Roads End Naturalist

Exploring the natural world as we wander at the end of the road

Tag: carnivorous plants

  • Savanna Sights

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    To think that plants ate insects would go against the order of nature… ~Carl Linnaeus After a crazy busy spring field trip season at work, I am finally getting around to catching up on a couple of posts. Like last year, toward the end of April I collaborated with Melissa and the NC Museum of… Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Plants That Bite Back – Part 2

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    It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood…some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things. ~Henry David Thoreau,… Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Plants That Bite Back

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    The great wonder of the vegetable kingdom is a very curious unknown species of Sensitive. It is a dwarf plant. The leaves are like a narrow segment of a sphere, consisting of two parts, like the cap of a spring purse, the concave part outwards, each of which falls back with indented edges (like an… Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Grass Toters

    Let us turn elsewhere, to the wasps and bees, who unquestionably come first in the laying up of a heritage for their offspring. ~Jean-Henri Fabre, entomologist, 1823-1915 They’re back…the wasps flying inside my office window like they did last year about this time. Except now, I knew to expect them and why they are there.… Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Where Insects Fear to Tread

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    There is no exquisite beauty …without some strangeness. ~Edgar Allan Poe Part two of our quest for carnivorous plants took us first to the Green Swamp, a well-known NC Nature Conservancy preserve site in Brunswick and Columbus counties. It was getting late in the day, so we went straight to the main access point, a… Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • Bay Watch

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    Find one, and you’ll find yourself closer to the heart of what a Carolina Bay can be: an island of wildness in a world largely tamed, a few acres of the primeval past passed over by progress. ~T. Edward Nickens The North Carolina Botanical Garden has an exquisite collection of carnivorous plants, and they are… Read more…

    Written by

    Mike Dunn

  • The Most Wonderful Plant in the World

    “This plant, commonly called Venus’ fly-trap, from the rapidity and force of its movements, is one of the most wonderful in the world” and “is one of the most beautifully adapted plants in the vegetable kingdom.” ~Charles Darwin One of the tree species Mike didn’t include on his recent tree bark quiz, probably because it’s… Read more…

    Written by

    Melissa Dowland