Carnivorous Plants

I am not sure I have the identification correct on this Sundew. If it is the Oblong-leaved Sundew, Drosera anglica, it is a species found in northern areas around the world. Sundews are carnivorous plants that catch and digest insects with leaves covered with sticky hairs. When an insect is captured the leaf folds around it and digests it. These Sundews were photographed in a fen in the area of Edmonton, Alberta. They are only a few inches tall and were very difficult to photograph in such a wet area.

One more picture for Halloween, this one also from the floating bog where the previous pictures were taken. This, however, is a native carnviorous plant, Drosera rotundifolia, the Round-leaf Sundew. It is a very tiny plant as is evident from the moss in which it is growing, but it does catch insects. The tiny drops of liquid are not water but a sticky substance in which insects are trapped and then digested by the plant.

Here's another post for the day, since I may not get a chance to get back on line. These are more of the carnivorous plants described in my last post, non-native but well-established in a muskeg or floating bog south of where we live. These are the White Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia leucophylla. These are not as well-established as the others but nevertheless have their own niche in the bog. The pitchers which are lined with downward pointing hairs are half-filled with liquid and when an insect ventures in and falls in the liquid, it is unable to get back out and is digested by the plant. For many of the insects a visit to these plants is a form of double jeopardy as well since there are often spiders lurking under the lids of the plants and waiting for unwary visitors.

They look so bright and cheerful, don't they? Well, don't be fooled by them because they eat meat and they may even grab you as you walk by. This is my post, or one of them, for Halloween, and very appropriate, I thought, because these are carnivorous plants, the Yellow Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia flava, with several pitchers or specialized leaves and a flower. I've posted pictures from this place before, but we make a trip there every year to see these amazing plants. They grow in a muskeg or floating bog on a lake south of us and there are five species of carnivorous plants growing there, one native and three non-native, and all very well established and thriving, especially these Yellow Pitchers and also the Purple Pitcher Plant. No one seems to know who planted them in the bog or when, and there are, of course, issues with introducing non-native plants into an area, though this bog is remote enough and isolated enough that there is very little chance that they are going to spread elsewhere. Nor do they seem to be competing with the native plants or crowding them out. We went to the bog with a friend and found, as usual that access to the floating mat of vegetation on which these plants grow to be rather difficult - a a kind of balancing act over old sunken logs and floating boards with fairly deep water all around. In the end we all fell in and were wet to our waists and though we wore boots had to pour the water out of our boots when we arrived back at the car.

The Cobra Lily is named for the resemblance of its leaves to the head and fangs of a cobra. It is a carnivorous plant that grows only in serpentine areas of northern California and southern Oregon, i.e., areas that have high concentrations of heavy metals, nickel, cadmium, etc., due to the underlying serpentine rock. The plant itself, shown below has an opening below the "hood" which insects enter and attracted to the little translucent windows in the plant, are unable to find their way out again. These were photographed in several different areas where the plants are protected. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2012/08/orchid-hunting-in-siskiyous.html

A last picture, I think, from our excursion to Summer Lake. This is the Yellow Pitcher Plant, now established by the thousands on the floating bog and shores of the lake. If you look closely you can see a fly perched on the rim of the pitcher and one can only guess what happened to it, but that close to the opening it probably became a meal. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2012/09/carnivorous...

These are the Purple Pitcher Plants in situ on the muskeg at Summer Lake. Both old and new pitchers and old and new flower spikes are visible in the picture as well as some of the other plants that grow on the muskeg, sedge and rhododendron. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2012/09/carnivorous...

This is another photo of the flower of the Purple Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia purpurea, growing and flowering at Summer Lake in Skagit County, Washington, far from its native haunts. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2012/09/carnivorous...

This is the carnivorous Yellow Pitcher Plant and its flower photographed at Summer Lake in Skagit County. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2012/09/carnivorous...