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Specialized plants, like the pitcher plant, get nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from animals. They collect insects in their liquid-filled pitchers and "digest" them using special enzymes to break them down.
<-- The pitcher plant's "pitchers" catch insects (click thumbnail image to view photograph.)
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In addition to their pitcher-like leaves, the pitcher plant has an attractive red flower.
<-- Pitcher plant in bloom (click thumbnail image to view photograph.)
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The sundew plant has a different method of catching insects -- their spikey leaves look like attractive flowers, but they're actually a sticky trap.
<-- Spatulate-leaved sundew leaves are attractive to insects (click thumbnail image to view photograph.)
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A sticky substance forms on sundew's hairy leaves and traps bugs like flypaper.
<-- Round-leaved sundew leaf with supper (click thumbnail image to view photograph.)
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Bladderworts are aquatic plants with bright yellow flowers on stalks above the water. The horned bladderwort, Utricularia cornata, grows on wet shores and bogs and has a fragrant flower with a long nectar spur.
<-- Utricularia cornata or horned bladderwort flowers (click thumbnail image to view photograph.)
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Horned bladderworts appear to be leafless, but they actually have tiny threadlike leaves that grow beneath the soil. The leaf stalks bear bladders or pouches that open up to trap tiny invertebrates which are digested by the plant.
<-- Bladderwort leaves and bladders (click thumbnail image to view photograph.)
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The "Virtual Bog Walk" is made possible by a Lake Superior Coastal Wetland Conservation Education Grant from the Michigan Coastal Management Program, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.
Photographs ©Scot Stewart and ©MooseWood Nature Center
MooseWood Nature Center, P.O. Box 773, Marquette, MI 49855
info@moosewood.org (906) 228-6250
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