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