16 Jun A Quest for the Fantastical: Pitcher Plants in Florida
With their unusual shapes, carnival-worthy colors, and the fact that they ensnare and digest insects, pitcher plants have always struck me as the type of fantastical creature that might’ve emerged straight from the pages of Alice in Wonderland. The first time I saw pitcher plants in the wild was while backpacking on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo. Those Old World pitcher plants had seemed every bit as magical as the glow-in-the-dark mushrooms I’d discovered alongside the trail the night before, or the gargantuan Rafflesia bloom I’d visited prior, the largest flower in the world by some accounts and definitively living up to its decaying odor reputation. These delights had felt appropriately at home in the wilds of Borneo, but it never occurred to me that similarly fantastical plants might also occur closer to what would become my own home. Florida, as it turns out, has the highest number of carnivorous plant species in the nation. Naturally, I had to see for myself.
As one might expect from fairytale-type herbage, it’s not so easy to find pitcher plants. They only bloom for a few weeks in the spring and all six of Florida’s native Sarracenia species have precise habitat requirements, needing both bright sun and wetland conditions that stay moist throughout the year. Fire suppression, drainage, and urban development have all taken their toll and as early as the 1980s estimates suggested that less than 3% of the original habitat remained. I hiked several trails in central Florida that promised pitcher plant sightings, but to no avail.
I confess that I’d become a bit skeptical by the time I’d headed northward, turning my jeep onto Apalachicola National Forest’s Apalachee Savannas Scenic Byway. To my untrained eye, I was surrounded by pineland. It was beautiful in its own right, but it didn’t strike me as the type of place one might find water-loving carnivorous plants. As with my central Florida explorations, I was following others’ recommendations and I began to doubt their validity. What had begun as a slow creep down the road as I scanned every herbaceous stem, had devolved into a highway speed limit surge past the pines when I noticed something different out of the corner of my eye. I’m not sure if it was color, texture or what, but I screeched to a halt on the side of the road and headed toward the eye-catching field on foot.
The land looked and felt dry, but I’d clearly stepped into a depression and there before me, standing as erect as the surrounding pines against the cobalt sky, was a cluster of knee-high lime-green pitcher plants with red collars. They were magnificent. And there were more; ones with white hoods laced in red, ones with red hoods, green ones, low ones, and interspersed throughout were similarly-colored, upside-down daffodil-looking flowers – the pitchers themselves being modified leaves.
Now that I knew what I was looking for, I saw more and more roadside bogs filled with my quarry. I explored one after another in Apalachicola, then further down the panhandle at Blackwater River State Park. Some spots seemed as dry as at my first stop, but others left me ankle-deep in water, my ripples sending a cottonmouth snake fleeing out from under foot in one case. I was fascinated not just by the plants themselves, but also by the associated wildlife community, including my serpentine encounter. I heard frogs calling and birds twittering. What struck me most though were all the insects that seemed to be courting fate in their proximity to these insectivorous plants.
Flies, beetles and even a stick insect prowled through this valley of potential death, lured by sweet nectar. I saw more than one insect perched inside a pitcher plant’s smooth-walled and slippery funnel, no doubt on its way toward the soup of digestive enzymes below that will convert it into a meal, providing the plant with nitrogen and other nutrients naturally scarce in this acidic environment. Fittingly, other insect predators take advantage of the pitcher plant’s allure. Several species of spider lay hidden from view just below the plant’s treacherously waxy rim, ready to steal vulnerable prey. Others were more bold, weaving webs across the pitcher plants to divert dinner into their own death traps. The longer I watched, the more I understood. And the more I understood, the more fantastical it became, all within the wilds of my own home state.
Jillian
Posted at 03:32h, 20 JuneCongratulations on finding the pitcher plants, your photos are beautiful!
Kirsten Hines
Posted at 20:27h, 21 JuneThank you, Jillian! They were so much fun to photograph!
Dana OHara Smith
Posted at 02:37h, 11 SeptemberAwesome Kirsten!
Kirsten Hines
Posted at 19:25h, 08 OctoberThank you! Definitely worth a trip to the panhandle!!!