Pitcher Plants, Terror of Things That Go Buzz

The Volo Bog is called a quaking bog by those who know wetland subclassifications, but it was the Volo Bog Interpretive Trail that did most of the quaking -- or at least wobbling -- when we walked on it. "It's moving," I heard either Lilly or Rachel say ahead of me, since they were first to reach the trail, which is a boardwalk over the bog. The boardwalk's wobble is a little unnerving at first, but before long you get used to it. For anyone over about three years old, anyone who is sober anyway, the danger of pitching into the bog is pretty low.

The first section of the trail crossed "open" water, though of course it's no such thing. There's a lot of boggy things going on in that water.

Soon the trail passes through more dense growth, including trees. But since it's still in the bog, it should be noted that everything, including the trees, is floating.

Just as the trail entered the dense growth, we encountered a woman with binoculars who was watching a sandhill crane on the ground -- on the surface of the bog, that is -- not far away. She pointed it out to us and let us look at the thing through her binoculars. I don't think I've seen one before, but then again I don't usually go out of my way to look for birds. It was big and gray. That's the trouble I have with learning natural history. I can't remember much more than that about the creatures I see, and I'm especially good at forgetting their names.

The woman on the Volo Bog Interpretive Trail doesn't have that problem. She briefly became our guide because she was enthusiastic about pointing out bog flora and fauna. A large muskrat, for instance. Actually she didn't need to point it out; we all saw it as it parked itself just a few feet away from the boardwalk, rapidly eating leaves. But she was able to tell us that it was eating blue flag iris, adding that the leaves would be poisonous to us, but not the muskrat.

She also pointed out other plants I'd never heard of it -- pitcher plants. Carnivorous pitcher plants. What former boy doesn't thrill at the thought of a meat-eating plant? Even if they aren't large enough to swallow unwary members of safaris, as those of us who watched enough movies on Saturday afternoons years ago learned happened from time to time.

Only a few days ago, one Adrian Higgins wrote in the Washington Post: "Among meat-eating bog plants, the Venus' flytrap gets all the fuss. Okay, so its leaf snaps shut like a monster's mouth. Hold my coffee while I clap. My vote is for another native carnivore, the pitcher plant.

"There are a handful of species, some tall and pale, others short and squat, and all producing decorative hooded tubes with a lacelike pattern that gives them a reptilian quality. In short, they are beautiful, and they have made the leap from the sour and soggy peat bog into the garden..."

Since he's a garden writer, he doesn't really detail how the pitchers lure and trap hapless flies and other insects. A fellow named Mike Baker, on a web site devoted to New Jersey Pine Barrens plants, does: "The inside of the tubular shaped leaf is lined with downward pointing hairs. These hairs block an insect from climbing up the tube and escaping. The fluid in the bottom of the tube contains digestive juices that will consume the insect prey."