Annual and perennial carnivorous herbs, sometimes free-floating or epiphytic. Leaves variable, often simple, in basal rosettes and covered with glandular hairs (Pinguicula) or modified in part to form animal-trapping bladders (Utricularia); stipules absent. Flowers bisexual, 2-lipped, solitary and terminal or in bracted clusters, the lower lip often spurred. Sepals 4-5, united. Petals 5, united to form a basal tube. Stamens 2, attached in the petal tube. Ovary superior. Carpels 2, united but forming 1 chamber with free-central ovule placentation. Fruit a dehiscent capsule with 2 or 4 valves.
This family is closely related to the Scrophulariaceae but is carnivorous and has ovaries with free-central placentation.
Utricularia, Bladderwort, is occasionally grown, but mostly by carnivorous plant enthusiasts.
The genus is characterised by the small bladders with a trapping mechanism for small animals; it has become weedy in rice fields.
Plants of wet places with spurred flowers and inrolled or bladder-bearing leaves, often glandular.
Taylor (1989).
4 genera and about 245 species of carnivorous plants that grow in wet places. Australia has 57 species of Utricularia.
Source: (2002). Lentibulariaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 4. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 3. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
