The naturalist Mark Catesby thought that the 'pitchers' of the pitcher-plant provided safe housing for insects.
The Queen’s Gallery at the Royal Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh is currently housing an exhibition called ‘Amazing Rare Things’. Some of the paintings are by Mark Catesby, and one in particular illustrates very well the fact that, while these painters were extremely accurate as far as structure is concerned, they often got the biology wrong! He has painted a composition with a frog, a pitcher-plant (of the genus Sarracenia) and some insects. In his monograph ‘Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands’ he describes how the plant provides a “secure retreat” for the insects!
It is true that there are some species of frog that live inside the pitchers of pitcher-plants, but the frog Mark Catesby has painted is not one of these. It is also true that many insects go into these pitchers – but very few come out again! The insectivorous nature of these plants was not discovered until much later, and the assumption that the plant provided safe housing for insects was quite reasonable in the early eighteenth century. This painting, and many others in the exhibition, shows how important it is to study animals in their natural habitat. It is only by observing behaviour that it is possible to understand them.
The Great Hogfish is another beautiful painting by Mark Catesby that features in the exhibition. This one restricts itself to the head of the fish, and shows the incredible detail that these early painter/naturalists were able to capture. One of the problems they all faced, particularly with fish, was the rapid loss of colour once the specimen was dead. Mark Catesby got around this difficulty by having an assistant replace the specimen being painted with a fresh one at regular intervals.
The eighteenth century was a time when Natural History was focussing on structural details and the anatomy of creatures. Classification was based on the way the animal was built. A more modern approach studies physiological details and genetics, and DNA is often considered when taxonomists attempt to work out how species are related to one another. These two approaches are fine if you only want to know which species you are dealing with and how it is related to others, but in order to study the way many different species interact it is necessary to observe creatures in the wild.
In order to understand how living systems work we need to study the ecology of creatures in their natural habitats. (See my blog)
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