Carnivorous plants generally live in sketchy plant hoods, or the botanical world’s equivalent of a food desert– the term for long stretches of city blocks where it’s impossible to purchase affordable fresh produce.
In boggy locales, such as North Carolina’s Green Swamp Preserve, home to wild Venus Fly Traps, water has leeched out the soil’s nutrients, leaving the plants in need of alternative sustenance. Between photosynthesis and what few nutrients the poor soil might provide, many plants would be unable to sustain their lives. But a carnivorous plant compensates for what is missing by ingesting insects for additional nutrition, a successful modification to a harsh living environment. Not unlike many of the low income neighborhoods in which one finds food deserts, opportunities are few and success depends on adaptation.
Unfortunately now wild carnivorous plants have new challenges. Agriculture and development threaten the niche locations in which these plants have adapted to survive. But in beautiful Sonoma County’s town Sebastopol, California Carnivores Nursery has worked to promote and conserve these extraordinary plants since the nursery opened in 1989. According to the nursery’s website, California Carnivores is home to the “largest botanical collection of carnivorous plants on display to the public in the United States,” and visiting their unique gardens has encouraged me to reflect on adaptation, particularly to scarce food, in both the plant world and the human one.
At California Carnivores, I was awed by the complexities and characters in the wide variety of species represented by the carnivorous plant world, particularly the Bladderwort. As if the name Bladderwort is not quirky enough, the highly evolved plant has unique attributes that defy our general assumptions of what plants are and what a plant can do. With no true roots and no leaves, an aquatic version of the plant floats on creeping stems lined with thousands of tiny bladders the it uses to suck up insects. When an insect trips one of the sensitive trigger hairs, the bladder’s trap door opens to ensnare its prey, vacuuming it up in a fraction of a second.
The unique behaviors and structures of carnivorous plants, particularly the Bladderwort, challenge us to think differently about what a plant is and what it can do. We benefit by confronting ourselves in the same manner, challenging what we ourselves are and can do. Of course like the carnivorous plant, we also can adapt to challenging situations, but furthermore, we have the ability to project ourselves into other people’s challenging situations though the power of empathy. Through empathy, we can adapt our thoughts and feelings to experience what others experience, enabling us to act on our insights, making decisions uniquely informed by our empathetic knowledge.
South Central guerrilla gardener and activist Ron Finley’s community work in Los Angeles exemplifies empathy, adaptation and triumph in the food desert. By transforming unused land in the city into vegetable plots and advocating for the urban gardener, he has created some solutions to the many serious social and health problems the food desert has inflicted on his community.
In his TED Talk, Finley explains his frustrations. “Just like 26.5 million other Americans, I live in a food desert, South Central Los Angeles, home of the drive-thru and the drive-by. Funny thing is, the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys. People are dying from curable diseases…” simply 
because healthy food is not available. Cheap processed foods and a lack of healthy alternatives cause high levels of obesity and diabetes to plague his neighborhood. Compounding Finley’s frustration, the city owns 26 square miles of vacant ground that could be planted with vegetables to feed people in need of fresh quality food.
Now through planting and advocacy, Finley’s project is strengthening the health of his community. His empathy has increased the quality of life for people in his city, and his championing of nutritional autonomy encourages people to think authentically, reject systems that oppress them, and create their own solutions.
Assuredly the best of people have used their empathy to solve life’s challenges, as Ron Finley has to eradicate the food desert in his city, and as California Carnivores has to conserve the existence of the extraordinary living being that is the carnivorous plant. And just as the Bladderwort exceeds our expectations of what a plant is, we know we too can exceed expectations of what we are, ostensibly through the power of empathy.
“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.” –Author and psychologist Daniel Golman
