Highlights
Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants with specialized, hollow, pitcher-shaped leaves that function as passive pitfall traps to capture and digest insects and other small prey. The plant blooming here is the North American genus Sarrasenia, named in honor of Dr. Michael Sarrazin, a French-Canadian physician who first sent specimens and descriptions back to Europe in the late 17th or early 18th century. Insects drawn to its bright colors, sweet nectar, and sometimes ultraviolet markings land on the very slippery slope of its petals and are deposited into a fluid of bacteria where they are digested. For centuries people believed that the liquid in the plant was merely rainwater, until Charles Darwin proved scientifically the true significance of plant carnivory in his publication Insectivorous Plants.
What Is It?
Each week, we’re going to feature a profile of a lesser-known plant or a more familiar one that is blooming on the Bridge in remarkable fashion.
Photo by Lynda Leitner.
T-Shirts for Sale!
Shirts are $20 each. 40% of the sale directly benefits the Bridge of Flowers. T-shirts are individually hand silkscreened by Worn at the Edges, a local Shelburne Falls serigrapher.
The most current Highlights are displayed below. See also archived Highlights.