This is the international year for biodiversity. Early this year I planned to write a series of diaries in honor of the year. I haven't got very far but will try to make up for it now. Yesterday I finally visited a habitat I'd heard quite a bit about ever since we first considered moving to Tallahassee over three years ago. Although the Florida panhandle is called the redneck Riviera and is rightfully known for its right wing politics, it is also one of the most biodiverse regions of the US. The long leaf pine forests, rivers, and swamps house an incredible diversity of plants, reptiles, and other forms of life. One spectacular example of this diversity are bogs filled with carnivorous plants.
Why should a plant eat animals? With all due respect to Roger Corman and John Wyndham, carnivorous plants do not rampage about eating stray pets or helpless humans. Prey items are usually insects and the plants live in a particular type of ecological situation. Usually carnivorous plants grow in very nutrient poor soil, mostly commonly because of high acidity (low pH). Although plants can obtain carbon from the atmosphere they normally need to get other nutrients such as nitrogen and calcium from the soil. When those nutrients are lacking in the soil, animals are good alternative source.
As if that wasn't interesting enough carnivorous plants are great system to study parallel and not so parallel evolution. Different groups of plants have evolved very different mechanisms for caching prey. Also, in the case of pitcher plants, a entire of community of organisms has evolved to live inside the plants' pitchers. The mosquito in the above picture may be laying eggs inside the plant.
Yesterday I finally went out with some people who know the Apalachicola National Forest well to look at bog plants.
First we visited a bog north of the forest, just west of the town of Hosford. The plant in the above two pictures, the white top pitcher plant, is found there in abundance. This species is probably the most visually striking pitcher plant. It does not normally occur that far east but appears to have been introduced into this bog from the other side of the Apalachicola river. Also present in this bog are huge numbers of Venus Flytraps, which are naturally only found in North and South Carolina. How they got here I have no idea.
There were also some interesting native species as well such as this sundew.
These three plants represent three different strategies for catching prey. Pitcher plants lure insects in with nectar and drown and digest them in internal pools of fluid. Venus flytraps mechanically catch prey using a trigger mechanism. Sundews use adhesive fluid to catch prey.
From there we moved on to visit several roadside ditches. These artificial habitats are excellent places for bog plants.
Here is a parrothead pitcher plant. It has a very small opening because the operculum (the top part) hangs so low but it does prey inside.
I believe this is the purple pitcher plant, the most widespread species, occurring over a wide part of North America. You can clearly see the fluid chamber here.
Among the other plants growing in these ditches were these orange fringed orchids.
There were quite a few other flowers growing in the ditches - don't know what most of them were.
This one is a Death Camas, so named because it is highly toxic.
And of course there were insects as well.
Here's an adorable grasshopper nymph.
This moth was an amazing mimic of a plant bud. If startled it would always land in this same basic position.
Moving on to the main event. We stopped at a large open area, backed by a forest of dwarf baldcypress. Presumably the baldcypress are kept small by the lack of nutrients although I don't know that for certain. For those of you unfamiliar was baldcypress they are a common southeastern tree usually growing in extremely wet situations such as swamps or in rivers. They are a conifer like a pine but lose their needles every winter (hence the 'bald').
You can see a cypress knee sticking up out from the pitcher plants. These knees allow the water-logged roots to get oxygen, much like the prop roots of mangroves. The pitcher plants are a fourth species, yellow pitcher plants.
These bogs are, perhaps surprisingly for such a wet habitat, dependent on fire. If there are not regular fires then trees will take over and shade out the plants.
Here are few more plants and animals found in the area.
There were numerous wasps and other insects lured by the nectar produced by the pitchers.
Pine Lily - a really spectacular flower.
These lynx spiders were seen on top of many of the yellow pitcher plants.
Some of these organisms are widespread in eastern North America. Others have very restricted ranges in northwest Florida. Much of this habitat is at least partially protected by the National Forest. However a changing climate might change the water or fire regime in the area and lead to the extinction of many species. Changes in logging practices could also have a devastating effect. This is not as obvious a habitat as the rain forest but it is home to many species.
Let's finish off with a couple of roadside animals we saw.
Zebra Swallowtails feeding and drinking salts and water in the sand
And finally this beautiful corn snake - the first wild one I've ever seen.