Most people don’t expect to find carnivorous plants growing in the South Carolina Lowcountry, but they are found in pocassins and bogs along the coast in protected places like Francis Marion National Forest.

Tucked beside the Coastal Expeditions Shem Creek Outpost is a small educational bog filled with one of the most fascinating native plants in North America: pitcher plants.

This display garden, planted with specimens that were purchased from a licensed plant nursery, was created by Coastal Expeditions guide Chance Feimster.  He is a student of the natural world and has an encyclopedic knowledge of amphibians, plants, reptiles and insects that makes him a great guide, especially in places where you’d find carnivorous plants nearby.

Visually, pitcher plants are almost impossible to ignore. Their tall green tubes are streaked with reds and pinks that glow in the morning light. The top of the plant flares outward like a hood or flower, attracting insects with both color and nectar.

But beneath that beauty is an incredibly effective passive trap.

The rim of the pitcher produces nectar that insects love. As they move around the lip of the plant feeding, they often make their way underneath the hood where the surface becomes slick and difficult to grip. The insects eventually lose their footing and fall into the tube below.

It sounds like science fiction, but this is a completely natural adaptation that evolved right here in the coastal plain ecosystems of the Southeast.

Pitcher plants thrive in wet savannas, pocosins, seepage bogs, and blackwater habitats — landscapes that once covered huge portions of the South Carolina coastal plain. Today, many of these habitats have disappeared or become fragmented, making native carnivorous plant populations increasingly rare.