Carnivorous Plants are miracles of nature. They blur the distinction between animal and plant kingdoms. They have enzymes. They move. They trap prey.

The famous Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is not a tropical plant, as some people believe. It is native to the pine swamps of coastal North Carolina. Growing in an area only 10x10 square miles on this planet, it is truly a miracle that they have survived the evolutionary ride.

But survive they have, with style: recurving fingers that snap shut around flying prey that happens to land in the jaw-like digestion chamber, red coloring to attract insects, and glistening drops of fragrant attractant over the trap surface.

Growing next to the Venus Flytraps are the Pitcher Plants. Pitcher plants have a wider territory. They are found throughout swampy wetlands from Mississippi, to Florida, and on up the Eastern Coastline to Canada. One species, the Purple Pitcher Plant, even grows across Canada. Only one distantly related Pitcher Plant, the California Cobra Lily, is found on the West Coast.

Octopus Plants and Starfish Plants (Drosera and Pinguicula) are found throughout the world.

In common to all, is an environment very low in soil nutrients. Often these areas are rain filled swamps or seeps where the water is almost 100% salt and nutrient free. True, it may look brown from tannins dissolving from rotting wood and leaves; but, there is little for the plants to use for food.

It is almost as if the plants "noticed" the air, thick and blackened by swarms of flies and decided that the eating was better topside, than at root level. And the evolutionary competition for specialized adaptations was on.

Carnivory is a world-wide phenomenon. In Venezuela, Heliamphora Pitcher Plants developed a pitcher with an "overflow" gate to let excess rain water escape. In Borneo, the Nepenthes Pitcher Plants took to the trees, perhaps to be closer to their food source? In Alabama, Pitcher Plants developed graceful hoods to deflect heavy raindrops to the outside of the tall leaf-traps. In South Africa, the Octopus Plant (Drosera capensis) developed leaves with glue tipped tentacles which can sense the presence of a fly caught on their surface. These tentacles, one after the other, bend over, in widening concentric circles of glue bearing embrace until their prey is digested.

Sadly, the greatest threat to these evolutionarily successful plants is not El Nino, global warming, or other natural changes. It is asphalt. Asphalt roads. Asphalt parking lots. Where the bulldozer goes, the plants can never return.

Even open and protected areas are no longer safe haven. As we demand more and more paper and pulp products, we are draining the pine swamps to increase lumber yields. We are supressing fires which used to burn the underbrush clean under the pines. Without water, and without sunshine, the carnivorous plants disappear from these pine plantations within a few years time.

So, while many children often ask, "Can this plant hurt me?" the reverse is really the case. We are their worst enemy.