Sarracenia “Big Mama”
Sarracenia “Big Mama” – A select form of Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa v. burekii or Sarracenia rosea – depending on how much you feel like typing or talking. Well, no actually. That’s just me. You read up on that debacle here. Whatever it’s called, I know that it’s a pretty nice plant. WORD TO YO MAMA.
Dude, I’m so F****N’ excited! Back on 13 May 2012 Dahlia and I planted the 2011 Sarracenia crosses. Instead of the usual 4-6 weeks in cold stratification, the crosses were left in cold and damp stratification for over 3 months. It’s been very rough so I haven’t been able to get to them as soon as I would of liked to. Anyway, a week later, on 20 May 2012, I began to notice that the seeds sprouted!
Seeing this gives me a renewed sense of hope, especially given the very rough growing season I’ve been having so far. Many promising crosses have sprouted and there are so many awesome things to look forward to. Anyway, a few folks have asked me about how to germinate Sarracenia seeds. A post on my set up and Sarracenia seed germination to follow soon! In the meantime, here’s a couple photos of the next generation.
Sarracenia moorei, select clone.
Sarracenia purpurea heterophylla x “Green Monster”
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Tagged FREAKIN' AWESOME, germinate, germination, Green monster, heterophylla, hope, moorei, North America Pitcher Plant, purpurea, Sarracenia, seed
Sarracenia mitchelliana, Anthocyanin Free Clone
If you don’t know me by know, I really am into anthocyanin free plants. Anthocyanin free (or “AF” for shorthand) plants are basically kind of like, “albino” plants (just for a lack of better illustration), and they are devoid of anthocyanin which is the pigment that causes the coloration/red in the plants. This particular AF mitch is “okay” — it is not quite what I’d have in mind in terms of a show-stopper. It’s just… nice. I do see potential in this though. First – It’s already anthocyanin free (YAY!), saving me some time in the AF hybridizing fiasco.
Oh and before continuing with reading below, a warning that I’m going to be speaking quasi Sarracenia-ese. For readers that aren’t too familiar with Sarracenia, it would probably behoove you to familiarize yourself with some of the species that offer up endless combinations for creative hybridization before proceeding. Like here or here or cornfuse yerself here and perhaps here … (Aye, it may help decipher some of me pshychobabble here on mah’ blog, mateys! ARGHHHH!!!)
Sarracenia mitchelliana, Anthocyanin Free Clone
Sometimes with hybridizing, if you have a concept you’d like to see come to fruition, you just gotta use what you have while you have it available. Now don’t get me wrong, it would be pretty cool to create my own special select AF mitch (YES! I am workin’ on it), but for time’s sake and with the ideas I have — I might as well use what I got. Ideally I’d like to see a mitch with say, a more flared/ruffled hood, or more white/contrast. But oh well, I don’t have it (YET!) and I’m not going to wait another 5 years or so to create what I want at this time, so… for now I will just use what I got! I’ll get to that other plant-thing later. In this case, I’m working with the shape of this plant as a “base” to build on, and also doing a gamble hoping that I can cause more the the S. leucophylla (white) to express itself more so in the subsequent cross. I kinda like that upward point to the hood as well.
Anyway, I’m posting this for now just as an online record to see what kind of hybrids can come forth from this. I’ve used this AF mitch as a pollen parent with some crosses, and last season, I used it as a pod parent with pollen from S. “Green Monster”. (Here’s a photo from 2009 of one of my plants…)
Sarracenia “Green Monster”
For those of you not familiar with it, S. “Green Monster” is an anthocyanin free mutant of S. excellens, (parents of S. leucophylla and S. minor). The plant, from my understanding, was created by Bill Scholl. On the horizon for me are my own crosses to create other AF S. exellens-ses. 🙂 I am hoping that either the influence of the S. minor, will express itself in the progeny with those neat cute lil’ white dot thingies (called areolas). Also I’d really LOVE to see S. leucophylla express itself strongly in the offspring. I mean, technically I’m going to end up with a plant that’s half leucophylla: purp/leuco and minor/leuco. (And why the heck does that remind me of an algebraic equation?) … So anyways, what the heck do I know?
One of the plants I have that has that combination of parentage turned out like this, and perhaps… one of the seedlings from the AF mitch/excellens cross I just did from this batch will turn out to be an AF version of the below — with the mitch shape and leuco color quite prominent:
Sarracenia mitchelliana x excellens
My imagination spurs me on to also imagine a plant with (hopefully) white dots about the upper portion of the pitcher. Perhaps some plants will have a hood that points up like the mother, or maybe slightly hangs over the mouth due to the S. excellens father influence? Eh, But who really knows?! It was a cool cross to make at the time. Part of what I find fascinating with this hybridizing thing is exactly that – the beautiful unknown. So, for the online record, there’s my thoughts/ideas with this cross. Let’s see what the next few years bring about!
Any ideas out there of what you think this S. mitchelliana AF x “Green Monster” cross may eventually look like?
Sarracenia mitchelliana, Anthocyanin Free Clone
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Tagged anthocyanin free, Excellens, ideas, leucophylla, minor, mitchelliana, purpurea, rad, Sarracenia
2012 has been off to an exciting start. With the majority of the transition behind me, I’ve had time to focus on the next big task: cleaning and re-organizing. Garden moves are not as easy as I would like them to be, and I anticipate a full season before I can really settle in and get things organized at the new place.
The greenhouse provides it’s own set of advantages as well as challenges that I hope to negotiate and document here. Honestly, I really do prefer growing Sarracenia outdoors; however – I’m thankful that at least the garden has a space.
Here’s a few photos from the past few days…
Overgrown seedling tray. Those seedlings are about a year old, and need to be trimmed, cleaned, then re-potted…
A tub of old pitchers. The blade is coming to slice em down soon…
Lots of trimming and re-potting ahead… and no, I really still can’t find stuff I want to find…
One of those nasty pots full of overgrown seedlings… This cross is a Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) x catebaei – Sumatra, FL
Same pot as above – Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) x catebaei – Sumatra, FL post cut. After trimming all these pots, the next step is thinning/shifting the seedlings out to let them grow out for evaluation.
Filllin’ the can up with dead pitchers full of bug guts… delicious.
And if you’re wondering why I haven’t used the katana blade – well, because of the move, I’m having trouble locating it at the moment. But not to worry, it will be in effect once found!
Looking cleaner! I managed to get through only a couple of benches thus far. And that’s only trimming. I still have quite a few more benches to finish with trimming — then it’s re-potting time! YEAH!
Another angle. Notice I left some of the phyllodia (those are the flat non-carnivorous leaves that aid the plant in photosynthesis), as well as a couple of pitchers that were still pretty good looking.
Speaking of pitchers… check out a few of these nifty pitchers that are still holding pretty well late in the season!
Recent addition – a couple of *bizarre beasts*, but yet kind of fun and interesting… this is Sarracenia “Smurf”! From what I was told, it originated as a tissue culture mutant of S. purpurea ssp. venosa, and later found at Carniflora. Special thanks to Kevin for these awkwardly insane and strangely weird beasts! (Uh, yeah… I do have a thing for weird pitcher shapes too…)
Sarracenia purpurea “Smurf”
Sarracenia purpurea “Smurf” — I guess there’s something about those weird pointy hood hook things that I kinda like!
As I was cleaning and trimming – I found some more pots of my cross of S. ‘Golden Red Jubilee’ x purpurea ssp. purpurea. These were growing in partially shaded conditions. Plants that I’ve distributed to others in the past year have shown some nice veins when they were able to be grown out in full blazing sun. Now that I have more space, I can’t wait to see what these things will do!
Sarracenia minor var. okefenokeensis x “Green Monster” – This is a collaboration cross between an idea that sprang up during a conversation between Jerry Addington and I. The mother plant supplied by Mike Wang, and pollen from the S. “Green Monster” I had. What you see is step 1 in an antho free project we have going on… good times!
Sarracenia minor var. okefenokeensis x “Green Monster”
Sarracenia courtii x ‘Adrian Slack’ – a select clone from a cross I did a couple years ago – late season pitcher.
There’s still a lot of work left to do. It’s unending, but it’s “work” that I find fun. As I remove the dead foliage, there are faint glimmers of hope that appear. Sometimes I’ll see the beginnings of a new pitcher, or perhaps a slight bulge at the growpoint on certain plants indicating that flowers are just around the corner…
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Tagged Adrian Slack, Catesbaei, Clean, cleaning, Courtii, Golden Red Jubilee, greenhouse, I CANT FIND MY KATANA BLADE!, leucophylla, minor var. okefenokeensis, oreophila, purpurea, Sarracenia, seedlings, Smurf
Sarracenia (purpurea ssp. purpurea x rubra ssp. jonesii)
x (leucophylla x rubra ssp. gulfensis)
Just a quick update on one of the plants from this cross, I’m loving all the variations from this ’08 batch. Hope y’all are having a good weekend so far!
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Tagged anthocyanin free, green, gulfensis, jonesii, leucophylla, purpurea, rubra
…No, not a fattie like that one you go blazin’. It’s just that this juvenile plant threw out this one robust fat pitcher. This cross was created by my friend, Wes Buckner. It’s a Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) x purpurea ssp. venosa, Columbus County, NC. The purpurea parent in this one, I am told, is a nice large purp that gets pretty big. Well, I can see some of that fatness shine through here.
The other younger pitchers were similar but did not have the same wide bulbous type pitcher. Let’s see what happens with the other up and coming pitchers!
[Sarracenia leucophylla x oreophila x purpurea ssp. venosa, Columbus Co., NC.]
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Tagged fattie, hybrid, leucophylla, oreophila, purpurea, Sarracenia, Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa var. burkeii f. luteola
