What's soil got to do with it?

The soil in Southern Alabama is really really poor. We are in a coastal plain. The plain formed many millions of years ago from eroding mountains North of here. Our soil is mostly sand. Sand doesn't provide any nutrition to a plant.

Besides being on sandy ground, as we walk along the paths at Graham Creek Nature Preserve, we are also only a foot or two above the water table. All this means that any plant that grows here has to find a way to survive with wet feet and not much at all in the way of nutrition.

That water soaked, sandy soil is one of the things that makes our area so very special. So special that you can find plants here that are very rare in other parts of the United States. Carnivorous plants! Try to imagine a plant species living generation after generation in very poor soil conditions. Over millenia, for survival, that plant evolves the ability to take advantage of the insects it encounters - the gnats, flies and other bugs in the environment.

That's what we have right here in Graham Creek. Several types of carnivorous plants! We have pitcher plants, sundews, and one of my personal favorites, Tracy's Sundew - Drosera tracyi. This plant looks like light and airy yellowish bunches of grass growing among the green plants, but it looks like it's covered with dew, even on a dry afternoon. That dew is really sticky nectar, and if you look closely, you can see tiny insects stuck in the drops. The plant digests the insects as they stick to the "dew."