There are just a handful of rivers in Vermont that have calcium in the bedrock where groundwater spills out from the banks. These places are special because many plants will only grow under these specific conditions.
Along one stretch of river like this, protected by The Nature Conservancy, there are willows, sedges, a tiny, uncommon orchid, and an unassuming flower called the sticky false asphodel.
"They look almost like an iris, the way the leaves sort of splay out. A very miniature iris," Aaron Marcus told me on a visit in June to see the tiny white flowers in bloom.
Marcus is a botanist with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, and they didn't want to share where we were to protect the plants growing here.
"It’s kind of a shock to the botanical world, maybe to all of us, that we’re still finding plants right under our noses that we’re finding are carnivorous"Aaron Marcus, Vermont Fish & Wildlife
The petals have a dab of pink, surrounded by a ring of brown balls, like bells of a jester’s cap.
And if you look closely, you can see their shiny, sticky stems covered in specks of purple. Until recently, no one suspected those stems could be sticky for a reason — to catch insects.
"It’s kind of a shock to the botanical world, maybe to all of us, that we’re still finding plants right under our noses that we’re finding are carnivorous," Marcus said.
In 2021, a group of scientists discovered that a different species of false asphodels catches insects and digests them with a special enzyme. They showed the plants absorb nitrogen from the bugs and incorporate them into their leaves. Sticky false asphodels are likely doing the same thing, but no one has studied the flow of nutrients in this species yet to confirm.
"We're kind of assuming that these are carnivorous as well, but we aren't 100% sure," Marcus said. "But I'm not sure why else they would be catching so many insects on their stems."
What made this finding so surprising is false asphodels make up a whole new lineage of carnivorous plants. They're unrelated to any other insect-eating plants biologists have documented, including a few that grow in Vermont.
"That means these ones presumably evolved carnivory on their own, independently, in their own little way," Marcus said.
Marcus has been fascinated by plants since they were a little kid. And learning this plant has been catching, and likely eating, insects without anyone in modern science knowing was humbling.
"It's like all of our plants are living secret lives that we just aren't in on," they said. "Sometimes they’re doing some really clever things that we just haven’t even detected yet."
And here, all you had to do was look.
"It's like all of our plants are living secret lives that we just aren't in on."Aaron Marcus, Vermont Fish & Wildlife
Last July, Marcus visited one of the only other spots in Vermont where sticky false asphodel grows, and confirmed that, sure enough, their stems were full of insects.
But this June, the plant's potential diet of bugs wasn’t so obvious. One stem had a dark speck the size of a gnat, but it turned out to be a grain of sand. Others were decisively bug free.
Not finding any dead insects on these plants is new information, too.
"We’re all learning this together,” Marcus said. “Later in the season last year, they were pretty covered in insects. I guess we’re just a little early for them.”
After some searching, and help from a pocket magnifying glass, Marcus did find a stalk with a single dead bug.
You could see its little black body and wings. Stuck. Slowly, we think, being eaten.
_
Lexi Krupp is a corps member with Report for America, a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and regions.
