Longleaf pine forest in the Green Swamp
Earlier this week, I got to go on a trip to some of North Carolina’s awesome wild areas with a bunch of other people from the museum where I work. We ended the day at Lake Waccamaw, a fascinating bay lake in the southeastern part of the state. The water was bizarrely warm but oh so clear, so I enjoyed my swim in it quite a bit. The highlight of the trip for me, though, was getting to see the carnivorous plants in the Green Swamp. One of my favorite memories as a kid was the venus fly trap my mom bought my sister and me, how we fed it flies and were fascinated by how it consumed its prey. I never knew then that they were native to North Carolina, nor that North Carolina is one of the best places in the world to see carnivorous plants. Now I’ve had a chance to see the carnivorous plants I grew up reading about in the wild! Today I’m going to share the five carnivorous plant species I saw at the Green Swamp because who doesn’t love a good carnivorous plant?
Venus Fly Trap
Venus fly trap
There is something so alien about this plant! It certainly looks strange with all the spiky bits coming off the leaves, but this plant is quite mysterious too. It sort of remembers things, and no one really knows why. The exact mechanism behind the trap that snaps shut on helpless prey remains uncertain. This plant knows the difference between a living organism and a non-living organism too. It’s just weird and oddly sentient for a plant. But how beautiful! And it was absolutely amazing to see them scattered all across the ground underfoot. I was so happy I nearly cried.
Yellow Pitcher Plant
Yellow pitcher plant
Pitcher plants are super cool plants too! This plant doesn’t snap shut on its prey like the venus fly traps do, but they have an effective alternative system: downward pointed hairs guide the insect victims into the digestive soup at the bottom of the trumpet-shaped leaves where they are slowly digested. If you pull an old, dead leaf off a plant and cut it open, you can sometimes see the exoskeletons of consumed bugs! Another beautiful plant, and, as an added bonus, many of these had green lynx spiders sitting on the “lid” of the plant too.
Purple Pitcher Plant
Purple pitcher plant
Purple pitcher plants are closely related to the yellow pitcher plants and were found within a few feet of their yellow brethren in the Green Swamp. These plants are very different though! Unlike the yellows that use digestive juices to digest their prey, the purple pitcher plants depend on a variety of invertebrates, including a mosquito and a midge larvae, to break down the insects that fall into the puddle of rainwater that accumulates at the bases of the leaves for them. How awesome is that?!
Bladderwort
Bladderwort
Bladderworts are fantastic aquatic plants! They store little bubbles of air in special chambers armed with triggers. When a small insect, other invertebrate, or even a small fish swims by and bumps the trigger, the door to the chamber snaps open and water floods in, dragging the prey animal inside. Then the plant secretes digestive chemicals and consumes the prey. It’s hard to imagine that such an adorable little flower is attached to such a violent plant!
Sundew
Sundew
Until about 6 months ago, I had never even heard of a sundew. Then I saw a picture of one on a blog somewhere and fell instantly in love. I knew I HAD to see one! And I did! These tiny plants are capable of catching things much larger than they are, including strong flying insects such as damselflies. They lure prey in with tasty globs of sweet mucus that line their leaves, but the globs are very sticky and trap insects that come too close. Once the insect dies, usually from exhaustion or asphyxiation, the plant secretes digestive chemicals and absorb the nutrients through the leaves. They’re adorable, yet surprisingly deadly.
Aren’t carnivorous plants fun? I just love them! And now that I know I can go see them any time I want without even leaving my state, I suspect I’ll find my way back to the swamp many times to see them again and again. Nothing beats going out into the wild and seeing these things growing out there! I was battling the last dregs of a cold and I found it very nearly unbearably warm the day we went, but I came away from the swamp happier than I’ve been for a long time. Funny what nature can do for a person’s emotional state!
_______________
The Dragonfly Woman 
Great photos! We have pitcher plants, bladderwort, and sundew in the bogs here (actually I wonder if it could be my blog you saw sundew on), but I’ve never seen Venus fly trap in the wild, so I’m super jealous of that. I learned this week that the world’s largest pitcher plants, in Borneo, have a mutualistic relationship with rats where the rats eat nectar secreted by the pitchers’ lids and in return they poop into the pitchers so the plants can get the nitrogen. I love how weird nature is.
I just looked up your sundew post and that was it, the blog post that introduced me to the sundews. Having spent my whole life in the arid southwest, the fact that those even existed blew my mind. What cool plants! If you’re ever in the Raleigh area, please let me know you’re coming so I can take you out to see the fly traps. You would love them! And it doesn’t surprised me one bit that there’s a strange pitcher plant out there that teams up with rats. Nature IS weird, but it’s oh so cool too, if you just take the time to look!
I will definitely be taking you up on that if I find myself in the Raleigh area!
very interesting. I am often in NC. love the photos of the “ugly but beautiful” plants a lot.
You should visit the Green Swamp and see the carnivorous plants the next time you’re in NC! It was the experience of a lifetime for me, but then I’m also a biology geek. I get way too excited about those sorts of things. :)
There is a permanent exhibition of carnivorous plants in Kew Gardens, London that I love to visit. I just can’t imagine what it must be like to find them in the wild for yourself. Beautiful photographs.
Clearly, I thought the experience of seeing the carnivorous plants in the wild was absolutely amazing! I’ve seen everything but the sundews in gardens before, but seeing them in the wild was an entirely different experience. Nature is simply amazing!
There was a nature trail outside the gifted center when I went there and I’ll never forget the day I found the sundews there. I’d never seen anything like them. The teacher hadn’t noticed them before and wasn’t sure what they were either, but it was clearly an interesting little plant with lots of little red threads and insects stuck in them. I was sure they were carnivorous plants and had to go to the REAL library to find a book on them and prove to my teacher they were eating the bugs, not just sticking them. Thanks to the book, I found bladderworts and butterworts on the same trail! A veritable cornucopia of carnivorous plants!
Supposedly, there are pitcher plants in Florida, but I’ve never seen any in the wild. Flytraps, of course, don’t get this far south. I don’t think they get much out of South Carolina. They don’t seem to have been very successful, as fascinating as they are to us. Probably spend too much effort doing what other carnivorous plants do without all the energy expenditure.
Apparently there is one little population of fly traps in northern Florida, but that’s the southern extreme of their native range. But the pitcher plants are awesome too! I could spend all day looking at those, and I probably spend too much time looking at the ones in the garden at work. Even if they weren’t carnivorous, the shape alone is fascinating to me.
So glad to hear that you got to show your teacher up AND make new discoveries too. That sounds like a perfect combination!
I hadn’t heard that introduced flytraps were growing in Florida. Kinda cool. I’ll have to hunt them down next time I’m in north Florida. Still, it makes sense. If you like swamps, you should love Florida, and the little flytraps do love them some swamps.
I don’t think they’re even introduced, rather a small relict population left over from some other time when they had a larger range. At least, that’s what the USDA has led me to believe. Their map for the flytraps supposedly only includes the native populations left within the historic range, not the introduced populations.
I’ve seen two species of pitcher plants in northern Florida at Eglin AFB.
Yeah? Awesome! They’re so cool.
Reblogged this on anirbas18.
I love your photos, carnivorous plants are just wonderful.
We have a few varieties of sundew growing wild in our backyard at this time of year, I did a post on them myself the other day, mine was a different type to yours though. I would love to have pitchers and flytraps out there too, but the only ones I have are in pots on the verandah :)
Ooh, excellent! I’m headed over to your blog right now to see your sundews. You’re so lucky they’re right there in your yard!
I am lucky they are so close, it is like having a crowd of extra pets out in the garden. Less demanding than the dog though! :)
Ha ha! Very true!