Spooky Season Nature Crafts: All About Carnivorous Plants

Morris Arboretum is leaning into the eerie side of nature this October, and one of the highlights is Spooky Season Nature Crafts: All About Carnivorous Plants, happening Thursday, October 29, at 11 AM. It's a hands-on session where you'll learn about plants that eat insects and then make your own plant monster to take home. Costumes are encouraged, so if you've been looking for a reason to wear yours a few days before Halloween, this is a good one.

The craft is part of the arboretum's broader 'Spooky Season' programming, which spends the month exploring the wilder, darker side of the natural world. The guides are drawing attention to things that usually fly under the radar: prowling owls, bats on the wing, mysterious mushrooms, and the lives of dead and dying trees. It's less about the manicured gardens and more about the strange, slightly unsettling stuff that happens in the woods when you're not looking.

One of the plants they're highlighting is Ghost Pipe (Monotropa uniflora), a woodland flower with no chlorophyll. Because it can't photosynthesize, it gets its nutrients through an underground relationship with fungi, which gives it a translucent white appearance—hence the name. The craft session follows that same vein, focusing on carnivorous plants that've evolved their own strange ways of surviving.

The session takes place at The Pumpkin Cottage within the Morris Arboretum & Gardens in Philadelphia. It's free with general admission, so if you're already planning a day at the arboretum, this is an easy add-on. It runs on Thursday, October 29, starting at 11 AM.