This Unique Indiana Bog Is Home To Lots Of Carnivores, Except They're Plants
By Tori Jane|Published June 28, 2022
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Tori Jane
Author
Tori Jane is a storm chaser, writer, photographer, and the village idiot - in that order. When she's not out and about dancing with the meanest storms on planet Earth for funsies she can be found wandering, shooting landscapes, writing, editing photos, and otherwise up to no good. Legend has it that she can also be occasionally spotted typing up short bios in the third person, but those rumors are unsubstantiated.
If you, like us, are always on the hunt for unique places in Indiana that you don’t hear about every day, boy, do we have the secret spot for you! Nestled inside a national park and rarely appreciated the way it should be, this amazing and super-unique wonder of nature is very unlike the vast majority of parks around the Hoosier state. You see, this one seems like it’s frozen in time – and it’s full of plants that eat living things to survive.
Pinhook Bog sits, mostly undisturbed, inside Indiana Dunes National Park.
Just in case you didn't think Indiana Dunes was unique enough, it goes and ends up getting even better! This particular spot is not open to the public to freely visit; it's only open for semi-regular, ranger-guided tours.
The land that makes up Pinhook Bog consists of an array of highly-unique, even rare flora.
You definitely don't typically find most of the plant life you'll encounter here at a whole lot of places in Indiana. Firstly, 25% of 580 acres designated as Pinhook Bog is a tree-covered "slab" of floating Sphagnum peat moss.
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It's deep enough in many sections for trees to have grown into it over the decades, though in some spots, it's just a few inches thick.
Also littering the landscape are several types of wild orchids, including yellow and orange-fringed orchids, and the rare-but-beautiful Pink Lady's Slipper.
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Most intriguing of all, though, are the carnivorous denizens of the bog.
They aren't wolves or bears; they're plants, and instead of simply photosynthesizing like the vast majority of plants, they consume insects to survive.
Among the array of carnivorous species present at Pinhook Bog, you'll find things like the spoonleaf sundew, and it's sibling, the round-leaved sundew.
They have "pitcher"-like cavities made of a specialized type of leaf that lures insects in with sweet-smelling nectar and, sometimes, bright colors imitating flowers. There are tiny hairs inside the "pitcher" that make sure the prey cannot escape, and when they're touched by the insect, it triggers the "eating" process.
These tiny hairs, when they feel an insect in their grasp, tell the plant that it has caught prey.
It fills itself up with a kind of digestive fluid, and the unfortunate prey is dissolved. Interestingly, these varieties of carnivorous plants thrive in places like Pinhook Bog, where the water is stagnant with very, very few nutrients and an acidic PH. Most other plants cannot survive in this harsh environment, but these unique species of plants do very well.
You'll find several pitcher plants, such as the purple pitcher, and a few other varieties of meat-munching plants like horned bladderwort and hidden-fruited bladderwort.
Other plants that you can find in the area aren't so strange, though - blueberry and cranberry bushes grow along the outside edges of the bog. You'll want to avoid these plants for the most part, though, as they're also interspersed with poison sumac.
This place truly seems like it’s one of the most unique places in Indiana. For additional information about Pinhook Bog, or for information on how to access it, please visit this website. Have you ever seen these fascinating carnivorous plants in real life? Which ones are your favorite varieties?
Address: 945 North Wozniak Road, La Porte, Indiana, 46350
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