Pitcher Plant Flowers

 

Click to enlarge this pretty pitcher plant flower. They are booming in the New Jersey pine barrens right now.

The ones I usually see are more purple, like this. One of their common names is the purple pitcher plant.

Odd, right? It's not hard for me to picture them blooming below a sky full of pterodactyls.

The leaves of the purple pitcher plant grow at the base of the flowers and are modified into pitfall traps like these -- pitchers. The plant grow in areas with poor soil conditions, trapping insects in the pitchers to supplement their nutrition.

The pitcher traps fill with rain. An insect that falls in is deterred from escape by downward facing hairs and eventually is digested.

The strange and lovely purple pitcher plant. See it now in a bog near you.