More background material:
I had visited the New Jersey
Pine Barrens twice before. The first time was when I was an undergraduate;
I had come seeking the Jersey Devil. No luck. The second time I was in
graduate school; it was one of my first-ever trips to see carnivorous
plants. Better luck. In the intervening years I have fondly recalled those
trips many times.
So in a way, it felt like a homecoming, and I was thrilled.
I met my
guide, Dave Evans (more about him later), and we went to a lake he knew well.
Immediately we encountered nearly all the carnivorous plants we would
see that day. The Pine Barrens are like that--most good sites have the
same suite of carnivorous plant species present, but in different
forms and distributions.
This photograph shows a
Drosera filiformis flower.
