Ell Pond sundew

It wasn't that my "voyage of discovery" today wasn't filled with the usual intriguing finds, but my trek to Ell Pond yesterday was the proverbial "cup runneth over," so I wanted to highlight yet another natural history gem I spotted and photographed there. The pond proper is a very acidic small body of water fringed by mature Atlantic White Cedars, and along its edges, there are many examples of "quaking bog" mats of sphagnum and other typical bog plants. Among these are the carnivores of the green world, which, in our neck of the woods, include Sundews and Pitcher Plants. (The stars of the insect-eating plants, the Venus's Fly Traps, are North Carolina specialties.) Sundews are often hard to find amidst the moss and the cranberries, but the light was right, and the sun glinted off the sticky liquid at the tips of the traps. When a fly succumbs to the siren song of the scent, it winds up glued to the plant, and, soon enough, flooded with digestive enzymes that turn the insect into plant food. Good thing, for larger species, that sundews are only about six inches tall.