Design

Our young mountain bog is looking good, especially with the addition of some Selaginella late this afternoon. What caught our attention, however, was our young Venus fly trap leaf with a still-living prey item, probably a spider or maybe a Daddy-Long-Legs (look for the legs protruding from the large leaf to the left). Previous leaves have nabbed insects and closed, but this one was quite obvious. The light wasn't good, but I think you'll get the idea.

We really hadn't planned on a small bog garden, but happened on a display of carnivorous plants at a local plant festival. The keen young proprietor had many of our native pitcher plants, sundews and some Venus fly traps, along with some Australian insectivorous species. Most had been propagated by tissue culture, he said, and my gardening companion was entranced (he knows all about our native bog plants from an ecological point of view). He set to work digging a hole. Native bogs and savannah habitats are a wonderful aspect of the Southeastern U.S. When we lived in SE Georgia, the few remaining bogs were (and are) meccas for plant lovers. Here in South Carolina, we have the same pine savannah bogs, but also mountain cataract bogs, supporting a range of rare species. Once widespread, coastal plain pitcher plant bogs have declined because of drainage, development, agriculture, etc. Wetland protection has helped some, but bogs are still rare and threatened here in the U.S., as w...