjoyed this Learning Pod!
If you have any feedback or photos/stories/art to share please get in touch!
