Bladderworts

We have a number of carnivorous plants that are native to the Northwest, but most people don't ever see them in the wild.  To do so, you have to locate specific types of wetlands and then go get your feet dirty.  Many of these wetlands were drained for farmland in years past, so we are left with a few bogs and fens that are either too remote or persistently soggy for farmers to have destroyed them.

A number of years ago, I read an article in the International Carnivorous Plant Society's newsletter by Hawkeye Rondeau.  In the article, he described his searches for a rare species of bladderwort called Utricularia ochraleuca.  I was intrigued by the idea of undocumented populations of native plants, and I determined to begin my own searches.

Through my contacts at the botanical garden where I worked, I learned the locations of a number of bogs in the Cascade mountains of Oregon and Washington.  When I first began to explore the bogs and fens, I remember being a plant frenzy that would leave me utterly exhausted by the end of the day.  I soon expanded my search to North Idaho and adjacent counties in Washington, where yet more botanical discoveries were to be found. 

In case you aren't familiar with wetland terminology, a fen is a wetland that has water seeping through it from underground.  They typically have a creek that emerges somewhere in the bog and flows out the lowest point.

A bog, on the other hand, only gets its water that falls into as rain and snow.  

Nearly all the peat wetlands that I've visited in the Northwest are fens.  No two bogs or fens are alike.  Most of this depends on the nutrient content of the soils and water.  In higher nutrient bogs, grasses and shrubs dominate.  Carnivorous plants are less common or absent.  

In the  most nutrient-poor sites, like the one in this picture, plants that are well-adapted to low-nutrient environments abound.  This is where you find the most carnivorous plants, such as the sundews, Drosera anglica.  The taller white flowers in this picture are false asphodels, Tofieldia glutinosa (not carnivorous.).

When I first went to this bog, I was blown away by the sheer size of the sundew population.  I once estimated that there were upwards of 44 million individual sundews.  Somewhere out there, there must be a variegated one, but I've never seen it.

The ground is red with them, and, on sunny days, there is an insect holocaust underway.  Damselfies, craneflies, and butterflies are struggling against their inevitable deaths in all directions.  If the wind is quiet, you can hear the desperate sounds of their efforts.  It is kind of disgusting, actually.

Each rivulet that drains the fen is filled with the foliage of bladderworts.  Utricularia minor- the lesser bladderwort- is found in many of the deeper creeks.  (By deep I mean several inches)  The shallower streams are filled with Utricularia intermedia, a more robust species.  In late June, their yellow flowers can be seen across the soggy landscape.  

One afternoon, while my friend Janet and I were exploring a stand of lodgepole pine trees in the middle of the fen, we found a plant that looked very similar to Utricularia intermedia- but that had red foliage.  This photo is not the best (I am not a photographer), but you can see the red foliage in the water.  The upturned yellow flowers that are standing on stems several inches above the water belong to the bladderwort as well.  

Here is a closeup of one of the flowers.  Though the plant looks almost exactly like Utricularia intermedia, the short spur (on the lower side of the flower) indicates that it is actually U. ochraleuca.  

This species had not yet been documented from this location, so I'm pretty sure that we were its discoverers.  Fun stuff :)


And now for a gratuitous picture of one of the orchids that grows in the bog, Plantanthera dilatata.   This species is powerfully fragrant.  On a warm day, you can smell the flowers from several feet away.  It grows in slightly elevated parts of the bogs among grasses.

If you aren't afraid of getting your feet wet or muddy, I highly recommend checking out any bogs you might have in your area.  The plant species can be really fascinating.  I love returning to this bog every year- both in the spring to enjoy the flowers and foliage of the carnivorous plants, and in the fall to pick the cranberries.