Nova Scotia Bogs

June 10th, 2008

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted in awhile. I just returned from a nice vacation in the wonderful Canadian province of Nova Scotia. We spent two weeks exploring every corner of the province, so while I get my aquariums back into presentable shape, I’m going to share some of the nature pictures from my trip. (This is incentive for me to sort through over 1000 photos that we took.)

The two Canadian national parks in Nova Scotia are Kejimkujik and the Cape Breton Highlands. We visited the two parks, and found carnivorous plants in both! First, at the Keji Seaside Adjunct park, there is a wonderful trail that winds through a bog, and eventually takes you to a rocky beach where seals perch themselves on small islands offshore. Today, I’m just going to cover the bog.

Keji Seaside Adjunct

All along the path, pitcher plants were mixed in among the moss and bushes. The patch below wasn’t the best looking bunch there, but unfortunately, this was one of the better pictures I got. These plants were mostly yellow and orange in color.

Pitcher Plant

And of course, the plants were feeding. While ants were a popular food found floating in the pitchers, this lucky plant got a fairly large beetle.

Pitcher Plant

Still being early in the season, none of the pitcher plants were flowering yet, but a few were starting the process, sending flower stalks toward the sky. Eventually, these flower heads will unravel revealing a rather unique looking flower. The ground in this bog wasn’t inundated with water, but the moss kept it just damp enough. We also saw some sundews, but I didn’t get any good shots.

Pitcher Plant Flower Stalk

Up in the Cape Breton Highlands Park, they have a trail aptly named the “Bog Trail.” Of course, the first sign on the trail explains that it’s actually a fen because unlike a true bog, it also sources some of its water from groundwater. This fen is more heavily covered by grasses and doesn’t have the same amount of bushes that the one in Keji did. Also, it’s impossible not to notice the large moose hoof prints and droppings throughout the area.

Cape Breton Fen

One of the most startling things about the pitcher plants in this area is how red they were. Brilliantly colored, and in standing water, they were beautiful!

Pitcher Plant

Not to be outdone, the sundews here were quite pretty as well, sending sticky red fronds out of their yellowish foliage to trap unsuspecting insects. There were far more sundews in this area then their were in Keji, but they looked relatively similar.

Sundew

In addition, the Cape Breton Bog trail also contained a species of Utricularia floating in the water. A blatterwort, Utricularia traps tiny organisms in the bladders shown below.

Utricularia sp. in Cape Breton

Carnivorous plants have always fascinated and I was so pleased to have been able to see so many in my trip around Nova Scotia. Comments welcome!

10 Responses to “Nova Scotia Bogs”

  1. Rami Says:

    Wow! Sounds like you had quite the adventure! 😀 Thanks for sharing such neat photos! I didn’t know Nova Scotia had so many carnivorous plants..

  2. Phillip Brown Says:

    Great pictures, and glad you had such a good break.

  3. Jason Says:

    That’s really wonderful! My wife and I keep carnies, and I’ve always wanted the chance to see carnies in the wild.

    Do the pitchers in the second photo look like they’ve been trimmed?

  4. lolly Says:

    The photo you got of the sundews is particularly great! good capture 🙂 kind of wish we were still there…

  5. guitarfish Says:

    Thanks for the comments everyone! Jason, I don’t think they were trimmed, but I could be wrong. I thought they just looked a bit weather worn at the time. Can you propagate them by trimming them? If so, maybe that might indicate poaching?

  6. Jason Says:

    I’m pretty sure you can’t propagate them that way. The tops just look like their hoods were cut off with a straight cut, and it looks like there’s a gray scar where the cut would have happened. I thought maybe the park trimmed them for some reason.

  7. octopus.gallery Says:

    I loved Kejimkujik! We rented a cabin just up the road from the Adjunct and it was a really fabulous vacation. Wandering around Keji was my first introduction to carnivorous plants, actually.

  8. guitarfish Says:

    Now that I look at it, you may be right Jason. If anyone else knows why someone might have done this, please chime in.

    Octopus.gallery, that sounds a lot like our trip. We camped and stay in B&B’s all throughout Nova Scotia. It’s a beautiful place, with friendly people. And the seafood is amazing!

  9. octopus.gallery Says:

    I was looking at my pitcher plant tonight and my old growth that I haven’t cut back from last year looks a lot like your pitchers from Keji now that they’ve been exposed to two weeks worth of thunderstorms. I think that the tops just dry out and crumb off.

    I’ve heard that about the seafood but I just can’t stand the stuff, even super fresh. So I missed out on that. I think next time we go we’ll do the B&B thing. Having the cabin right on the water was fabulous, but it was such a long drive from everything that we didn’t see nearly as much of the province as I would have liked to. Did you by any chance make it to the Lunenburg County Winery? Really great stuff there.

  10. guitarfish Says:

    Thanks for that info OG. You definitely missed out on the seafood. I highly recommend the B&B’s — they’re often cheaper than the chain hotels, and very nice. We didn’t make it to Lunenburg County Winery, but we did visit Domaine Grand Pre and Jost, enjoying wines from both of them (especially Jost).