Tag Archives: Obsession

Come to the Light

One of the many things I find so captivating (literally) and fascinating about carnivorous plants and Sarracenia are all of the many systems in place that lure in and capture their prey. Deadly beauty in both art and function. It’s all friggin’ awesome stuff!

The below photo is one that I managed to capture of a freshly opened Sarracenia excellens as the morning sunlight was filtering through this plants areoles. The hood will eventually fold over that opening. As the insect is attracted to the tube by the scent and nectar the plant will produce, it gets lured in deeper into the trap. Eventually, the meal wanders too far in and then tries to escape. Said meal sees the “windows” and thinks it can get out that way. The windows provide that “false hope” of escape for those bugs unfortunate enough to wander too far into the hole. As the meal tries to escape, the futile efforts lead to exhaustion and ultimately a nice meal for the plant.

Yes. Come to the light…

Sarracenia leucophylla x minor var. okefenokeensis

[Photo: Sarracenia leucophylla x minor var. okefenokeensis]

Stuffing Envelopes…

Yeah. Tonight I was stuffing envelopes… Literally. I get enough paper-pushing at my desk during the day and then I get home and this is what I was just doing for the past 2 hours…

filing1[Paperwork! AHH!]

But I didn’t mind too much tonight cuz I was taking this…

pod1

[Photo – Seed Pod – Sarracenia (rubra ssp. jonseii AF x minor var. okeefenokensis) x “Green Monster”]

Stuffing envelopes like this:

packet1
[Stuffing Envelopes!]

And getting something like this:

filesystem1[The Sarracenia Files]

And that’s not even all of my crosses on the year so far – still have a few to go through that aren’t quite ready.  Oh well.  This is the “paperwork” I’d rather be doing though! Love it!!

Sarracenia "Starry Night" x 'Hummers Hammerhead'

Another one of the crosses I did a couple years ago, finally putting up some defining pitchers.  Sarracenia “Starry Night” (link is a photo to the parent plant) is a very nicely colored Sarracenia excellens (leucophylla/minor hybrid), and Sarracenia ‘Hummer’s Hammerhead, looks like it has… well… a hammer head! 🙂

These are freshly opened pitchers, as the season progresses I hope that more color shows.  Two different seedling pitchers photographed below. The latter is starting to show some pinkish hues. Hmmm… what to call it? A “Starry Hammerhead?” LOL 😉

Sarracenia "Starry Night" x 'Hummers Hammerhead'

[Photo: Sarracenia “Starry Night” x ‘Hummers Hammerhead’]

Sarracenia "Starry Night" x 'Hummers Hammerhead'

[Photo: Sarracenia “Starry Night” x ‘Hummers Hammerhead’]

The Carnivorous Plantation

Howdy everyone!  Hope you’re enjoying your weekend!  Now, how about a little weekend getaway, shall we?

All photos in this video were all taken by Bob Hanrahan at his Carnivorous Plantation in Alabama.  Now pull up a seat (the video is about 22 minutes long), grab some popcorn, and enjoy the movie! 😉


***
Mr. Hanrahan — a very sincere and special thanks to you for sharing this; it is an honor and a delight to have “virtually visited” The Carnivorous Plantation by way of these photos. For now, I must vicariously live through them until I visit in person one day soon. Thank you Bob!

Digestion

So, after the meal gets drawn in to the pitcher by the sights, smells, and savory serum spawned from the fierce foliage , it ends up looking kinda like this. Check out all those bugs swimming in a rich latte of enzymes that the plant uses to break em’ down for some nutritious absorption. Nice!

digestion

[In the tube…]

Sproutage!

Howdy y’all!  I was out checking some seeds that I started this year and to my delight, saw one sprouting!  I did this cross early on this year, harvested seed roughly a month ago, put through about 2 weeks cold stratification in the fridge and… viola!

Reptilian Rose x Adrian Slack

By the way…I did this same cross last year and only had a few seeds from that pod.  A few of those germinated but none survived. (Don’t ask…) I was so torn… anyway, hope to have better success this year.

A Young Moorei

Howdy y’all! So as I was thinning out some of the S. leucophylla x flava seedlings pots a few days ago, I stumbled across this one interestin’ lil’ fella.  This was from a batch of seeds that a buddy of mine sent in 2008.  Most definately, this is one of the kids that I’ll be watching in this group. This is the first juvenile pitcher showing these characteristics. The new pitchers that are coming up will be opening in a few days are exhibiting the same qualities – predominately white upper pitchers with nice green veins. Dude, you never really know what you’ll get with those lil’ seeds – and that’s part of what makes this breeding thing so fun! 🙂  Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Sarracenia leucophylla x flava

Sarracenia leucophylla x flava