Meat Eaters

Here's one for Halloween - some carnivorous plants growing on a floating bog here in western Washington. They're not native to Washington, but they're moving in and they're hungry!

More seriously, they are not native but many years ago were transplanted as part of a rescue from the Carolinas, where they do grow, to this bog where they've become very well established,

They are the Yellow Pitcher Plants, Sarracenia flava. There are four other species of non-native plants, including two other pitchers growing in this bog as well as one native species.

For those not acquainted with these unusual plants, they are carnivorous, the water-filled pitchers trapping insects which are digested and which provide nutrients to the plants.

The inset photo was taken by my son with a point and shoot camera down into the tube of a Purple Pitcher Plant and shows a dead dragonfly floating in the water at the top of the tube.

The oddly shaped growth in front of the pitchers (the leaves) is one of the flowers of this species. It flowers late in the year about the time we usually make our annual visit to the bog.