ERIKA ALIN

Common Butterwort

Pinguicula vulgaris

The common butterwort rises from moist crevices and the margins of rock pools while the bird’s eye primrose is still in bloom. Like the latter, it emerges from a resting bud that forms in the center of the leaf rosette of a parent plant late the previous summer. The butterwort's resting bud can loosen from the parent plant and travel by wind, water, or ice to take root in a new place.1 

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Emerging butterwort plants resemble tiny yellow-green tulips, but soon unfurl their leaves into flat rosettes and grow red stalks topped by solitary nodding flower buds. Once opened, the flowers hide their nectar at the base of deep spurs and attract long-tongued pollinators such as bees, moths, and butterflies.2 The rosettes supplement the meager nutrients of thin, cold soils by trapping small insects with fluids secreted by glands on their leaves.3 For months, they work to absorb enough nutrients before dying down to form a resting bud in their centers and birth next summer’s plants.