In 1949, Newfoundlanders voted (a squeaker at 52 to 48%) in favour of joining confederation. Five years later they had to make another choice: what would be their Provincial flower?

Proving once again that they’re a people who march to the beat of their own drum, they turned their back on the predictable and boring; no wild lupins, sweet peas or buttercups for these new Canadians. Instead they chose a flower that eats flesh, lives in swamps and is just slightly more attractive than week-old roadkill on a Newfoundland highway.

For all their creepy looks, pitcher plants, like all carnivorous plants, are fascinating evolutionary hybrids. The ‘pitcher’ is formed by the upright tubular shape of the leaves at the base of the plant. Designed to capture and hold rainwater, these liquid snares lure insects inside with a sweet scent that promises a good meal. Once inside the pitcher, the insect is trapped when they find the inner walls covered with tiny glass-like spikes.

Digestion is a team effort between a range of bacteria and the larvae of the pitcher plant’s symbiotic helpers: pitcher plant flesh flies. Suffice to say, the bottom of these leaves is as close as it comes to the proverbial primordial soup which feeds the plant.

With their unique biology, fascinating looks and boggy habitat, it’s not surprising that First Nations people found the pitcher plant an interesting addition to their medicine bundles. The plant was dried and powdered to use as a love medicine (sprinkled over oneself or one’s victim). It was an early sports medicine: the Iroquois powdered themselves with it before playing lacrosse. It was a witchcraft medicine for Menominee sorcerers, and a smallpox medicine for the Micmac. It was also a toy used by children as pretend cooking pots and tea kettles.
While it must have been their legendary sense of humour that drove Newfoundlander’s decision to chose the Pitcher Plant as their Provincial flower—it all started with their former Queen.

In the early 1800’s, as a teenage princess on an educational field trip, Victoria visited a greenhouse featuring a very fine specimen of this, let’s face it, pretty creepy plant. She wrote in her diary later that day how much she admired the plant—so much so that, 15 years later, when designing the Newfoundland penny, she declared that the flower should appear on the flip side of the coin opposite her own profile.
Newfoundlanders happily obliged by putting the world’s first and only carnivorous plant stamped coin into circulation.