Flappers & Fiction

Seven thousand feet up the side of Mount Shasta, in a poor boggy marsh where few things flourish, grows a pitcher plant so difficult to cultivate that even the great greenhouses rarely attempt it. Darlingtonia Californica curves its mature leaf into a graceful dome, trailing a gorgeous swallow-tailed appendage beneath. It is beautiful, exceedingly rare, and, like all its insectivorous kin, a quiet killer thriving on impoverished soil.