Australia has long been something of an aspirational destination for me; the countryside, people, and, most of all, plants have all been a great source of fascination. Mostly the plants though.

On a two week trip to the country last fall, I was left with a bit over two days at the end for botanizing. One of those days was spent in the Blue Mountains around Blackheath. Robert Gibson was kind enough to describe a well-known spot for carnivorous plants along the trail between Govetts Leap (pictured above) and Horseshoe Falls.

The Drosera on Lantau Island are confusing; there are lots of little rosetty plants that resemble an abstract intermediate point between typical Drosera spatulata and Drosera oblanceolata, but nothing that is clearly Drosera spatulata. Are the sundews simply a particularly abberant form of D. spatulata? Are they hybrids of some sort, or perhaps a new species due to be spilt out on its own in an upcomming taxanomic revision? I certainly don’t know.

These images are from a large Darlingtonia californica site I have visited many times at $8 Mountain in southern Oregon. Here are other images from the same location, and here are yet more. These pictures are from an October visit; I find it interesting to compare the state of the Darlingtonia and habitat with that of other seasons.

Known primarily for casinos, egg tarts, and its proximity to Hong Kong, Macau is also home to a small selection of carnivorous plants. Drosera spatulata, Nepenthes mirabilis, Utricularia bifida, and U. caerulea may not be the sort of exotic rarities apt to excite the botanical cognoscenti; nonetheless, observing them growing together on a rugged maritime hillside is not an everyday occasion for most plant nerds.

I've visited the Darlingtonia californica fens and seeps around 8 Dollar Mountain repeatedly over a number of years. Southern Oregon is fascinating botanically not just for the carnivorous plants found scattered about it's remote places but also for sheer non-carnivorous botanical diversity. From dense coniferous forrest to sparsely vegetated serpentine slopes, the variety of plants follows the variable native geology, which is hard to beat in the pacific northwest.

Dionaea muscipula

Photos of a few of the non-native plants growing at Albion Bog before their removal by the Nature Conservancy (the owners of the bog).

When I ran across a paper describing a new Utricularia species from Thailand the thing gave my memory a good jog. Had I seen that plant already? After digging thorough a few harddrives, it looks like yes, I did see Utricularia ramosissima on a trip to Thailand a couple years ago!

The Darlingtonia californica fens around $8 Mountain in Josephine County are probably the most attractive, best preserved Darlingtonia sites in Oregon. Here are a few photos from one of my favorite locations.

The pygmy forests along Mendocino’s coast are utterly fascinating. The place is an ecological wonderland of tiny, gnarled trees growing in depauperate podzols amongst rhododendrons and mosses. Rain is far more common than blue skies and the temperature rarely deviates far from a balmy 15°C. But that isn’t what first drew me to the place nor is it why I keep going back. No, what I find most intriguing about this terrace of acidic, sandy soil and stunted vegetation is that it is perfectly tailored to the environmental requirements of a number of carnivorous plants.

Drosera rotundifolia is a native fixture of the Sphagnum hummocks that dot the landscape but has been joined in the past few decades by a number of other stalkers of legged protein. Beginning in the 1970s, a group of Bay Area horticulturalists began augmenting the native flora with carnivores of their choosing, transforming a portion of the pygmy forest into a bizarre sort of botanic garden. They toyed with plantings of Darlingtonia and Sarracenia alongside swales of Drosera binata, exotic Drosera slackii, and even Heliamphora.

Sarracenia leucophylla from Washington County Alabama.

Dionaea from Hosford, Florida with a fly (from Hermosa Beach, California).