Sarracenia Flowers for 2016

First to bloom this year, S. leucophylla 'Tarnok'

 S. Black Widow x flava rubricorpora

S. rosea Clone K, Mobile Co., AL

S. 'Royal Ruby'

S. rosea var. luteola

S. rosea 'Fat Chance' (L) & S. rosea, Liberty Co., FL (R)

S. rubra

S. flava var. rubricorpora "Red Tube" Botanique clone

S. minor (anthocyanin free)

S. minor, Orange County FL.

S. rubra ssp. gulfensis (anthocyanin free)

S. rubra ssp. gulfensis, Green, Yellow River, FL (MK-RG1)

S. purpurea ss. venosa, Tattnal Co., Georgia

S/ purpurea ssp. venosa, Botanical Wonders a.k.a Death Cube Clone

There are a ton more buds coming up and of course pitchers!

A Few Nepenthes Photos

Nepenthes ventricosa. This species slows growth through the hottest part of summer here, so now that it's been cooler, all of my ventricosa have been doing better.

A free plant Bruce Bednar (of Lee's Botanical Gardens) had put in with an order I made from him last summer, Nepenthes "Winged Grabilis" (N. mirabilis winged x N. gracilis nigropurpurea.) Was a little cutting that is starting to do very well now that it's had a few months to settle in.

Nepenthes trichocarpa (ampullaria x gracilis) x "viking." I like the yellow and red color combo on this one. It will unfortunately always have small pitchers due to the species that make up this hybrid, but it does keep it's pitchers a long time which is always a plus.

Nepenthes truncata, lowland variety. Starting to gain some size and more color in the pitchers.

Nepenthes mirabilis var. globosa x (ampullaria x rafflesiana)

Nepenthes mirabilis winged x [maxima x (maxima x mixta)]. This one's into one of my favorites. Besides the winged tendril, it's very pretty in it's simplicity.

N. bicalcarata Orange Blush. Still one of my favorite species.

Nepenthes veitchii "pink," newly opened pitcher

Nepenthes trichocarpa "green" x viking. Another compact hybrid that I just really like how pink it always is.

Nepenthes rafflesiana BE clone #99, older pitcher looking a little rough from living outside.

Nepenthes ampullaria x ??? It's grows quickly and makes tons of basals or such a young plant. So whatever it is, this should be a really nice looking plant when it gets larger.

N. albomarginata, Red, Gunung Jerai. A slow grower for me, most likely keeping a bit warm for it's tastes but it's growing larger finally.

Now that the outdoor temps have started to dip into the 40's at night, I set up the indoor grow tent and moved everybody that was outdoors either into the Florida room, or into the tent. It was a good 2 day project to move all the plants, clean up, trim, or repot, and reorganize everything. However, I still have room for more plants though, even with everything moved inside, so that was nice to find out.

Nepenthes Bio-Dome 'Lady Luck'

These Borneo Exotics Bio-domes started showing up at a few local garden centers here. I had been wanting to order a 'Lady Luck' from one of the various online retailers, so finding these down the street from my house before I had a chance to do that was an awesome surprise. I hope the wholesaler that picked these up continues to do so with all the bio-dome cultivars, (so I bought a few for myself and a friend to encourage and support this.) Plus, impulse buying a Nepenthes in person is one of the best things ever.

OOPS. Didn't read instructions.

Just kidding, mine was already busting out of the dome, not that I need it's help growing it here anyway. However, the Bio-dome system is actually pretty cool and really inventive for people that don't already know how to grow Nepenthes. Knowing next to nothing about Nepenthes, you could still grow one of these in a window or on a desk with good enough light for quite some time before having to eventually pot them up. It's fairly fool proof easy too, there's instructions all over the packaging and Borneo Exotics have also set up a FAQ website for the newer growers too. It's a very cool way to spread growing Nepenthes to the masses!

Now for those of us that have established preferences in regards to media, location, etc. maybe you'll break it out of the dome like I did as soon as you get one too. 

Only tiny pitchers at the moment to show, but larger ones will come.

Oh, and the one I bought for a friend that wanted just a single plant comes in the most adorable packaging ever.

There's a bow on that one excited looking cartoon pitcher. The mean looking one that's been Borneo Exotics' "mascot" for a long time looks like something currently alive is stuck inside it, which I've always thought of as funny, in more of a macabre kind of way. Adorable packaging, love it.

Anyone else growing one of these? Now that they're available online in the USA, and reaching local stores I figure there's got to be quite a few of you out there. I'll be growing mine in more lowland conditions, and that should be just fine for it. I'd also be interested to see if it will grow just as well in a wide range of growing conditions as claimed though, and can't experiment here unfortunately.

Edited: Catopsis morreniana (Originally Catopsis berteroniana )

Edit: Unfortunately this is a Catopsis morreniana. I'll leave the rest of the post as is, but wanted to put this at the top for people coming across this post. I purchased this from California Carnivores, summer 2015, if you've purchased yours around the same place same time, this note is for you. Catopsis berteroniana only produces one pup at a time, mine currently is working on it's 3rd from the same mother plant. Catopsis berteroniana also has larger flowers and it much larger at maturity, with a variety of other minor difference irrelevant at this point for a positive ID.

Thanks to a tip last spring from Natch Grayes, I got a hold of a Catopsis berteroniana. This is one of the few Bromeliads thought to be carnivorous. I decided I needed one when I learned part of it's natural range includes Southern Florida. So although I may have to bring it inside as the weather is starting to get cooler now, it should do very well here outside the rest of the year.

I totally forgot to post pictures of it blooming this summer. I've been so busy with other things, I haven't posted pictures of much of anything for a while :(

The flowers aren't particularly exciting, but the fact that it flowered is great because...

We've got pups! Only two so far, not sure if that's typical for these, but I'm just happy that it's happy.

Now that I'm forced to bring more cold sensitive plants inside for "winter" I'm reminded to take pictures, so more to come as I have quite a few things I'm excited to share. Happy New Year, hope you all are well and your plants grow spectacularly in 2016!

Mid-Summer Temperate Carnivores

 As you can see, my husband is in the process of putting together something nice to display the temperate carnivores in the yard. Pics to come when it's all finished. In the mean time, while we were out there I took some photos of some of the carnivores outdoors that felt like being photogenic today.

S. leucophylla 'Tarnok'

S. rosea f. luteola

S. rosea, Mobile Co., AL, Clone K

D. filiformis var. tracyi

S. leucophylla Hurricaine Creek White, clone E x F, juvenile pitcher

S. purpurea ssp. venosa var. montana (F1, Transylvania Co., NC.)

Here's two I received from Rob Co of The Pitcher Plant Project as freebie seedlings added to an order I made 2 years ago that are starting to look good. Very interesting lids on both so far. I'm curious to see what they'll look like this fall with cooler weather.

S. Black Widow x flava rubricorpora

S. catesbaei "Grande" x Bud Wilkerson

 The plants I received from Mike King are all doing well.

S. leucophylla f. viridescens, Perdido, AL (MK-L46C)

The rest of the smaller seedlings from Mike King

This unidentified Drosera must've hitchhiked it's way into the collection as it doesn't resemble anything I've ever grown before.

Unidentified Sundew hitchiker

S. rosea 'Fat Chance'

VFT B52. Not a lot of color right now, but some huge traps.

Here's one I picked up from the local Hardware store. Too young to ID, but I'm guessing maybe 'Judith Hindle' or 'Daina's Delight?'

Hope all of your plants are doing well too!

Cultivating Carnivorous Plants: A Book Review!

Recently I received a copy of our friend Natch Greyes' new book, Cultivating Carnivorous Plants. I had a little time yesterday to catch up on the reading I've been wanting to do. So here's a little review for anyone considering picking up a book on cultivating carnivorous plants.

I will admit I have never actually read a book on carnivorous plants before, ever. Until quite recently, never read Peter D'Amato's book, The Savage Garden either. Shocker, I know. Most information can be found online for free, so I never bothered buying a single cultivation guide for any of the plants I've ever tried to grow. This book has changed my mind about that stance. Especially with the less "popular" genus, it's not easy to find a source online with all the info you might want in one place. I love a well organized chart and this book has one for all the genera that have enough species to desire one. I like to grow heat tolerant species, so being able to look at things like altitude range and country of origin for almost all Utricularia is so handy.

Speaking of Utricularia, in reading this book, I learned there are quite a few species that may do well with the heat here, besides the native FL species. If nothing else, I love looking at pictures of beautiful species of all the plants I can't grow here easily. There is no shortage of fantastic photos throughout this book of all types of carnivorous plants. It's really great to see a mix of people's personal collection photos and not just "professionally" grown collection photos as well.




Natch also mentions bog building and common pitfalls for potential new bog-builders to consider, (wish I had read about a few of those issues and not by figuring things out after the fact,) growing indoors under artificial lighting (actually, I wish the section on lighting was larger, but that's only because lighting choice questions seem to pop up with frequency on forums,) as well as so many other growing tips and techniques throughout the book. 

There is also a great section on pests and disease as well. Pictures of the offenders and pictures of what their damage looks like ON carnivorous plants is so great to see as diagnosing what pest is harming your plants is a skill usually learned the hard way after many years of growing and witnessing different damage. The one pest I'd love to see covered in a cultivation guide book (Natch, if you ever do a revised edition?) are sod web worms and other various cutworms and moth larvae. They are common, and I usually see them misdiagnosed online as the less common rhizome borer, but they can do massive damage quickly on outdoor grown plants. Even The Savage Garden, (which I only thumbed through so far) only makes a brief mention of Exyra moths, which are only one of many moth larvae genus that can kill outdoor grown plants like Sarracenia.

This book is a great resource for anyone interested in growing carnivorous plants. Cultivation information, soil mixes, terrarium building, it's got a bit of everything for indoor and outdoor growers. Only the relevant information you'd want too, no filler or fluff here. If you're considering picking up this book, (and you really should,) you can purchase it online in paperback book or Kindle formats from Amazon, or get a signed copy from the author himself by clicking Here!.

By the way, Natch, my apologies for the delay in reading your book, been too busy with the new house and a new job to read at all lately. In response to your inscription (readers, of course I bought a signed copy) I had no idea Catopsis berteroniana existed or is a Florida native. Follow-up to anyone reading....how can I get one? It's beautiful!