Tag Archives: seedlings

Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x ‘Adrian Slack’

I recently was cleaning and re-potting some of the S. (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x ‘Adrian Slack’ babies and wanted to share a few photos of the resilient youngsters. This was a cross I did back in 2009. As with all of my other plants, they were struggling for most of the year due to the low light levels in the last grow area. Things are coming around I am constantly amazed by what I see. The pod parent plant is a richly colored S. leucophylla x oreophila clone that I obtained years ago from Karen Oudean. I used pollen from S. ‘Adrian Slack’ and got a wide range of great looking young plants.  Here are a few that have made an exceptional come back thus far. I am hoping for a great spring flush of pitchers next season. Being that the plants are recovering, who knows what they’ll look like next year with a full season of light? I can only dream.

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S. (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x 'Adrian Slack'
Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x ‘Adrian Slack’

First up is this one rather subtle yet elegantly tinted clone. It has a slight coppery blush about it. The pitcher recently opened as you may be able to tell as the nectar roll hasn’t quite fully unfurled. I’ll be watching it to see how that color develops. It would be interesting if most of the exterior of the pitcher will copper up, while the interior stays light.

Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x 'Adrian Slack'
Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x ‘Adrian Slack’

Another angle of the same plant above. There’s a few prominent vertical veins at this point in time – not too vieney. I like it. Who knows if more of those veins will fill in and lace the pitcher as it ages? I am also hoping for some of the white coloration to pull through from the leucophylla influences of both parents, even if it’s a quiet expression. With the obvious lack of strong color, I am still impressed by the form and structure of this one. Neat-o.

Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x 'Adrian Slack'
Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x ‘Adrian Slack’

Here’s another one from the batch. More veins are visible on this one. At this point in time, there appears to be some white “frosting” to the nectar roll adding a nice touch of color and depth to the overall look of the plant.

Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x 'Adrian Slack'
Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x ‘Adrian Slack’

Another clone, this one looking a little more rugged than the others. The shape of the nectar roll exhibited by the pitcher in the foreground reminds me a little bit of S. ‘Reptilian Rose’ it has a bit of that angularity mixed in. This is another one of those – eh, who knows?! The parentage of S. ‘Reptilian Rose’ is S. oreophila, Sand Mountain x S. ‘Royal Ruby’. All of the species in S. ‘Reptilian Rose’ (oreophila, leucophylla, flava) have a representation going on in this scenario. The pitcher in the rear has a nice little dip in the lip to it. Too early to tell if that toothy angularity will be consistent though.  Whatever, I’m still likin’ it.

Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x 'Adrian Slack'Sarracenia (leucophylla x oreophila) Oudean Clone x ‘Adrian Slack’

This one has a nice radiant brightness about it. It is freshly opened so the coloration will most likely change. Right now, a lot of the white from the Sarracenia leucophylla influence from both sides of the parentage is apparent here. What I like about this one is that the heavy undulating lid that follows most of the Sarracenia leucophylla hybrids has been diluted, and what is left is the leucophylla color without all the frills. As with everything else, it’s too young to tell if all the current characteristics will remain. What I do know is that they are making a good recovery and that I look forward to the surprises they’ll  have in store next season.

Cleaning and Organizing

   

Much ado about cleaning! Now that I have water tables built, I finally have the chance to spread the plants out. The pots used to be crammed into either those 10 x 12 inch trays, or cement mixing tubs. There is nothing wrong with that, those make flippin’ AWESOME containers to hold water. I have used those for years! Now that I’m here, I figure a larger “container” would help me cut back on the time spent watering. Now I can just flood the tables by letting the hose run whenever I want to water the plants, instead of watering tray after tray after tray.

I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning, weeding, and getting things organized. You can kinda see how some weeds have begun to slowly take over above. There’s also the sad looking long and lanky foliage – a result of the “dark ages” earlier this year. I’m clipping some of the dead pitchers off, well ‘cuz you know that good floral hygiene is great. The joy and rapture of cleaning and organizing never seems to end here. At least things are coming together…slowly. What is cool is that I’m finding so many crosses and plants that I totally forgot about. Yeah, every now and then I find pots that contained rotted out plants. Dude, it still sucks, but what can you do. I just close my eyes, shed a tear, and toss those out. As my friend Jerry Addington recently reminded me, I’ll have time to remake stuff as the years go by. Anyway, I’ll update my surprise findings on the blog every now and then. Stay tuned!

Sarracenia Seedling Cleaning and Organization
Getting plants grouped and organized! In the foreground are the younger seedlings. The group of plants behind that are various hybrids I’ve done with S. ‘Adrian Slack’ from prior years. They don’t look that great now, but I have high hopes for next season. Various other hybrids are in the back.

Sarracenia Seedling Cleaning and Organization
Another shot of the recent babies! Grow lil’ homies, grow! Can’t wait to see what you’ll look like in a couple of years! In the background, you see a fraction of the stuff I still have to go through, sort, and clean. WOOHOO!

Sarracenia Seedling Cleaning and OrganizationYeah, I know. It’s really messy looking, but some neat and interesting young plants here. All are on the road to recovery and doing well.

Sarracenia Seedling Cleaning and Organization
More seedlings! Finally having the ability to stretch and enjoy a little! Still more space to fill in, but that will be filled very soon as I continue going through the various jumbled trays of plants. 

Darlingtonia Baby Separation

Little seedlings don’t stay little for so long. The ravenous things grow and eventually outgrow their grow area. I received a few baby seedlings from Mike Wang in 2011 and I potted quite a few up in a tub. They’ve done really well over here and I’ve been busy separating them into their own pots! Aw yeeeaah! A few of the seedlings really took off as you can see below. There were a also few stragglers caught under the big dudes, and I’ve set them aside to give them more room to grow.

A few folks asked me about my potting mix with these guys. I just peat and a course grade of horticultural sand. The new mix though is peat/perlite and little bit of sand. The plants don’t seem too picky and do well with various combinations of peat/perlite/sand.

Awww… they look so… innocent right now. Aren’t they freakin’ cute?

Darlingtonia california babies
The baby Cobra nursery, plants ready for separation.

Darlingtonia california babies
Handful of baby Darlingtonia.

Darlingtonia california babies
Young Darlingtonia can look so interesting!

Darlingtonia california babies
Ready for expansion – potted up in their own individual pots!

Darlingtonia california babiesSome of the smaller seedlings were planted in the bin once again, spread apart to ensure they receive plenty of light and air!

Adjustment

Happy Friday!

At the beginning of this month I moved a couple trays of plants over to the temporary greenhouse. After a couple of weeks, I began to see some adjustments that the plants were already making. (These trays were in the temporary venue prior to the recent grand move I wrote about in the last post.)

Sarracenia seedlings

Yeah, it’s a hot jumbled mess in that photo above! If you notice, there’s that one plant with a whitish lid — it’s pretty nice to see that color now. It was completely solid green at the old spot. If you look closely, there’s also hints of new stronger growth rising up out of that fray and it’s only been a couple of weeks. NICE. I’m going to have a fun time sorting out this mess in the late fall/winter.

New Growth

The plants in the photo above have also been in that holding location for a couple of weeks. The old growth is stretched and lanky – flopping over. But wait… there’s new growth coming out of those growpoints that are actually looking — somewhat decent! (Now, If only I could borrow Uncle Rico’s time machine to see how these babies will look like in the future…) GOSH! That’s FLIPPIN’ SWEET!

More Cobra Cuteness

More Darlingtonia californica cuteness!  Seedlings were given to me last year from Mike Wang. I love seeing these things grow.

Darlingtonia californicaDarlingtonia california – tub of babies

Below, young developing pitchers looking quite interesting! You can really see that serpent’s tongue.

Darlingtonia californicaDarlingtonia california – interesting looking youngin’.

And So It Begins… Again.

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”

Rebuilding
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…

Looking Back…

It was one of those days today that caused me just to look back on everything… I was just going through some old photos and saw some of the first successful “sprouts” from 2007.  Made me kind of chuckle cuz who would of thought that these few seedlings would be the humble beginnings of some major Sarracenia insanity…

Sarracenia Seedling - Doodle Bug OP[Some of the first Sarracenia sprouts]