Meet Nibbles. 

Nibbles is Belle’s Venus flytrap. He is her fourth in the last four years – and the only one to survive two full seasons.

With each plant, she learned a lesson. Cthulhu taught her about root rot, He Who Shall Not Be Named acquainted her with proper watering, and Chompers was all about sunlight.

But Nibbles? Nibbles taught Belle that a native plant thrives best when left to its own devices in its natural habitat.

And yes, Fayetteville is included in that range! The Venus flytrap’s historic range spans 21 counties within 100 miles of Wilmington, where they’ve thrived in the sandy, sunlit soils of North Carolina for centuries.

North Carolina colonial Governor Arthur Dobbs discovered the plant in Brunswick Town in 1759. He wrote to English botanist Peter Collinson, calling it “the great wonder of the vegetable kingdom” and describing its leaves as being “like an iron spring fox-trap… [which] instantly close[s] like a spring trap” upon any insect that touches them. He named it the “Fly-trap Sensitive.”

Dobbs must have seen it as a rare marvel. But for us locals, flytraps are part of the Carolina landscape, growing wild in places like Carolina Beach State Park and the Green Swamp.

Yet, with the pressures of fire suppression, shrinking habitat, and poaching, the flytrap’s range is dwindling. It’s already disappeared from Lenoir, Moore, and Robeson counties, and the exploding population in Brunswick and Wilmington may further reduce sightings in the wild.

Here’s hoping Belle’s generation isn’t the last to get hands-on experience with these native North Carolina plants—or to feel the magic of discovering a Venus flytrap in the wild.