North Carolina's Green Swamp, a Nature Conservancy preserve, is famous for its carnivorous plants; more genera (five) can be found there than any other single spot in the world! We usually find nine species there during the annual Duke biodiversity class field trip. In the above photo, a Butterwort (Pinguicula sp.) is on the right, and a Sundew (Drosera sp.) on the left.

Photos below marked with an N (for "new") are the most recently added ones. Many thanks to my botanically and mycologically inclined friends like Jay Horne, Kyle Williams, Norm Douglas, Alec Motten, Patrick Coin, Christine Davis, Jon Shaw, Jason Thacker, Becky Yahr, Milo Pyne, Mary Jane Epps, Chaz Zartman, and many other folks who identified many of these for me, either in person or from photos. Some of them also helped with my plant photos from Hawai'i.

 Venus' Flytrap, photographed in the Green Swamp on the October 2000 field trip of Professor Alec Motten's Duke University biodiversity course. Okay, so maybe they don't just trap only flies...

N The flytrap may be the most famous carnivorous plant, but the most conspicuous in the Green Swamp is the Yellow Pitcher Plant. Alec's course  The Green World, a botany course for non-biology majors, found an especially good patch.

 The Sweet Pitcher Plant is the smallest of the Green Swamp's pitchers.

 Pitcher plants commonly hybridize, even in the wild. This Hybrid Pitcher Plant is probably a cross between the Sweet (Sarraceniarubra) and  Purple (S. purpurea) Pitcher Plants.

 The Spatulate-leaved Sundew is one of two sundew species known to grow in the Green Swamp.

N The butterworts are tough to tell apart, unless they're flowering, as this Blueflower Butterwort was in April 2002.

 Sphagnum moss  isn't actually carnivorous. However, it does help create the acidic soil conditions that carnivorous plants need to survive in the wild. See my Hawai'i Photos or the "wildflowers without flowers" section below for some other bryophytes.

N Florida's Blackwater River State Forest, near Pensacola, is almost as good as the Green Swamp for carnivorous plants. Parts of it are lushly populated with Tracy's Threadleaf Sundew ; one of them caught a fruit fly. The much less conspicuous Pink Sundew lives there too.

 Not all the plants in the Green Swamp are carnivorous. One of the most conspicuous is the interestingly named Rush Featherling. Another Green Swamp native with an even more hilarious name is the Hairy Chaffhead. The tiny Northern Bluethread is rarer, less conspicuous, and has a more conservative name.

N Rarer still is an orchid much more spectacular in appearance than name, the Bearded Grass-pink. This one bloomed the spring after its part of the Green Swamp was intentionally burned.

 This White Thoroughwort was actually in Virginia, but very close to North Carolina.  It was blooming in the Smart View area of the Blue Ridge Parkway in mid-October, while we were on our honeymoon.

 On the same day at Smart View, we found a few patches of Stiff Gentian. A couple of days earlier and not far away, we had found a roadside patch of  Closed Gentian near Mountain Lake, VA.

N The following July, Scarlet Bee Balm and the related Pale Bee Balm were blooming profusely along the Parkway in North Carolina. Fly-poison was also widespread. Don Hendershot led me to a patch of the much rarer Tall Larkspur with some Skullcap blooming nearby. A few days later, I found Pale Touch-me-not and Micheaux's Saxifrage up on Waterrock Knob.

N The April after our honeymoon, my wife and I still hadn't finished the thank-you notes from our wedding, so we spent the weekend writing them in a B&B on Lake Waccamaw. Lots of Carolina Small Laurel and Coastal Dwarf Azalea were blooming at Lake Waccamaw State Park nearby.

 The flowers of the Crane-Fly Orchid come out late in the summer, but the leaves can only be found in the winter and spring. These plants managed to grow leaves while retaining the previous fall's seed pods and flower stalk. The English name and genus (Tipularia) come from the flower's distant resemblance to a crane fly of the genus Tipula; the species name refers to the leaves, which are green on top, purple underneath.

N Possibly the most notorious of exotic plants, Water Hyacinth costs the U.S. government over a million dollars a year as it blocks boating routes, threatens ecosystems, and causes other problems.

 This Japanese Clover was growing very close to the above Elephant's-Foot. However, as you might have guessed from the "Japanese" in the name, it isn't supposed to be there. Unlike many other Japanese imports, this weed has not become a major invasive problem in natural habitats. Not yet, anyway...

 Not so for the Spotted Knapweed. This nasty European invader not only crowds out native plants, it eliminates food plants needed by native butterfly caterpillars and grazing animals, and even degrades the productivity of commercial agricultural grazing and farmland.

  The European herb Heal-All has spread throughout much of the U.S. Its name comes from its widespread use in herbal medicine; it reportedly helps heal wounds and soothe bruises, sprains, and assorted irritations. And hasn't shown any negative impacts on native species... yet...

I'm not quite sure if this Florida Butterfly Orchid was growing wild where I found it, or if it had been planted there by the  Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation , whose land I was exploring at the time. Either way, it looks great!

 An Opuntia of some kind from The Nature Conservancy's Chihuahua Woods preserve in south Texas.

N Also in south Texas, a Wolfberry at the Mercedes Tract of the LRGV NWR.

A trip to the Sierra Nevada introduced me to the Mahala Mat  and  Purple Fritillary  near Salmon Creek Campground. Also found this Western Columbine , a dead ringer for its eastern relative.

N Another plant which looks much better than its name, Bog Moss was blooming in the Blackwater River SF near some of the sundews above.

N The Virginia Meadow Beauty has a much more fitting name, except that this one was blooming in Mississippi... and in a swampy forest...

Best  of all, that trip into the Sierra Nevada introduced me to  Sarcodes sanguinea , also known as the Snow Plant because it often blooms through the snow and is strikingly visible when it does. Its red color comes from a lack of chlorophyll; it's either a saprophyte, surviving on decaying plant matter, or possibly a parasite on the surrounding huge conifers.

 As their name implies, Beech Drops grow in close proximity to American Beech (Fagus grandifolius) trees. The genus' scientific name implies it too; it's Epifagus, which means "on Beech". They are parasites; while many parasitic plants tap into their hosts indirectly via networks of mycorrhizal fungus hyphae, I think Beech Drops penetrate directly into the tree's roots.

N One of my favorite plants for general wierdness is Psilotum nudum; not only does it not flower, it has no leaves or roots, and its stem branches dichotomously. It also has a gametophyte stage which lives underground mutualistically with some kind of fungus.

On my aforementioned trip to California, I found some Giant Horsetail  growing in a little suburban park in Santa Rosa.

 My friend Cait Coberly and I went out one morning to see the rare Hexastylis lewisii, and as a bonus also found my new favorite moss Entodon seductrix. It had lots of sporophytes.

N A huge White Oak tree in our front yard hosted a Chicken-of-the-Woods during the summer. A virtually identical one appeared a couple of months later.

 The genus Cordyceps usually infects moth caterpillars, but this one goes after adults instead. Some members of this genus are widely used in Chinese medicine, for many of the same purposes as Ginseng. My friend Tracy Feldman photographed another one a year or two earlier.

N The next photo may look like a flower, but it's actually a smut fungus! It has infected a Deerberry (Vaccinium stamineum) and forced it to produce fungal spores through flower-like growths; I'm not sure, but the spores may even be dispersed by pollinators intending to visit the Deerberry flowers!

N Cait found two Morels behind the Duke Biological Science Building in early spring 2002: one was growing on a bed of moss, the other on a mat of liverworts.

 The lichen genus Graphis gets its name from the sporangia which look like pencil scribbles.

 Lichens aren't eaten by many animals, but this patch was apparently grazed on by a land snail or slug.

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 Joshua S. Rose