Florida Carnivores

Everyone is starting to wake up! Here's some of my hooded pitcher friends. I like how you can see the old and new pitchers.

The sundews here are so red! I can spot them so easily. I've seen some big ones, but the all of the ones I saw yesterday were teeny tiny.

Here's some flowers for you.

And a few more flowers

As an added bonus, I found these Rose Pogonia orchids blooming nearby. It reinforced just how important preservation is - hooded pitcher plants, threatened orchids, and my favorite tillandsias all call this preserve home.

I love your photos! I always have! You do such a great job.

And you know, I don't even try. It's all the camera. I guess it was worth standing in line outside Best Buy at 3:30 in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving! I finally learned how to do an extreme closeup when I took the picture of that orchid. Guess I should have read the directions, but that's no fun.

I'm buying a new camera because I couldn't figure out how to do an extreme close up on the last new camera I bought. I'm ordering the Nikon something 80 with an additional lens and I know two people who have the camera so I don't need to worry about reading all the print that normal humans can't read in those user guides.

Ok, I went back out today to check on my favorite plants, the hooded pitchers. I took a bunch pf photos, and Mom says this is her favorite. They caught my eye on the trail - doesn't it look like they're hugging?

I like this photo

Extreme close up, you can really see the spots on the back

Why didn't you guys tell me sundews bloomed? I tugged on the flowers to make sure they were really attached to the sundews and not something else!

Another sundew pic

Here's a closeup where you can see the stem of the flower coming out

These pitchers are still really green and haven't gotten that nice red tint to them yet. They were growing more in the shade, maybe that's why?

This one has that nice color that hooded pitchers usually have.

Checking out the inside of the flower

I also noticed that a lot of the pitchers seemed to like growing at the base of trees.

Are those bugs on this sundew?

Hey hey hey! Great photos!

I'm gonna go with drosera capillaris. There are quite a few that look very similar. Here's another pic with little black spots on the sundews. Eat those bugs, eat 'em!

Is this some kind of carnivorous plant or just hairy grass? It caught my eye when I saw the little hairs on it.

I believe what you have may be Drosera brevifolia. While I’m certainly no expert, if you enter a google search for images I think you will notice subtle difference between the two species. Other than that, I believe brevifolia tolerates considerably dryer sites than capillaris. And, a mighty healthy and happy looking D. brevifolia I might add. The other Drosera that are indigenous to your area would be capillaris, intermedia, filiformis, and tracyi with the last two have distinctly different appearances such that you could not mistake them for the others.

The last image you posted is not any carnivorous plant with which I have any familiarity.

I went online to do a quick search for you and came up empty handed on that plant. Sort of off topic but I did find this publication that looked interesting-
http://www.floridaplants.com/CR/flwild.htm

These sites looked interesting too-
http://www.nsis.org/garden/
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/TOPIC_Native_Plants

I was just poking around to try to determine if the last plant was native or not. I suspect it is. Why, I don't know. I could be way off but maybe this is some sort of a basal rosette to Dichanthelium spp. You might want to post his photo over in the Plant Identification Forum and see if anyone can help you with this.

See, I went to the USF plant atlas http://www.plantatlas.usf.edu/ and typed in drosera and those five you mentioned all came up. You know, if I'd looked a little closer it also says only brevifolia and capillaris grow in my county, although intermedia is in two bordering counties so there's a chance for that one. I guess I don't have the trained eye yet to tell the subtle differences between them. Well, I'm off to go for a morning walk!

I don't have the trained eye either so don't feel that bad. Neat site you found.

Get in there love bug! Get in there!!

I always get a kick out of watching bugs scrambling over minor hoods then disappearing underneath never to be seen again!

If only they could eat all the love bugs. I'm tired of scrubbing them off my car.

In your dreams. Around here I'd like them to eat all the earwigs.