Spring Sarracenia 2014

The Sarracenia and Flytraps are all budded up, it's officially spring!

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok'. This is it's first flower for me, so I'm super excited to see it in all it's mutant glory!

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' bud

Next up, but much further behind, is Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora Red Tube.

Sarracenia flava. var rubricorpora

This year we also have some new additions to the family. You know those "Bug Biting Plants terrarium set," sold in Lowes this time of year? More on this in another post. Well, I decided to buy one because I didn't have the Sarracenia in the kit already in my collection. The kit comes with a dormant rhizome of a flytrap (and despite what the package leads you to believe picture wise,) a Sarracenia rubra rhizome. According to the internet identifiers, it's S. rubra ssp. rubra, however AG3 just lists this as S. rubra, so I'll wait for a flower + mature plant to ID. There's also reports of a green flower, which means it may be a rubra hybrid or even a mutation.

I made this first pot with the original box I bought. The flytrap isn't much to see at the moment but the Sarracenia rubra has the tiniest little flower bud I have ever seen on a Sarracenia!

S. rubra

Isn't it cute, next to such a tiny pitcher?

Then, one of the Lowe's here had started putting the kits on sale already so I picked up a few more. Mostly because I'm a total nut, I decided to go back and buy all the kits on sale. I gave the flytraps away and made a big community pot of all the Sarracenia. They are all a bit light deprived and squiggly from trying to grow in a small sealed package.

S. rubra compot

There's a few buds in there.

My Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa may not flower this year. It had started to dehydrate for no apparent good reason, so I unpotted it to find some mold and some evidence of insects munching on it. I treated it for both and it's now growing again, but I don't expect flowers unfortunately. I decided to forgo flowers for the flytraps and cut them all off. A healthy flytrap can flower and make decent sized traps throughout the year, but I decided to try and do some stem propagation with the flower stems instead. I have never had much luck trying this in the past, so I'm trying it differently every year until something works and I can claim some skill in this area.

Happy Spring! Wishing you all a productive growing year!

Some Carnivorous Plant Pictures

Hope you had a Happy Halloween all!

Nepenthes rafflesiana, Left: AG3 clone, Right:  EP (q) squat x var. alata seed grown.

Nepenthes globosa ("Viking"), finally making larger pitchers, but I read that until they hang over the side they won't make that "Viking" shape.

Some VFT 'B52' lunch

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' looking better as fall approaches

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok' Update

This monstrose Sarracenia leucophylla was discovered 30 years ago by Coleman Tarnok in Baldwin County, Alabama. Mine's a little young, so I don't have pictures of the flower that makes this S. leucophylla unique but take a look at the ICPS cultivar registration for pictures: A New Cultivar of Sarracenia Leucophylla Raf. 

If you remember, about a month ago I got this plant as a small rhizome. Another month later, the 1st pitcher has already opened.

It's making juvenile pitchers, so I might have a few years to go for a flower.

Everyone in their window box. My typical VFT is going to flower soon. If you enlarge the picture you can see the stalk, but it's not much to look at yet.

Dionaea muscipula 'Akai Ryu' has come out of dormancy and started putting out some small traps too.

I also got this Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora so the S. leucophylla can have something to be tall with. It's just breaking dormancy and has a flower bud growing at the moment. It''s mature so the pitchers it puts out this year should be much much larger. Both these species can be found growing as far south as Northern Florida naturally, so I figure they should do well here.

It's going to be a good summer for carnivores here.

Venus Flytrap 1st meal of the year

Well, that was quick. 1st spring trap out of dormancy and not a day later than it opened.

More spring traps in the making.

Looking ferocious.

Looks like it's going to flower again. I'm still not sure that this window box is going to provide enough light for them, so I'm on the fence as to weather I should let it flower or not. Stupid overhang, and no yard, here's to hoping the fact that they'll have stronger light down here will make up for some afternoon shade.

Update: Order #2 VFT & Sarracenia, and Some More Spring Carnivore Stuff

New Plants! Dionaea muscipula 'Akai Ryu' and Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok'.

These were shipped quickly, and packaged well. Everything was in order when I opened the box. A relief after last week. They both look like they were recently, or are, dormant and I'm basically just photographing rhizomes at this point. Big things worth photographing coming soon once they get adjusted.

All potted up:

VFT 'Akai Ryu'

Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok'

In other carnivore news, here's the singlular flower on the strange split flower stem on Drosera sp. 'South Africa' that I had mentioned last month. They only open in full sun, making the flower hard to capture the color appropriately, (for my digital camera at least.) It's a slightly darker pink than the photo shows.

Drosera sp. 'South Africa' flower

We're waiting on flowers from Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa to open. I previously said my husband counted 4, now it's clear there will be 6. This plant's best showing yet. Occasionally online, (as recently as yesterday on reddit's r/savagegarden,) I will see people tell new growers to only spend their money at specialty carnivorous plant nurseries, and not waste it on garden center/big box store/hardware store plants. Anyone who tells new growers this is an elitist plant snob. This was a big box store rescue, and one of the best plants I've ever had. Five stars, would grow again. I didn't have to pay to ship it, cost under $10, and came out of a square plastic box, *GASP*, how plebeian.

Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa

Spring Carnivores and The Start of Plant Shipping Season!

I was storing the North American carnivores in the fridge to finish out the rest of their dormancy, it's been enough time so I put them outside. The Venus Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, has made it through and woken up nicely with the start of some small traps:

The Sarracenia purpurea is also waking up nicely. Looks a little sparse now that it's all cleaned up and I cut out any dying pitchers. My husband found 4 flowers starting on this guy while he was watering it the other day. This plant...it's toughed out every year despite any adverse conditions and has even won over my "I don't care about plants," husband. All kidding aside he's adopted my mini rose bush too. Maybe being forced to endure them for so long a few have grown on him for one reason or another.

The starts of a few buds

The seedling Nepenthes ventricosa from Lowe's is doing well with the mild temperatures

The best part about spring, (and now that I'm sort of settled in one place at least for the year,) IT"S A GOOD TIME TO START ORDERING PLANTS AGAIN! Yes, I'm shouting, deal with it. My brother is visiting from Maine and I got to take him to his 1st orchid show and sale. We went last weekend and he had a great time and bought some pretty cool orchids. Can you believe he only had a collection made up of orchids that other people gave him?! Oh, that 1st opportunity to be surrounded by plants and get to pick out the ones you want. It's overwhelming. He came back with five orchids....I didn't buy a thing. Odd how I've finally gotten to the point of having so much of what I want that there is little left and with little space, I have to stick to things I've fallen in love with. So I've placed two orders online so far, (and I think I might attempt to go to the Redlands International Orchid Festival in May.)

Order #1: Nepenthes veitchii 'Pink', a lowland.
Status: Arrived

Living in Florida now, lowland Nepenthes should do well here, highlands...not so much. There's really only two lowland N. veitchii cultivars available in America, 'Pink' and "Bau Lowland" from Malesiana Tropicals in Borneo, Malaysia. I've seen a few other forms, but rarely, so if anyone knows of any let me know.

 

I didn't order this from the usual place I order Nepenthes from. I had to try a popular, more "famous" carnivorous plant retail nursery. As you can see in the pictures, this plant came potted. Not how I ordered it and I was charged the extra shipping for it to fit a large box. The newest leaf was also broken off in shipping.

This is why I order plants bare root. I've never received a damaged plant that way, and it wouldn't have needed the extra space of a larger box. So I wrote an email about the error and although the mistake was apologised for, I also got a lecture about why it's better to keep them potted, (basically, my choice of being willing to shock the plant by unpotting and repotting it was wrong, my bad?) So why even offer bare root shipping if you don't want to ship that way. Needless to say I repotted it as I want to grow it in what I want to grow it in, and sure, it'll set the plant back a month or so. Yes, I'm a monster. You all can see how awful I am to my Nepenthes, you've seen the pictures.

Order #2: Sarracenia leucophylla 'Tarnok', an American pitcher plant with a monstrose flower. Also, Dionaea muscipula 'Akai Ryu', a nice all red Venus Fly Trap cultivar.
Status: Ordered. Updates to come. I also used a nursery I haven't ordered from in the past for these guys, but I have been meaning to expand my Sarr and VFT collection for a while now. Ordered both bare root, let's see how this order goes...

Successful dormancies

It's pretty easy to tell when carnivores have gone dormant, but it's not quite as obvious how good the dormancy was until the growing season begins again. We had a very mild winter. I'm positive that helped my Sarracenia purpurea and Venus Fly Trap. Here they both are blooming away.

Sarracenia purpurea, a few different angles

S. purpurea forming it's buds

A fully opened S. purpurea flower

Dionaea muscipula, aka Venus Fly Trap flower.
The stalk was over a foot away from the plant. It wasn't possible to get them both in focus.