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NAT U R E
Sunlight AND A DASH OF PROTEIN
The humble (and hungry) common bladderwort.
Insects beware! Eastern North Carolina is part of a narrow region that’s home to a multitude of carnivorous plants. BY CORINNE SAUNDERS
THE PLANT’S RED, JAW-LIKE LEAVES SIT OPEN, WAITING. An insect bumps into one tiny, hairlike protrusion inside the leaf, keeps crawling and touches another. That second contact seals its fate; it triggers the plant to close its trap and signals its digestive enzymes to begin working on its prey. This isn’t the premise of a sci-fi novel though – it’s simply how the official state carnivorous plant of North Carolina supplements photosynthesis with enough nutrients to survive. The Venus flytrap – also known as the meadow clam, or, scientifically, Dionaea muscipula – has long fascinated everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Charles Darwin, but many would likely still be surprised to learn that this plant only grows naturally within a 75-mile radius around Wilmington, North Carolina. Scientists aren’t sure exactly why the Venus flytrap is endemic to this particular area (which extends slightly into South Carolina), but they hypothesize that geology might be a factor. This zone is also known as the Cape Fear Arch, and in the past 60 million years it has experienced periods of geologic uplift, often raising it above sea level at times when most of the Coastal Plain was underwater, according to Michael Schafale, an ecologist with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, and Brenda Wichmann, a state botanist with the same program. “This area has more extensively sandy soils than the areas to the north and south, so the landscape configuration may have been more favorable to the regular fires that Venus flytraps need,” Schafale notes, referencing the fact that these small plants rely on an open understory in order to receive enough sunlight to prosper. Wild Venus flytraps also used to be more abundant in this area than they are today, Wichmann adds, but development impacts, changes in hydrology, fire suppression and poaching have begun to threaten the species. Popularity has its pitfalls, after all. Consumer demand for these plants rarely lags, but because they need such specific environments in order to thrive, cultivating
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them isn’t easy – a conundrum that’s driven many to poaching as an easy alternative. Fueling an active black market and further threatening the species’ survival, these thefts made officials take note several years ago, and in 2014 removing Venus flytraps from the wild in North Carolina changed from a misdemeanor to a Class H felony punishable by up to 25 months in prison. The first felony arrest in this state took place in January 2015, but it wasn’t the last. Several flytrap poaching arrests in North Carolina have made national, and even international, news since then, with coverage in outlets such as The Washington Post, The Guardian and The New York Post as recently as 2019. WHILE VENUS FLYTRAPS WOULD MOST ASSUREDLY WIN a carnivorous plant popularity contest, they’re not the only ones growing in this state. Broadly speaking, there are five main carnivorous plant types in the world (with some found on every continent but Antarctica): Venus flytraps, butterworts, bladderworts, sundews and pitcher plants. North Carolina is home to all five. In this state, carnivorous plants inhabit longleaf pine savannas, Southern Appalachian bogs and the coastal plain, with habitats that are typically wet with acidic or otherwise low-nutrient soil. “They’re basically making up for a lack of nutrients,” explains Rachel Veal, a conservation horticulturist with the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. “They do photosynthesize too, but they get the nutrients they need from animals.” Within the five main types of carnivorous plants, there are more than 600 species worldwide. According to The Nature Conservancy, 66 of those species are found in the United States, and an astounding 36 of those live in North Carolina – but despite this abundance, Veal notes that people often still believe carnivorous plants only grow in more exotic locales. She speculates that this widespread assumption mostly comes down to the fact that people don’t often frequent the habitats where carnivorous plants reign supreme – at least while the plants are blooming and more noticeable – such as buggy, swampy areas during the summer. “Some [like bladderworts] are small and easily overlooked, too. Even for people who notice them, it isn’t readily apparent that they’re carnivorous,” she adds. “It’s easy to assume they’re not from a temperate area – especially if you’ve lived in North Carolina your whole life and have never seen one.”
