Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509290011
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL NOWELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HAMPSTEAD, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
``I believe they came from outer space,'' says Northrop, who grows flytraps and other insect-eating plants by the thousand at his family nursery in rural Pender County.
``I know that sounds weird,'' Northrop says as he sticks a lighted cigarette into a flytrap's jaw-like leaf. The leaf quickly slams shut, evoking images of the man-eating Audrey II in the movie, ``Little Shop of Horrors.''
Venus' flytraps are native to the region surrounding the city of Wilmington - and nowhere else in the world. Northrop has capitalized on that fact. For 50 years, Venus' flytraps have been his livelihood.
Right after World War II, a 5-year-old Northrop fought off water moccasins and mosquitoes to help his father, William, collect the exotic plants in bogs and marshes alongside country roads near Hampstead.
They sold the flytraps along with watermelon and other produce out of the back of the family's 1938 Dodge pickup in Richmond and Washington D.C. Soon, they were selling them to collectors and botanists around the country.
Now 55, he still cultivates flytraps in six greenhouses at his distinctively named Northrop Insectivorous Plant Farm, located on a dirt road off U.S. 17 in Hampstead. His wife, Tinker, and son, James, also work in the business.
Northrop wholesales the plants to plant shops and researchers around the world. His newest market is in Germany, where some cancer specialists believe the plants could be helpful in the treatment of certain types of stomach cancers and other diseases.
Legendary for their extraordinary feeding habits - they prey on unsuspecting flies and other insects - the rootbound bug eaters grow wild in nutrient-poor marshes, ditches and bogs along the coastal border of the Carolinas.
``If they evolved, we'd find them in South America and other places,'' Northrop insists. ``But you can only find them here. Why?''
He answers his own question with an apocryphal story.
``The flytraps grow near small lakes we call Carolina bays, which were created when meteorites hit the Earth and bounced back up,'' he said. When the space objects hit the ground, Northrop presumes, they left the flytraps behind.
While the scientific community doesn't accept that theory, there is no general agreement on the flytrap's ancestry.
``It's impossible to know,'' said Larry Mellichamp, an expert on carnivorous plants at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. ``Some experts believe they may have come to North America when the continent broke away from Africa.
``Or they could have just evolved there and did not spread very far,'' Mellichamp said.
There is one point about the Venus' flytrap upon which Mellichamp and Northrop can agree: ``It's absolutely a unique plant in all the world,'' said Mellichamp, who has a collection of flytraps and other carnivorous plants.
The plants have captured the imagination of other scientists, including naturalist Charles Darwin, who called it ``the most wonderful plant in the world.''
Some experts are worried about the encroachment of civilization on the plant's natural habitat. Housing developments, highways and strip malls now stand where flytraps once flourished.
``The campus of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington used to be one of our prime hunting places,'' Northrop said.
He's not worried, though. The flytraps grow wild in several protected habitats, including the Green Swamp and the Holly Shelter Game Preserve. They also can be found along highways and roads in the countryside around Wilmington.
The little plants also are easy to propagate in the greenhouse.
``I can grow 50 plants from the cuttings of one flytrap,'' Northrop said. ``They grow like grass.''
Unlike the bloodthirsty star of ``Little Shop of Horrors,'' the Venus' flytrap is actually very small, often 4 inches tall or less.
``It would eat rats and small children if it got any bigger,'' Northrop joked.
by CNB