What do you mean by "digestive mechanisms?"

• 
  Drosera schizandra
  glands
• Metriocnemus
  in Darlingtonia
• Cyrtopeltis
  on Ibicella
• Setocoris
  on Stylidium

Now we move to the second part of the three-part definition of a carnivorous plant:

A mechanism is present by which prey are degraded into a form that can be assimilated by the plant. The digestive mechanism may be enzymes produced by the plant, decomposition by bacterial activity, or other organisms in a mutualist relationship with the plant (i.e., arthropods as in the cases of Darlingtonia andRoridula).

All this means is that once the prey is captured, the prey must be digested into raw nutrients that the plant can absorb into its tissues. If you think of the trapping attribute as the plant's mouth, the digestion attribute is rather like the functions of a stomach. There are three ways that digestion can be performed:

1. The plant may produce its own digestive enzymes.
2. The plant may have internal parts that are populated with bacteria, mites, larval insects, etc. This is universal for all pitcher plants, even those that produce their own enzymes. Analogous to bacteria in the human gut, these organisms digest the prey for the plant.
3. The plant may have external surfaces upon which live organisms such as predatory/scavenging hemipteran bugs that digest the prey, then produce excrement that can be absorbed by the plant.

You should be a little careful when looking at plants with predatory bugs crawling around on their surface. Every now and then a carnivorous plant enthusiast will report on some possible "new carnivorous plant," and will cite as evidence the fact that they saw a hemipteran crawling on it. Beware! Hemipterans crawl around on a lot of surfaces and sticky plants--that doesn't make the plant carnivorous. It is crucial that the plant has clear adaptations by which it can absorb the nutrients from the hemipteran. If the excrement from the bug just rolls off and goes into the soil to be lost, that ain't carnivory!

Plant of the day - Pinguicula Primuliflora

Perennial herb. The leaves are in basal rosettes that are 4-16 cm broad. The leaves are bright green, oblong, rounded at the tip, 6-9 cm long, 2.0-2.5 cm wide, and covered with short, knob-tipped (sticky and glandular) hairs. The flowers are solitary on leafless stalks (scapes) that become 8-15 cm tall, and have scattered, short, knob-tipped hairs. The flowers are bilaterally symmetrical with the calyx 2-lipped, the upper lip with three distinct lobes and the lower lip with two smaller lobes (see persistent calyx around fruit in illustration). The corolla consists of an expanded portion that is 2.5-3.0 cm wide with five nearly equal lobes that are obovate to nearly round, 8-13 mm long, 10-14 mm wide, and shallowly notched; a narrow tube that is 4-5 mm long; and a narrow, basal, downward extension or spur that is 3-5 mm long. The corolla tube and spur are lemon yellow with prominent brownish-violet veins; the ground color of the expanded portion of the corolla varies from deep to pale bluish-violet with darker veins, with a ring of white at the throat and a mass of yellowish, sometimes reddish-tipped, club-shaped hairs at the center. Some of these hairs, besides occurring along the inner throat, are found on an appendage (palate) that projects obliquely some 3-5 mm from the lower, inner surface of the corolla tube. The two stamens are white; the single ovary has a white style with two unequal lobes. The fruit is a rounded capsule, 5 mm in diameter, with numerous seeds. The seeds are brown, small (0.5-0.7 mm long), somewhat broadened at one end, and honeycomb-surfaced.