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Purplish-Red Stalked Wetland Plants

Wetlands are places where land is usually covered by shallow water, such as bogs, marshes, ponds, fens, and the edges of lakes and rivers. Every living thing needs water to live, and so life in wetlands is abundant. When one examines photos of plants that thrive in wetlands, it's surprising how many of them have reddish purple stalks. Why their stalks are this color instead of green is unknown.

Edible Plants
- Slender glasswort is a fleshy red plant with tiny flowers and leaves on spikes. It grows from 6 to 18 inches tall in coastal and inland salt marshes from Nova Scotia down to Georgia and on to Michigan and Wisconsin. It's very salty and can be pickled or added to salads. Cranberry is a creeping shrub of open bogs, swamps and lake shores that's found from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia and south to North Carolina and west to Minnesota. Though cranberries are cultivated, the wild ones can be picked and eaten as well.
Plants Found in the Southeastern United States
- The lawn orchid has small white or yellowish flowers on a spike that can grow to around 7 inches high. It's found in lawns, wet fields, hummock edges and roadside ditches from Central to Northern Florida. Great laurel is an evergreen shrub with clusters of beautiful pinkish white flowers that are often cut and arranged for displays. The stalks are not only reddish purple but sticky. It's found in damp woods and forested wetlands from Maine south to Georgia and Alabama. The great laurel can grow from 5 to 35 feet tall, and forms dense thickets. The wood can be used for making tools and ornaments.
Plants Found in Canada
- Lizard's tail has tiny fragrant white flowers on a spike that can be 6 inches high. It flowers from June to September in swamps and shallow water, and ranges from Ontario to New England, South to Florida and west to Texas, Arizona and Kansas. The common name and genus, saururus, describes its drooping flower clusters. Climbing boneset is a vine with clusters of white or pinkish flowers. It's found around stream banks, moist thickets and swamps from Southern Ontario to New England to Florida and west to Texas, much like the lizard's tail.
Unusual Plants
- The greenfly orchid is an epiphyte, which means it lives off of other plants like live oak, magnolia and other trees that live in swamps. It has whitish-green flowers, and even the leaves are purplish. It's the only orchid found north of Florida. The round-leafed sundew is a carnivorous plant that has white or pinkish flowers and grows to about 10 inches high. It flowers from around June to September in swamps and bogs. Its genus, drosera, refers to the drops of "sundew" on its leaves that capture insects and other small organisms.

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