At a very young age, Kevin Zhang learned that gardening was not for the faint of heart. Some of his earliest memories are of his grandmother plucking fat green caterpillars from the tomato plants in her garden with a pair of chopsticks and dropping them into soapy water.
So perhaps it's no surprise that -- after stumbling upon a Venus flytrap at a nursery near his childhood home in Chicago -- Zhang became fascinated with carnivorous plants, those that snare and snack on insects for extra nutrients. "I remember being instantly captivated by the unusual appearance and the way they were able to move," he says. "I was hooked."
After some trial and (lots of) error, Zhang says that by the time he got to high school, he had gotten the hang of growing carnivorous plants. While he was in college at Princeton, he expanded his collection to a 10-gallon fish tank full of butterworts and sundews and joined the botany club, where he met his future wife over a table of tropical pitcher plants.
The couple moved to Philadelphia for medical school, an aquarium of predatory plants in tow. Zhang's collection was larger and more eclectic than ever, but something was missing.
"After college, I definitely missed the camaraderie and being part of a plant group," says Zhang, now a 30-year-old medical resident.
He cast about online, looking for a new crew of carnivorous plant lovers, but came up empty. With the support (and extensive contact list) of Michael Szesze, owner of the Carnivorous Plant Nursery in Smithsburg, Md., Zhang started his own.
Seven years later, the group that Zhang founded, the Mid-Atlantic Carnivorous Plant Society, boasts about 80 dues-paying members and 1,200 followers on Facebook. They've flocked to lectures, plant auctions and field trips to bogs and arboretums from Virginia to New York, eager to commune with fellow carnivorous plant enthusiasts. Zhang has been delighted by the interest. This month, MACPS embarked on another new project: Its first plant show.
An all-consuming obsession
Everyone is welcome at MACPS get-togethers, but, according to Zhang, the world of carnivorous plants tends to attract certain types of people: scientists, teachers, children.
"Lots of kids show up to our meetings who already have an extensive knowledge of carnivorous plants," Zhang said. "I think it's attractive for a young kid to see a plant that can move, that can do something that's not just sit there and look kind of pretty."
But there are plenty of adult members, too. One of them is 32-year-old MACPS Vice President Rick Roberts, who spotted his first pitcher plant in a California orchid house when he was 19. "I was mesmerized and had to get one," he says. "One turned into two. Two turned into five. It exploded from that point onwards."
That's the way it is with carnivorous plants, Roberts says. "It's really addicting. Most people wind up being collectors."
He's even recruited his wife, Hannah, who handles social media and marketing for MACPS, into the pastime, despite her initial reluctance. Hannah was with Rick when he encountered that first pitcher plant. "I thought it was kind of ugly," she says. Fifteen years and many plants later, the 33-year-old graphic designer has changed her tune. "I'm obsessed with them now."
These days, the couple are not just collectors but purveyors, raising carnivorous plants in two greenhouses and a grow tent in their Woodbridge, Va., backyard and selling them online.
For Rick, the best thing about MACPS is geeking out with people who get it.
"There's not really anything quite like talking to someone who is in this hobby," he says, "just to be able to share your love and affinity and enjoyment of these plants with each other."
He's hardly the first person to feel so strongly. There are an estimated 720 species of carnivorous plants growing on every continent but Antarctica, and the violent vegetation has fascinated everyone from Arthur Conan Doyle to Charles B. Griffith, the screenwriter who penned "Little Shop of Horrors" about a plant that feeds on human blood.
After encountering the sundew Drosera rotundifolia in the wild in 1859, Charles Darwin wrote to a friend, "I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world." He published two books about carnivorous plants, which evolved over millions of years in nutrient-poor habitats like acidic bogs and the sandy soil of the tropics.
To get the nourishment they need, these plants have developed elaborate hunting tactics. For example, the interior of a Venus flytrap has about six trigger hairs. When an unsuspecting insect touches two of those hairs within about 20 seconds, an electrical impulse causes the lobes of the plant to snap shut. The sealed trap then acts like a stomach, breaking down the insect with the plant's own enzymes over the course of about 10 days.
A pitcher plant, meanwhile, entices its prey with bright colors and delicious but slippery nectar that acts as a chute into the plant's vase-shaped trap. Ensnared insects drown in the water and digestive fluid pooled at the bottom of the trap and are slowly broken down into a nutrient-rich slurry absorbed by the pitcher's walls.
Diminutive sundews catch and crush insects with their sticky tentacles, while aquatic bladderworts live up to their name -- using an underwater bladder to suck up prey like a vacuum cleaner.
A growing community
Keeping houseplants has perhaps never been more popular, but for many "plant parents," carnivorous species may seem too exotic or finicky to bring home.
"There's a perception that they're extremely hard to take care of," says Samara Gray, MACPS secretary and a greenhouse coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania.
The plants do best outdoors, but they can thrive inside with a little coddling. Most carnivorous varieties need full sun. "A bright window is good enough for many," Gray says, otherwise, an inexpensive grow light can get the job done. Additionally, because they evolved in nutrient-poor environments, carnivorous plants will wither if doused with mineral-rich tap water. Growers should stick to distilled or rainwater.
Another misconception? That owning a carnivorous plant means being accomplice to insect murder. Like any other plants, carnivorous plants photosynthesize for energy and use their roots to suck up water. An occasional housefly or even a meal worm is a nice treat, but not a necessity. "People think that the plants have to eat to sustain themselves, that they're some amalgamation between a plant and animal," Rick Roberts says. "But bugs are effectively a fertilizer that helps them grow faster and more prolifically."
If you do decide to add a flytrap or pitcher plant to your collection, there's one more thing to keep in mind: Many carnivorous plants are in decline or endangered because of poaching. That means collecting plants from the wild, including plant parts and seeds, is a big no-no.
"Yes, you can see Venus flytraps at Trader Joe's all the time, but in nature they are critically endangered," says Gray.
To avoid buying poached plants online, Rick Roberts says to look for a transparent seller. "Retailers who have been doing this for a long time can offer specific information about where plants are coming from."
Buying from people you know can ensure ethical collection -- and come with a discount. At in-person MACPS meetings, members often swap extra cuttings and hold auctions in which carnivorous plants "tend to sell at ridiculously low prices," Zhang says, "which is fantastic. It's the whole point of this group."
Beginners found lots of inspiration at MACPS first plant show, held on Oct. 11 at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, including reputable vendors and lectures on how to get started. Zhang estimates that more than 700 people attended.
Veteran growers like Zhang, whose collection once included a dedicated refrigerator for plants that required a nighttime temperature drop and today spans a small greenhouse and basement -- entered their most impressive specimens in the group's first judged plant show. The award for best in show went to Owen Shieh's Byblis gigantea, and the people's choice honors went to Keegan Orr for a Nepenthes truncata x edwardsiana.
For carnivorous convert Hannah Roberts, the show was a chance to admire not just the plants but also the people who love them. "I love seeing people growing their plants and sharing them," she says. "I love seeing the passion."
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Ashley Stimpson is a freelance writer in Columbia, Md.