This Carnivorous Plant Invaded New York. That May Be Its Only Hope.
The waterwheel lives a double life: facing extinction in its native habitat even as it creeps into places where it doesn’t belong.
By Marion Renault
in the August 13, 2019 NY Times.
Michael Tessler, a biologist at the American Museum of Natural History, holding waterwheels, a carnivorous aquatic plant, in Big Pond near New York’s Catskill Mountains.
Across their kayaks, the three men passed the green shoot back and forth. Occasionally, one of them would cradle it in one palm and bring a hand lens to it with the other, inspecting the carnivorous plant that was their bounty.
By day’s end, the group — Seth Cunningham and Michael Tessler, biologists at the American Museum of Natural History, and John Thompson, coordinator of the Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership — filled eight vials with the plant, Aldrovanda vesiculosa, also known as the waterwheel.
The plant shouldn’t be here, and it presents an ecological conundrum.