The Rise and Fall of Flytraps

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Flytrap's were all over this part of North Carolina a hundred years ago. Development did a number on the population, and what's left has been relegated to a few protected preserves. Even Flytrap Farm, at 18,000 plants, wasn't enough to satisfy the market. Plants are still disappearing, mostly from the biggest concentration of all, the green swamp.

Every year for the past few years, tens of thousand of flytraps have gone missing – from the wild, from gardens, from nurseries. And, really, nobody knows where they go. What’s cropped up in rural North Carolina is essentially a Venus Flytrap crime ring — with lackies, middle men, and a mysterious end buyer who’s perpetuating the market.

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