[Sarracenia ‘Alucard’ and future meal, livin’ on the edge…]
I don’t really got to say much here, but man… that fly really is livin’ on the edge (not for long though…)
Posted in Blog
Tagged Addiction, Alucard, Carnivorous Plant, Garden, North American Pitcher Plant, Obsession, Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia, Sarracenia Hybrid
It is a new season, and it’s becoming obvious in the garden, as well as life. I couldn’t help but thing about change as I was driving home from the office on this beautiful evening. I was appreciating some simple things about this change into fall: taking in the colors of the fall sky at dusk, rollin’ home down highway 1 with the windows down, breathing that fall air, the feel of the wind on my bald scalp… oh and pumpkin spice lattes now available! YEAH! (well, nix the pumpkin spice. I’m happy with just coffee.) 🙂
Cycles. Seasons. Change. Growth.
Beautiful.
Shifts are necessary in growing Sarracenia as well. When one grows Sarracenia from seed like me — things can and will get crowded *very* fast. Sure, seedlings will grow in the pot – for a while – but the true potential of the seedling won’t be visable until some changes happens and it’s given a little bit of room to grow.
The following photos are of a cross that I did last year of Sarracenia courtii, anthocyanin free clone x “Green Monster” (Photos here link to the actual parent plants.) This is S. courtii, anthocyanin free x excellens, anthocyanin free. Anthocyanin free plants lack pigmentation and are all green. All awesome. More examples from an earlier green post.
[Sarracenia courtii, anthocyanin free x “Green Monster” – cross by Robert Co – It’s crowded! Sho ’nuff!]
In the photo above, the seedlings are growing very fast, however it’s time to sort this out. Time to sort and shift em into a place where they can grow.
[Removed from the pot. Time to break em apart.]
[Sorting.]
The sorting process is fascinating. You don’t really realize how many seedlings are in there until you break it all apart. The strongest ones are evident, and the rest — well other growers will compost them, but I’d like to give this particular cross one year to see how the plants fare and adjust just due to the rarity of the parentage. I’m hoping for some surprises as some seedlings may look smaller and not as strong as their siblings at this time, but the next year after a little TLC, some could have a spurt and become the winners of the group. It has happened to me with a few earlier crosses.
[Strongest seedling out of this batch. Good size and shape, and root system formed.]
[Fresh transplants… time for growth. In the coming years, their characters will be revealed.]
Hello Autumn. Nice to see you again.
Man — after a long day at the office, it was so nice to be greeted by a wonderful full autumn equinox moon tonight. Came home and my wife baked a fresh pumpkin pie. Oh man. I am feeling very autumn-y!
The equinox marks a shift in season — where both night and day fall roughly into equal lengths. The “harvest moon” refers to the when the autumn moon is at its brightest, when the farmers would work by its light to bring in the harvest… I wasn’t doing any harvesting tonight, but rather doing a lot of watering. Tonight the harvest moon and autumnal equinox fall on the same date – and this won’t happen, I’m told until another 19 years in 2029.
I just took this photo a few minutes ago; it is a photo of the autumn harvest equinox moon from my deck.
When I think of autumn (Sarracenia wise), I think of leucophylla/leucophylla hybrids, seed pods, and the seed pod harvest …and speaking of harvest, I did a little bit of harvesting a couple of days ago. Here’s a quick mosaic taken with photos from the handy dandy iPhone reflecting some of this…
[Clockwise from top left: group shot | S. leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’, division from a seed grown plant before the HCW site was destroyed | Handful of Sarracenia pods | A pocket full of fresh harvested pods in envelopes to extract seed later. Yes – Cargo pants come in handy in situations like this.]
So, this past weekend, I finally was able to get a chance to go out and do some night photography around San Francisco with my good friend and bro, Ron. (Thanks for kickin’ it, bro!) We didn’t do much painting with lights, but we did get a chance to do a lot of great night time San Francisco city scape shots. Just a couple shots below…
There’s something so poetically metaphorical about photographing the beauty of light while everything else is darkness. While we were out shooting, I was reminded of a photo I took in 2009 of a grouping of my Sarracenias in the dark — with an added LED flashlight of course! Ah yes, Sarracenias are a bright spot for me, indeed.
[Sept 19, 2010 – Pacific Heights from Alta Vista Park, San Francisco]
[Sept 19, 2010 – Painted Ladies in the Night, Alamo Square, San Francisco]
***
And a photo of Sarracenias and random LED light painting/scribbles.
Hmm… I should do this more often with the Sarrs…
[Sarracenia in the dark + LED lights randomly waved about, 2009]
As I was sorting out some seedlings a couple weeks back, I discovered one of the pitcher plants kinda … hangin’ out. Well, that thing on it was hangin’ out.
This is a 2 1/2 year old seed grown clone of S. rubra ssp. wherryi “Chatom Giant” x “Sky watcher” (cross created by Brooks Garcia) – what impresses me with this plant is that — that thing. You know, that long thing on the hood. Reminds me of an angler or something. 🙂 Now, not all the crosses from this grex look the same, (grex is just a geeky way of saying the plants that came from the same hybrid group): some have elongated lids, some are showing more color, some are exhibiting more flared hoods from the S. “Sky watcher” parentage — but they all look interesting. I hope that it gets some of that size from it’s rubra ssp. wherryi “Chatom Giant” as it matures. Yeah. 😉
[Sarracenia rubra ssp. wherryi “Chatom Giant” x “Sky Watcher”]
You ever wonder what it would be like to see Sarracenia from a bugs point of view? Sarracenia catesbaei gives us some perspective…
[Photo: A bugs point of view – inside Sarracenia catesbaei]
Hope everyone found Brook Garcia’s pollination tutorial helpful! I sure did! Again, everyone has their own methods and variations on how to pollinate. My suggestion is — do whatever works best for you! Don’t be afraid to try new things. Anyway, so in 2009 when I wanted to store the pollen to create crosses with plants that don’t bloom at the same time, I figured I could store pollen in little containers that were available at a local craft store. I didn’t really want to keep the pollen on a q-tip as I wanted to be able to spread that pollen around to more plants. Saving the pollen in the container would allow me a little bit more control. So being the uber plant nerd I am — I stored the pollen. Actually, it was fellow grower and friend Jacob Farin who called me a Sarracenia nerd when he saw what I was doing. (OK, yes, I am a Sarracenia nerd. I admit. And I’m PROUD!! YEAH!!)
Yes, that is correct. I stored the pollen.
In little pollen containers.
In a pollen case.
In the pollen storage section of my fridge.
Next to the bacon. You MUST store it next to bacon. If you didn’t know, pollen storage next to bacon actually keeps it viable longer.
(Actually — the fridge keeps the pollen viable longer, not the bacon. But yes, eat bacon. It is good for you.)
You can’t really see it in the photo, but I did tag those cases so I knew what pollen was being used. Good record keeping is key, and organization is a good practice.
When it came time for the pod parent to open up and bloom – I just simply took my uber-nerdy pollen case and my even more super uber-nerdy pollen brushes and pollinated away! Here’s a photo from April 2009 of my “Sarracenia Pollen Palette”.
[A Sarracenia Pollen Palette. It’s nerdy. But it works.]
