Carnivorous plants are often portrayed as scary people-eating monsters, but in reality they’re quite beautiful. Their trapping leaves are an amazing sight to see, and their fantastic colours, textures and shapes have inspired many great artworks, from the detailed illustrations of various Drosera by Rica Erickson to the iconic paintings of Nepenthes by Marianne North. Recently, I was invited to run some carnivorous-plant-inspired art workshops for 8-12 year olds as part of the Swan Libraries School Holiday Program here in Perth. I wanted to share the experience alongside some of the incredible artworks that were created.
Each workshop started with me giving a brief presentation about carnivorous plants - how their trapping leaves work and examples of the amazing diversity of carnivorous plant species native to here in Western Australia. I also explained what it means to be a botanist, and the basics of what I got up to in my PhD research including fieldwork and lab work to better understand the nutrition and ecology of these cool plants. We also had a chat about carnivorous plants in popular culture (like the chomper plants in Plants vs Zombies) and the kids all had great questions about how the plants trap and digest their prey - I was even asked “do carnivorous plants poo?” which is a question I tried to answer in this podcast!
Once we’d had a good chat, it was time for the kids to have a go at observing some real-life carnivorous plants! I brought along various species of the sticky-leaved Drosera (sundews), as well as a delicate little Byblis liniflora (rainbow plant) and Cephalotus follicularis (the Albany pitcher plant). Huge thank you to Shannon, who kindly let me borrow plants from her collection to bring along for the kids to see. I think just looking at the plants was a real highlight!
In the first arts & crafts workshop, we did a lot of colouring-in and collages based on some photographs I’ve taken of carnivorous plants out in the wild around Western Australia. I loved all the different styles the kids used to make their artworks, and all the beautiful colours and textures!
In the second two workshops, we focused more on observing the real-life plants, using magnifying glasses to see all their tiny details, and making artworks from scratch based on these. All the kid’s did a great job, I was blown away by how they captured the sticky dew drops of the sundew’s trapping leaves and their beautiful delicate flowers!
While I didn’t bring any Venus flytraps in (we were focused on carnivorous plants native to Western Australia), one of the kids made this amazing collage inspired by the plant’s infamous snap-traps. How cool is that?
Finally, for a bit of fun, we also had a go at making these cute pop-up cards. When you open the card, the mouth opens and closes. Sure, it’s not scientifically accurate, but they were a lot of fun to make and brought out a lot of creativity and good humour! “If you are a fly, do not open!!”
I had so much fun running these workshops! Thank you to Swan Libraries for inviting me, especially Nola for all of your support and great ideas, as well as Richard, Sarah and Amy for all your help. A big thank you again to Shannon for letting me borrow some of your beautiful carnivorous plants for the workshops, and finally, thank you to all of the participants for chatting about carnivorous plants with me and making such beautiful artworks! I hope you all had fun, and enjoy looking out for carnivorous plants on your next bush walk. Remember, keep the plants happy in their habitat, take lots of photos, and keep on making art 😊