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Plants weren't supposed to survive here, but they did.
Such plants have evolved an eerie yet extraordinary collection of biological attributes in order to be compatible with
a kind of habitat in which living would otherwise be impossible.
These plants, called Sundews, don't just live and grow by way of the soil's nutrients.
These plants have survived in a way all their own, by catching and eating their food.
When enumerating the various components that make a habitat suitable for plant life,
peat bogs fulfill very few of them.
The ground has little nutrients, the soil is acidic, and the primary, if not only, source of water is rain.
How such an unearthly habitat came into being can be gleaned from the other kinds of wetlands that often surround it.
In environments with standing water, decaying plant material can build up, and over thousands of years,
glaze over the water with an organic mass that is today called "peat".
Peat is the building block upon which the utterly inhospitable bog habitat is constructed.
It traps rain water, apprehends its few nutrients, and fosters highly acidic conditions.
Very few types of plants are capable of withstanding such a harsh environment.
Yet there are plants that live in North America's peat bogs, and are as unique and seemingly hostile
as the ground from which they originated.
The Sundew belongs to the group that responded to the peat bog's challenge of life.
It has an innocuous appearance, and is named for the dew-like fluid on its leaves, that conceal a more sinister purpose.
In reality, the fluid is meant to stick to the legs of unsuspecting insects and entrap them on the Sundew's leaves.
Such an insect becomes a meal for the Sundew, as the plant possesses digestive enzymes that break
down the insect for the plant's own consumption.
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Carnivorous plants, as they're called, are the evolutionary result of peat bogs and other similar habitats.
When the ground is unable to provide the nutrients that plants require to survive, the only plants able to live
are those that are able to gain their nutrients by some other means.
Acted out over an immense timescale, these plants were biologically funneled into forms rarely replicated
elsewhere in the natural world.
The end of winter is the earliest in the year that the Sundew will be commonly found in its southern range.
As the bogs enter spring and summer, insect populations will increase and provide ample food for the inconspicuous predators.
Their seasonality is indicative of the larger forces at work in their environment, many of which can only occur
over long stretches of time.
Though seemingly impenetrable, the peat bogs are a rare and fragile ecosystem, and plants like the Sundew are an
even rarer component of them.
There are only five forms of carnivorous plants in North America, the Sundew being one of them, a testament to their unique existence.
Almost no other plant has been able to produce adaptations so remarkably well-suited to the conditions of the peat bog,
and as such, the Sundew remains one of the most fascinating members of an unearthly group - the predatory plants.
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