Carnivorous mouths: These plants have a protein-packed diet, too

Lia Picard & Francesca Forquet

Most people don’t want more insects in their homes, but Chloe Gomez has very particular mouths to feed.

“If I don’t have a lot of gnats flying around the house,” said Gomez, 28, “I have to feed them with fish food.” She’s referring to her pinguicula, carnivorous plants that require food in insect form, trapping bugs, as the pinguicula do, on their sticky, neon-hued leaves.

Up until a year and a half ago, Gomez, a benefits administrator in Houston, tended to ordinary houseplants like monsteras. But after falling down a YouTube rabbit hole with videos from creators like Wildfern and Benji Plant, she discovered the captivating beauty of carnivorous plants.

She now has 27, including pinguicula and drosera (or sundews).

Carnivorous plants might sound like flesh-eating killers, but it is insects, not Seymours, that they eat. Fans say they are drawn to the plants’ otherworldly beauty, impish charms and vampiric longevity. And they’re gaining popularity in shops and online.

Flora/Fauna, a plant store in Atlanta, has seen a sharp increase in demand in the last year. “We’ve always carried them, but we’d probably sell a dozen a month,” said Katelynn Corley, an owner. “Now it’s hundreds.” She opened Flora/Fauna in 2018 and watched the COVID-era houseplant boom bring in new enthusiasts.

California Carnivores, a speciality nursery in Sebastopol, California, saw its best year in almost four decades in 2025, and sales this year are already 30% above those from last year. Online, the nursery’s YouTube subscribers have increased to over 285,000 this year from around 50,000 last year.

Carnivorous plants have evolved over millions of years to live in nutrient-poor soils, supplementing what they can’t get from the ground by trapping and digesting insects. Many use beautiful leaves and elaborate structures to attract their meals to them. Venus flytraps snap their spiky jaws around insects, while pitcher plants lure prey into deep wells of digestive enzymes.

While carnivorous plants can be found on every continent except Antarctica, many grow in the US. Venus flytraps are native to wetlands in North and South Carolina, and cobra lilies, a type of pitcher plant, grow in Oregon.

Many of the carnivorous plants sold are cultivated, rather than collected from the wild, which is illegal in some states. In the 1970s, botanists like Larry Mellichamp crossbred carnivorous plants to make them more appealing to consumers.

Their ethereal looks and unique display needs they can’t live in just a pot of dirt, and some require constant moisture make them a compelling design feature in homes.

Gomez arranges clusters of hers in vintage candy dishes, while others craft terrarium habitats or keep them in self-watering vessels.

Finally, they make for steadfast companions. Many plants can reproduce asexually, creating genetically identical offspring. “There’s no mechanism in a plant that’s equivalent to our ageing,” said Damon Collingsworth, an owner of California Carnivores, who bought his first cape sundew when he was 11.

That sundew he bought in 1988? He still has it.