Meeting the Meat-Eating Plants of Big Thicket National Forest

Pitcher Plants

 

Date: April 27, 2025

Place: Big Thicket National Preserve, Kountze, Texas

Coordinates: 30.582235, -94.335772

Length: 1.3 miles

Level: easy 

 

 

Last April Pappa Quail and I flew to southeast Texas on vacation. This trip gave us a chance to reconnect with old friends living in Texas. On the day after we flew in we met our friends at Big Thicket National Preserve and walked the Nature Trail near the visitor center. We completed that walk quickly and decided to walk the Pitcher Plant Trail - another short trail at a different part of the preserve - a walk with more unique botanical interest because there were carnivorous plants there. The Pitcher Plant Trail is north of the visitor center so we needed to drive there and reconvene. 

Our hike as captured by my GPS

When arriving at a new part of the country, everything is new and exciting, even what for locals might be a common weed.  I started snapping photos as soon as I exited the car. 

Straggler Daisy, Calyptocarpus vialis

Being excited about every new wildflower, I took photos indiscriminately. Later I found out that one of the tiny flowers I photographed is a relative of the Californian blue-eyed grass. I can see the family resemblance. 

Blue Pigroot, Sisyrinchium micranthum

We down the forest trail, continuing our chat as if we didn't split into separate cars before getting there. The forest looked very much the same as the one we hiked in earlier. Same mixture of spring-foliaged broadleaf trees and tall, thin pine trees. 

Pitcher Plant Trail

At last, on one of these pine tree, Pappa Quail photographed his first bird in Big Thicket that day. It was a red-bellied woodpecker - a common bird in that area, but not common for us to see. 

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Here too the forest was of sparsely-placed trees that allowed much sunlight down to the forest floor. The undergrowth comprised of shoulder-high bushes which I did not recognize. The bushes however, were covered with a vine that I was very familiar with - wild grape. Not the California species, of course, but Vitis, nonetheless. 

Wild Grapes, Vitis sp. 

Another vine was also easily recognized. The brambles were well into the fruiting stage - the berries looked plump and healthy, and there were many of them. Alas, we were there too early in the season to enjoy the fruit - none of the berries were ripe. 

Blackberry, Rubus sp. 

The thistles were last year's thistles, but they were holding on to their seeds still. I didn't pay too much attention to them until my friend called me over to see one that had beetles walking on its seed head. The beetles were large and beautiful. They moved slowly on the thistle's seed head. They didn't appear to be eating or courting one another. It wasn't clear what they were doing there other than hanging out. 

Eastern Leaf-footed Bug

The aster family was represented along this trail, although not as much as I might have expected for such a prominent group of plants. 

Black-eyed Susan

One representative of the aster family I had to look twice at before I could place there - it didn't have the classic composite look. It might be those protective leaves below the inflorescence that had floral colors rather than the usual green. 

Old Plainsman, Hymenopappus artemisiifolius

We reached the bog area and stepped onto the boardwalk that spanned it. Below us was the moist bog earth, on it grew different plants from what we've seen so far. There were little yellow flowers blooming there and I snapped a general shot and was ready to take a closer one when I heard the exclamation of my hike's companions - they have found the pitcher plants. Days later, after looking at my photos on the computer screen, I found that those little yellow flowers were another species of carnivorous plants. Moreover, when I enlarged the photo I realized that another carnivorous plant was right below those yellow bladderworts - the tiny pink sundew. 

Zigzag Bladderwort, Utricularia subulata, and Pink Sundew, Drosera capillaris

I joined the others looking at the area where the pitcher plants were. The area was quite large, but the field of pitchers was fragmented by bushes. 

Pitcher plants are carnivorous. The bog soil is poor in fixed nitrogen so the carnivorous plants evolved to catch and digest animals. Their prey can be and animal small enough to be trapped inside the pitcher but the victims are usually insects. The prey insects are attracted to the moisture on the pitcher's lip. As they consume the liquid they dip further into the pitcher until they slip and fall inside. At the bottom of the pitcher there is digestive liquid that slowly digests the prey and releases the nutrients to be absorbed into the plant. 

Pale Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia alata

I've seen pitcher plants in nature before. They were the California Pitcher plants (although I have seen them in Oregon). The California pitcher plants belong to a different genus but they look similar and their mechanism of hunting is practically the same. 

Pale Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia alata

The one problem for an insect-eating plant is that when it comes to fertilization it needs to take special measures to not eat the potential pollinators. The pitcher plant flowers are therefore, well removed from the pitchers themselves. 

Pale Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia alata

The next chance I had I took a better photo of the little yellow flowers in the big. Still, they were so small and I was so distracted by the pitchers and by socializing that even then I didn't look too closely at them.

Zigzag Bladderwort, Utricularia subulata

The boardwalk was well raised above the bog. The wildflowers that bloomed there were all quite small, perhaps because of the poor soil. 

Wood-Candle, Schoenolirion croceum

I was beginning to get familiar with some of the local wildflowers already. The helmet skullcap I already remembered from the previous walk earlier. 

Helmet Skullcap, Scutellaria integrifolia

We moved slowly to the end of the boardwalk. There we had a really nice view of the bog. The soil was completely obscured by the plants but the trees stayed shy of the bog and the numerous pitche plants gave away the nature of the soil below. 

Past the pitcher plant area the forest returned. We decided to complete the loop and commenced walking into the forest. The trees here were broadleaf and grew more dense, so less light was filtering down to the ground. The undergrowth was much thinner here, and much of it was ferns. 

Virginia Chainfern, Woodwardia virginica

we did came upon one more bog area. A smaller big that still had trees (small ones) growing in it, but had no pitcher plants. 

Pitcher Plant Trail

There were other small wildflowers there, and I took a few photos and moved along to catch up with Pappa Quail and my friends. Upon analyzing the photos at home I learned that this was in fact, the forth species of carnivorous plant we encountered on that trail. 

Small Butterwort, Pinguicula pumila 

Below is a cropped and enlarged section of one of the butterwort photos that I took. On the top center part of the cropped image are the butterwort leaves. The leaves are taco-shaped and sticky on the inside. Insects are caught in them, and digested by the enzyme-rich goo that the leaves produce. The butterwort flower is, naturally, removed from the trap by a long stalk. In the photo, right below the butterwort flower is the tiny rust-colored rosette of the sundew leaves. The sundew was the plant I didn't even see was there in real time. Its tiny, spoon-shaped leaves are covered with gland hairs that produce sticky goo in which insects are trapped. Then, as with the butterwort, the leaves curl to coat the poor prey with digestive enzymes. 

Pink Sundew, Drosera capillaris

Now I wish I was there again, to take a closer look at these fascinating plants. As it was, we continued down the trail through the lovely forest. 

Pitcher Plant Trail

The denser parts of the forest had much fewer bushes in the undergrowth. Instead, there were lovely patches of bright green yellow peatmoss. 

Yellow Peatmoss, Sphagnum lescurii

There were a few flooded areas in the forest, and a couple of places where we needed to carefully cross muddy parts of the trail. 

Puddle

We found the ladies' tresses orchids blooming along this trail too. There were a few of them and I got my opportunity to get better photos than those of the single orchid I saw on the earlier hike. 

Ladies' Tresses, Spiranthes sp.

The Pitcher Plant Loop Trail isn't long at all but it is so rich in interesting sights that we took a good long time to walk it. Eventually however, we were nearing a closure and started discussing what to do next. 

Pitcher Plant Trail

Our friends were planning to drive back to their home that day so we decided to go to lunch together, after which we would part ways. We had a very lovely morning together in Big Thicket National Preserve. For me it was the first sampling of one of the most amazing forests I've ever visited, and I would visit it a couple more times before the end of our trip. 

Red Maple, Acer rubrum

 Sometimes I don't see the value of what I'm seeing in real time. I am glad to find out, even at a later time, that I did get to see on that one hike all four carnivorous plant types that grow in Big Thicket National Preserve.