North Carolina has a long and colorful bond with Venus flytraps, the carnivorous plants that grow in the wild only in a 75-mile radius around Wilmington.

In 1760, the North Carolina colonial governor, Arthur Dobbs, described the discovery of the plant in his diary: “The greatest wonder of the vegetable kingdom is a very curious unknown species. Upon touching the leaves, they instantly close like a spring trap.”

More than 200 years later, a rugby field and a five-kilometer run bear the name of the flytrap, and in 2005, the state declared it the official state carnivorous plant. The North Carolina chapter of the Nature Conservancy described the flytrap as the state’s “most famous natural legacy.”

But some people have taken that fondness for the flytrap too far, officials said, with poachers trafficking in thousands of plants plucked illegally from the wild, as well as from gardens and nurseries.