Tag Archives: Sarracenia Hybrid

Species

Back to basics, shall we?

Sarracenia species.  Below you’ll find the cornerstones of what the hybrids are built upon.  I’ve recently been even more appreciative of the species; probably due to the hybrid madness that’s going on with me right now. I love the complexities, the various breeding combinations, and the whole roll-of-the-dice that you get when breeding plants.  You never know what you’ll get! Patience required, but hybridizing is very awesome indeed.

That said, I’ve been only breeding/hybridizing for the past 2-3 years.  I’m just starting and am only just starting to see some of my work come to fruition.  All of this crossing, combining, creative madness has gotten me to really appreciate the species so much, and to realize the importance of preserving them.

Below are a few photos of the species and a listing of their subspecies/variations.  Keep in mind, that even within species, there is much diversity in color, shape, and size.  The photos below are for illustrative purposes to give you a very general feel/sense of what each of these species is all about.  Taxonomy for the plants are debated in some cases (depending on who you talk or argue with) — but for now, I’ll try to keep it simple… 🙂


[Sarracenia alata: Pale Pitcher Plant]

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[Sarracenia flava : Yellow pitcher plant]

– Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea

– Sarracenia flava var. cuprea

-Sarracenia flava var. maxima

– Sarracenia flava var. ornata

-Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora

-Sarracenia flava var. rugelii

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[Sarracenia leucophylla: White pitcher plant]

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[Sarracenia minor : Hooded pitcher plant
]

-Sarracenia minor var. okefenokeensis

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[Sarracenia oreophila : Green pitcher plant]

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[Sarracenia psittacina : Parrot pitcher plant]

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[Sarracenia purpurea : Purple pitcher plant]

-Sarracenia purpurea subsp. purpurea

-Sarracenia purpurea subsp. purpurea f. heterophylla

-Sarracenia purpurea subsp. venosa : Southern pitcher plant

-Sarracenia purpurea subsp. venosa var. burkii

-Sarracenia purpurea subsp. venosa var. burkii f. luteola

-Sarracenia purpurea subsp. venosa var. montana

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[Sarracenia rubra : Sweet pitcher plant]

-Sarracenia rubra subsp. alabamensis : Alabama pitcher plant

-Sarracenia rubra subsp. gulfensis : Gulf coast pitcher plant

-Sarracenia rubra subsp. jonesii

-Sarracenia rubra subsp. wherryi : Red pitcher plant

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Livin' on the Edge


[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…)

Alien!

Today a co-worker of mine was telling me about some news story she heard about with a UFO sighting in Mongolia… or somfin’ like that… (I guess the story was like… from today, and news clips could be found on places like this…)

But anyway, the whole UFO/alien thing reminded me of one of the plants growin’ out here that I think showed up after UFO’s invaded my grow area or something.  One of the alien dudes were left behind. So I potted it up… Some lime green weird looking Sarracenia-iod-ish type plant from the planet Triffid. Or something…

Actually, it’s just a Sarracenia flava x psittacina. Heh heh. But still, looks pretty durn funny to me – like it just walked out of a space ship or something. 🙂

flavaxpsit1[Sarracenia flava x psittacina – Take me to your leader!]

flavaxpsit2[Sarracenia flava x psittacina]

A couple of years…

One of the hybrids I did a couple of years ago caught my eye as I was doing some clean up in the yard today. Check out what a couple of years did…

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S. (purp het x rubra jonesii) x (leuco x rubra gulf) AF[Winter, 2008 – Sarracenia (purpurea ssp. purpurea x rubra ssp. jonesii) x (leucophylla x rubra ssp. gulfensis) – Anthocyanin Free Clone]

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S. (purp het x rubra jonesii) x (leuco x rubra gulf) AF
[Fall, 2010 – Sarracenia (purpurea ssp. purpurea x rubra ssp. jonesii) x (leucophylla x rubra ssp. gulfensis) – Anthocyanin Free Clone]

Seasons [Seedling] Shift

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.

Separating Sarracenia courtii x "Green Monster"[Removed from the pot. Time to break em apart.]

Separating Sarracenia courtii x "Green Monster"[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.

Separating Sarracenia courtii x "Green Monster"[Strongest seedling out of this batch. Good size and shape, and root system formed.]

Separating Sarracenia courtii x "Green Monster"[Fresh transplants… time for growth. In the coming years, their characters will be revealed.]

Autumn Equinox – 9.23.2010

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.

moon_orig

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…

eqnox[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.]

A Minor Detail

One of the things love about Sarracenia minors and their hybrids is that they have those very cool windows on the pitcher.  It’s a luring/trapping mechanism that the plant has that I mentioned about in an earlier come to the light post.  So a couple days ago, I noticed one of the plants with some cool thick windows in the back of its pitcher head.  It’s seed grown. The seeds came over as Sarracenia minor var. okefenokeensis x “Golden Red Jubilee” — as they grew, a lot of the seed looked like the pod parent plant, and a couple plants have characteristics of both parents.  Anyway, for this particular plant it would almost seem that  it may of been self pollinated seedling?  Eh… But who knows really. That’s just a minor detail.  When it will bloom, it may give us a better indication.  Anywhoo, for now, I just am enjoying the “Minor” detail on the back of this pitcher…

A minor detail[Some pretty cool windows on the back of this one..]