Fun Facts about Carnivorous Plants

When I first stumbled across a book on carnivorous plants, I realized how mistaken I was about them from pop culture. In real life, they’re still as freaky and fun as they are in Little Shop of Horrors, but for entirely different reasons.

The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants by Peter D’Amato and Killer Plants: Growing and CAring for Flytraps, Pitcher Plants, and Other Deadly Fauna by Molly Williams.

3 fun facts about carnivorous plants:

1. Carnivorous plants will die if you care for them too well
   They thrive in inhospitable conditions, so if you prepare nourishing soil for them, they’ll die. Instead, they’ll flourish if you

2. Charles Darwin was so fascinated by carnivorous plants that he wrote a book about them!
   Darwin studied carnivorous plants for years, especially the Drosera, which he was especially interested in them because of how various species had evolved to be carnivorous in order to survive in inhospitable conditions.

3. Carnivorous plants should more accurately be called “insectivorous” plants
   It was Charles Darwin who coined the term in his 1875 book, Insectivorous Plants. Carnivorous plants don’t ingest all types of animals, only insects, thus his preference for the term.

A page featuring Venus Flytraps from Molly Williams’s informative and entertaining book Killer Plants.

As I was developing the plot of The Alchemist of Monsters and Mayhem, facts I’d learned about carnivorous plants came into play as I developed a whole conservatory of strange plants. I haven’t attempted to grow any myself, but I enjoyed spending time with them in fiction.

Portland, Oregon's Pittock Mansion and The Alchemist of Monsters and Mayhem

Have you heard of Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon? You won’t find it downtown. It’s off the beaten path in the West Hills of Portland, not far from the Witch’s Castle in Forest Park, accessible via a narrow, winding road through a forest of trees.

The first time I visited, it was the drive through the lush greenery that made the biggest impression on me. But the house itself is filled with plenty of history and mystery. It inspired the mansion I invented for The Alchemist of Monsters and Mayhem, a fictional house high in the Portland hills that’s surrounded by topiary shaped like monsters and boasting a conservatory of carnivorous plants.

The topiary at Pittock Mansion is well-tended and not in the shape of monsters like my fictional version, and the wide windows don’t contain a conservatory of unusual plants, but looking at this mansion, doesn’t it make you want to take hedge trimmers to the topiary a la Edward Scissorhands create monsters in front of the foreboding façade?

Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon. This is the original front of the house, now the back, but it’s the part of the architecture that’s most mysterious. Which, of course, is most important in a mystery novel filled with carnivorous plants and topiary monsters.

Placard in front of Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon

Henry Pittock headed to Oregon on the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800s to find his fortune. He started out as a typesetter at newspaper The Oregonian, and went on to own the newspaper and make it thrive. Construction of this mansion (built in the style of a French Renaissance chateau) began in the early 1900s, when Henry was feuding with a rival at another newspaper that turned into a long feud between the two newspapers.

Research is such fun! If I didn’t have book deadlines, I’m not sure when I would stop researching and begin writing. One of my favorite ways to conduct research is visiting places in person. Since the Accidental Alchemist Mysteries are set in Portland, Oregon, each time I travel to Portland to visit my parents, I do a bit of exploring.

It was a gorgeous day the last time I visited Pittock Mansion earlier this year. It has a panoramic view of of Portland, and the weather was so clear you could see Mount Hood in the distance.

View of Mount Hood from Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon

View of Mount Hood and downtown Portland from Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon

Read more about a fictional version of the mansion in The Alchemist of Monsters and Mayhem.