Spruce Flats Bog

Spruce Flats Bog is a large clearing high up in Forbes State Forest. It's a good place to know about and to make a point of seeing if you're in the area. The parking lot is just a short stroll to the bog, where there is a small boardwalk to bring visitors out where the unusual plants can be seen without getting your feet soaking wet. My son's reaction was, "Wow! It's beautiful!"

The land here has terrible drainage, of the sort that normally will not support trees. This was not apparent a hundred years ago, when it was thickly forested. Then it was logged, and no one could understand why it quickly became boggy and trees could not be replanted.  The mystery was solved when someone figured out that the trees themselves had made the land suitable habitat for trees. Trees gather water from their roots, use some water and release the rest into the atmosphere. Over the centuries since the end of the last ice age, trees had gradually closed in from the edges as they sucked water from the ground. A sign on the edge of the bog proclaims that "One large tree can transpire 36,500 gallons a year!". Pennsylvania native bog plants were planted here and are now well established. So it's technically an artificial bog, but it's also an authentic Pennsylvania ecosystem.

Bogs tend to offer fewer nutrients than most plants find desirable, but carnivorous plants can thrive by getting the  nitrogen they need from eating insects. Spruce  Flats Bog has both round-leaved sundews (which trap insects in sticky dew) and purple pitcher plants (which trap insects in specially adapted cylindrical leaves filled with water and digestive fluid). Carnivorous plants also need the same insects they like to eat as pollinators. So their flowers tend to grow on very long stems, in order to help their pollinators to avoid the menacing death traps of their leaves. When we visited, these plants had long since bloomed, but the pitcher plant's iconic seed pods still remained. 

Cotton grass.

Cranberries and purple pitcher plant.

Purple pitcher plant.

Round-leaved sundew.

Pitcher plant seed pods.

Cotton grass.

Cranberry.

Pitcher plant seed pod.

Cotton grass.

Cranberries.

Purple pitcher plant.

Round-leaved sundew.

Pitcher plant seed pods.

Purple pitcher plant.

Pitcher plant and cotton grass.

Purple pitcher plant.

Round-leaved sundew.

Marsh St. John's wort.

Pitcher plant seed pods.

Round-leaved sundew.

Cotton grass.

Round-leaved sundew.