Summer marks the blooming season for one of North Carolina’s most ferocious native plants – but don’t worry, this one doesn’t sing.
The Venus flytrap may not be straight out of Little Shop of Horrors, but it is carnivorous, snatching unsuspecting insects with its jaw-like leaves. In Brunswick County’s Green Swamp Preserve, the plants bloom beneath a canopy of pines, alongside a host of other meat-eating flora.
Michelle Ly is a conservation coordinator for The Nature Conservancy, the organization that owns the preserve. She says the flytraps are easy to miss unless you know where to look.
In a sunny clearing, Ly points out a cluster of the plants at the base of a pine. Their bright green traps are wide open, waiting for prey.
“Oh, man. This is beautiful,” Ly says. “Look at these traps. They're huge.”
It’s no Audrey II, but the plant is pretty impressive. Each leaf has trigger hairs, and when they’re activated just right, the trap slams shut — no musical number required. But Ly advises against testing it, as they can only perform that magic trick a few times in their lifetimes.
“Kids will come out here and they'll want to touch them to death, which is fine, I get it,” she says. “But you know, when you touch it and it closes, you're taking away its opportunity to eat.”
Turns out, Venus flytraps are a little finicky. They need very specific conditions in order to thrive natively — conditions that are only found within a 90-mile radius of Wilmington.
So what makes this area so ideal?
“A lot of these carnivorous plants need a lot of nutrients,” she says. “Our soils don't give a lot of nutrients, and that's why they are carnivorous. They're getting nutrients elsewhere.”
That same environment is also ideal for other carnivorous plants. Along the preserve trail, Ly points out one of her favorites.
“There’s sundews right here that are carnivorous,” she said, pointing to a plant with red-tipped tentacles. “They’re like sticky fly paper. I think they’re the cutest thing in the world.”
Cute, unless you’re an insect. Those tentacles help digest bugs lured in by their namesake “dew.” The species is what’s called passively carnivorous, meaning it can trap prey without any movement at all.
Ly’s other favorite, pitcher plants, are also considered passive, but their killing method is still pretty gruesome. Their sweet nectar draws insects into deep, tube-shaped leaves — and once inside, there’s no way out.
“These digestive enzymes at the bottom of these plants will break down the insect itself,” she says. “So some of these old ones from last year — it's kind of fun — you can take a knife and cut them open, and the exoskeleton of the insects will still be there.”
If all that sounds grim, their other means of survival is even more intense: fire.
There’s evidence of it on a patch of forest along the trail — tiny green flytraps are just beginning to reemerge through the ash.
“The Venus flytraps grow from a rhizome underneath, similar to a tulip bulb,” Ly explained. “So these traps are just its leaves, they'll burn and they'll pop right back up.”
Fire prevents shrubs and hardwoods from overtaking the savannah. It used to occur naturally more frequently, but widespread fire suppression efforts in the 1980s shrank the flytrap’s range. Now, controlled burns are needed to maintain their habitat — and they require careful planning.
“Something we look at every time we burn is, are we blowing smoke toward a community, a school, a hospital?” Ly said. “Burning around more people comes with more considerations.”
Poaching is another serious threat. In 2023, two people were charged with stealing more than 600 Venus flytraps from another one of The Nature Conservancy’s preserves. Because the plants are so rare, taking them is a felony in North Carolina.
“And thankfully, the game warden was able to recover them, and we're able to replant them,” Ly explains.
Several groups, including The Nature Conservancy, are working to protect the plants. Ly says one organization even performs rescue missions, moving flytraps before development projects break ground.
With rapid growth reshaping the coastal plains, she says now’s the time to prioritize the species and the many otherworldly species that share their home.
“The Venus flytrap is like the gateway plant. It really draws people in, and then people discover there's so much other, other really amazing things here to see.”
You can see 14 different species of carnivorous plants in the Green Swamp Preserve, including the fly traps. None of them talk — at least, not yet.