Pictures of Pitchers

It’s funny how something very familiar to you can be totally unknown for someone else. Recently I posted this series of Pitcher plant flowers on another site and pretty much everyone who commented had never seen them before.

It may be my love of bogs since I’ve photographed them before from boardwalks. But it might be that I kayak often and some lakes, like where these were taken, are actually bogs. So this allows me a lot of access to these often difficult to reach plants.

Most are the bright magenta/red you see above, but the full common name for these is Purple Pitcher Plant and this one lives up to it –

And here’s one that appears to have a lot of “petals” missing. I believe they are actually bracts and not petals (bracts are modified leaves). Similarly odd, they rise on scapes and not stems. Stems have leaves. Scapes do not. All of these were taken from the kayak as I noticed them and could get shots that didn’t have a lot of other foliage between me and the flowers.

The actual leaves of this plant are the notorious pools of death of their name – they are carnivorous plants that trap unwary insects in water that collects in their pitcher-like leaves. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see any clearly enough for photos. Either that or I wasn’t focused on them so don’t have any. But hey, here’s a double view for you –

I love that you can see both angles in one shot. They are such odd flowers and kind of large and boxy so they can be hard to visualize. I hope I did them some justice and you can see just how odd and interesting they are.