M e a t

It took more than 6,000 years for the last ice sheet, the Wisconsin Glacier, to spread across what is now Lake Erie and Ohio, at an average rate of about 160 feet per year. In doing so, it set the stage for peatland ecosystems — bogs and fens (see sidebar at left if you don’t know what they are) — to make their appearance in the Great Lakes region.

Those bogs and fens, as it turned out, became habitats for some strange natural phenomena, says Guy Denny, author of Peatlands of Ohio and the Southern Great Lakes Region (Kent State University Press, 2022) and one of the Buckeye State’s leading naturalists.

“Even into medieval times, bogs and fens remained mystical and frightening places,” says Denny, a member of Mount Gilead-based Consolidated Cooperative. “Fueling

Spatulate-leaved sundew

The fleshy leaves of sundew are covered with glandular tentacles tipped with droplets of sticky secretions. “The common name ‘sundew’ is in reference to how the droplets glisten in sunlight, resembling morning dew,” Denny says. “The sweet and very sticky substance topping the tips of the tentacles attract and then entangle insect prey.”

Bogs and fens?

If you don’t know the difference between a bog and a fen, this little saying might help: “Fens flush and bogs back up.” It means that fens are sustained by underground water sources, such as a mineralrich spring; bogs, on the other hand, depend upon precipitation or surface water to replenish them.

The more the prey struggles, the more tentacles bend over to further entrap it. Slowly, the tentacles force the prey downward onto the surface of the leaf, which at the same time folds over the prey. On the surface of the leaf are glands that secrete digestive enzymes. Ultimately all the process leaves behind is the indigestible chitinous material that once formed the exoskeleton.

Denny says the entire process takes from three to 20 minutes, depending upon the size of prey. The sundew leaf then slowly reopens to repeat the process with its next unlucky insect victim.