Adversity Can Make You Stronger: Carnivorous Pitcher Plants

Passmoore, Works Of Alexander & I.V.

At the NC Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, Sarracenia oreophila elucidates the beauty of triumph out of adversity. Hardship spurred its progenitors into admirable innovation. Water seeps perpetually through the soil where they grow, leaching all the minerals out. But while other plants wilt, the pitchers utilize another source of nutrition: abundant insect life, which is drawn to the fragrant pool of water within, and intoxicated by the chemical coctail on the rim. Beetles, wasps, ants... all fall helplessly into the insectivore's trap. Then mosquito larvae macerate, leaving more digestible remains for the ingenious plant.