Speaking of Pitcher Plants

[liveoak]

OK Jim, jamesp , we're here to pick your brain.

Got ourselves to the flea market last weekend & a women was selling some potted pitcher plants.

I think we have at least 2 varieties & she said she thought maybe a third one just coming up.

We were hoping you could identify what we have.

I've tucked them into the greenhouse for now, but maybe you could also suggest the best way to grow them.

I have a small greenhouse (with fan) and also have some outside kitty pools I use to grow half assed water plants.

Any input & suggestions appreciated,

Patty

[electrocutus]

Cool plants. I love carnivorous plants.
I have been growing an asian pitcher plant in my basement office. It's under an LED grow lamp that is on 16 hours a day and typically very dark for the rest of the 24 hours. It is a very thirsty plant. It has been doing really well.

[jamesp]

Oct 20, 2022 10:26:46 GMT -5 electrocutus said:

Cool plants. I love carnivorous plants.
I have been growing an asian pitcher plant in my basement office. It's under an LED grow lamp that is on 16 hours a day and typically very dark for the rest of the 24 hours. It is a very thirsty plant. It has been doing really well.

Nice nepenthes electrocutus.

[jamesp]

Oct 20, 2022 10:14:17 GMT -5 liveoak said:

OK Jim, jamesp , we're here to pick your brain.

Got ourselves to the flea market last weekend & a women was selling some potted pitcher plants.

I think we have at least 2 varieties & she said she thought maybe a third one just coming up.

We were hoping you could identify what we have.

I've tucked them into the greenhouse for now, but maybe you could also suggest the best way to grow them.

I have a small greenhouse (with fan) and also have some outside kitty pools I use to grow half asses water plants.

Any input & suggestions appreciated,

Patty

The top one is a Flava. The bottom two are leucophylla.
Either the Flava is a hybrid or it's red neck ribbon has not fully developed.(you will see it on a search)
The lower Leuc appears to have been bred from fornication too as it's white section seems to fall down the pitcher further than a pure plant. awesome, my fav one. But you won't know about either possible hybrid situation until you grow them out better next year.

They both look to be illegally dug plants from the wild. Typical behavior in your neck of the Sarracenia neighborhood, home of Sarracenia poachers ! Could be wrong but they appear too crooked to be grown in controlled conditions. A dead give away.

Don't put them in a greenhouse or you will deny them their needed hibernation. Try to keep them in full sun always.
Wait till February and re-plant/pot them in 100% peat moss - it comes in bags at Depot/Lowes. Wet the peat good, it defies getting totally moist. Preferably use squat pots so they won't blow over. Min 6 inches peat depth. 8 inches peat depth will make beastier plants.
Meantime(and all the time) set them in a pan holding 2 to 3 inches of water to keep their feet wet assuming those pots have holes in the bottom. If not make holes in the bottom. The water can evaporate down to 1 inch deep before adding water back up to 3 inches. No higher than water 3 inches up the pot or they will drown. DO NOT FERTILIZE. NEVER. They need bugs ! Their roots don't eat, they serve only as anchors.

Welcome to the world of Sarracenia. And yes if I were you living where you live I too would poach an desirable occasional plant once in a while. Especially if there is a large colony covering over an acre and removal of a couple will not damage their numbers. You live right at the intersection where several varieties overlap, expect cool hybrids.

Maybe you guys can start selling Sarracenia like this fellow does in Oregon ! That fellow Brooks used to come to my place and get my hybrids when one popped up. He found the motherload of hybrids at the Wilkerson farm near you.



a pure Flava should look like this but without any red veins. However most are crossed sometime in the past few 1000 years.



Natural bog of Flava. Note hybrids. Naughty plants can't control themselves. Color blind rascals. White flower is Star Grass.

[liveoak]

Thank you Jim jamesp, just what we needed to know.

The woman at the Dothan, AL flea mkt  said she had been growing them in a "field", but what that actually meant I don't know.

She kind of implied that there might be a third type in one of those pots, but she wasn't sure, although she asked a higher price for that one

Thanks for the very detailed growing tips- we can do that.I have a bale of peat moss on hand regularly for turtle pens .

Right now they look to be growing in a mix of sphagnum and sand, but we'll hold off until Feb to re-pot.

Might need to take that little drive you mentioned to maybe see what's out there,eh ?

What a great excuse not to work tomorrow

Thank you,

Patty .. packing her folding poachers spade

[jamesp]

Passing thru Dothan(hwy 280 ?) to the beach there were Leucophylla on the west shoulder of the road in the mow path !
Not sure how they survive being mowed there, must be excellent growing conditions.
I have found entire stands of them(100's of plants) poached out. This is damaging. Getting one or two from a large stand causes no harm.
Anyway, if you dial in growing them you will have all you want simply by their vegetative reproduction.
Most of my pots are packed, even potbound. Will be transferring many of the large 24 inch pots to an earthen pond. They must weigh 200 pounds each and have over 100 traps each.

[liveoak]

OK  Jim ,jamesp , so Tom and I took the day off yesterday & decided to go and look for pitcher plants.

We  took your initial tip about the road from Mexico beach (Hwy 386).

So we drove 386 all the way from Wewahitchka down to the bridge on the inter-coastal, at 30 miles an hour and we really looked.

NO no pitcher plants. We saw lots of wet roadsides/ditches and saw every other kind of wild flower, arrowheads, etc but no pitcher plants anywhere.

So a nice picnic by the inter-coastal & then we changed tactics, and started driving the side roads (dirt/sand) out through the old St Joe Co lands,

thinking that they wouldn't have mowed those, so maybe we find some plants.

We found ideal looking habitat , many wet fields, creeks with grassy bogs along the banks,

so much so that we wished we had plants to plant there, the habitat looked so good.

We drove MANY miles of these roads, branching off of 386.

We saw:

Butterflies

2 Otters (at one of the creeks) frolicking together, but moving too fast for a photo.

   Something I have observed that otters tend to do.

3 Bald Eagles (1 enjoying a nice road kill lunch)

1 Racoon (boat launch type)

1 Sea Tow rescue boat (flying by and waving)

Many Many Many wildflowers (picked a big bouquet)

3 Deer (in one of the wet fields)

3 Wild Chickens (a few miles from any house)

1 beaver dam (beavers unavailable for comment)

NO Pitcher Plants (ZERO)

Now we're not saying that you were wrong, that the roadsides out of Mexico Beach were littered with these things &

we'll give the disclaimer that we didn't continue 386 south of the intercoastal, as that's getting pretty close to Mexico Beach

and we figured that would be pretty well developed & built up by now.

But perhaps you were correct and poachers have removed every single plant from this area-

but I figured we would have seen 1 or 2 stragglers, and that they all hadn't become extinct.

But I'm beginning to wonder, that unless they are found very locally in some concentrated area that we missed,

I certainly don't think they have that much of a wide range in that area.

OTOH it was a nice cool sunny day & a good day to get out for a drive.

Even though there were NO (ZERO) pitcher plants.

Patty

A butterfly at one of the creeks :

Find the wild rooster- crowing to beat the band in the middle of the day.

I think we could have lured them into the car if we only had some chicken feed with us, as they approached pretty close.

So they probably weren't too wild. Pretty nice looking chickens actually .

[brybry]

Middle looks like a Rhode Island Red, the white on the left is a white version that pops up in RIR, the right is either Americana or a mix with Americana.

[liveoak]

Oct 22, 2022 10:35:37 GMT -5 brybry said:

Middle looks like a Rhode Island Red, the white on the left is a white version that pops up in RIR, the right is either Americana or a mix with Americana.

How funny brybry- I just knew they were fancy chickens .

Wild & fancy 

Thanks for the ID

Patty

[jamesp]

The habitat is tricky liveoak. Sorry to hear the trip didn't produce.

Tips:
Rarely do they grow in standing water or creeks.
They usually grow in damp pine flats without standing water.
Usually the pines are thinner in Sarracenia habitat due to the overly damp soil allowing more sun to tan them pitchers.
With the millions of acres of production pines down there this type of habitat can be like finding a needle in a haystack.
And in the past 15 years since I frequented Mexico Beach rest assured the collectors have picked the easy roadside offerings.

I can tell you a hot spot on the Mexico Beach boundary. It is exactly 1.57 miles up hwy 386 from it's intersection of Hwy 98 at the beach. There is a small bridge there to allow flood water to pass. The low growing purpurea were being mowed on the road shoulders on the east side of Hwy 386. On the NE corner of the little bridge drainage and Hwy 386 was a stand of big Flava(bright yellow) however the next year that stand had been poached. They were about 100 feet back in the pines from 386. But a visit and hike in that forest on that NE quadrant should educate you on perfect habitat and perhaps those dang poachers left some root stock in the ground. Looking at March 2020 Google Earth that spot has been timbered. grrr. I'd still go stomp around at that spot. The log skidders often displace Sarracenia and the removal of trees can send them growing. The low brush may prevent hiking there, don't know.

At 1.50 miles up 386 on the west side(just before the drainage) is a bog that is at 9'el.(as opposed to a dryer 11'el. adjacent/surrounding it.
If it is not too wet it may have Sarracenia. But it looks like 9' elevation is going to be habitat for them at that particular area.
Or maybe you are gunshy to try again. I have another solution. You will hear from me on that one.

[liveoak]

HA jamesp, we just knew you'd tell us it was south of the bridge.

Seriously the 9' El was an interesting observation, as I'm sure everywhere we looked was higher than that.

We just might take another drive, it was interesting - it would have been nice to come home with one or 2 plants,

but as they say sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination

So we're likely to try again and bring our hiking boots.

Thank you,

Patty

[jamesp]

My buddy lived up the road in Overstreet. I explored the next 3 miles to Overstreet quite a bit and found nothing.
They sure did a lot of timbering around that bridge but that may not be the end of those plants in that area.
One good thing about timbering is that it exposes wet areas(exposing bull rush and sedge colonies, deep skidder tire tracks, and pools of water). Also look for drosenia, they grow around Sarracenia, as does star grass and stems with a white ball on the end(forgot name).
Remember how the wet areas looked in person on site and then go look at those spots on google earth so you can identify such wet spots.
Timbering is #1 destruction method of Sarracenia by far.

The mowed purpureas on the shoulders can be barely visible and only 2 to 3 inches tall. Look down into the grass there.

Since I found a poached(35 foot circle) of Flava they must be native to that area. I was not sure if Flava went to that zone.
Certain that Leucs grow there, bright white tops easy to see.
Their foliage should still be standing, mine in Atlanta are.

[liveoak]

You've given us a lot of incentive to go out again, jamesp .

Obviously if past history stands, the plants are south of the bridge at Overstreet & I guess that's where we have to go.

We'll try to down there sometime in the next week or two & will report back.

I think this week we've been playing too much hooky & have to do some paying work a little bit

Thank you ,

Patty

[jamesp]

I-10 crossing from Alabama into Mississippi. That area on the Mississippi side was loaded with Sarracenia. Alata and Leucs. One stand of Alata at one exit and down the road a mile south must have been several 100 acre in size.
That property may be drained and developed by now as it was prime real estate.
Let's get back to work and take care of responsibilities

[liveoak]

Nov 2, 2022 9:05:15 GMT -5 jamesp said:

Let's get back to work and take care of responsibilities

It would be cool to see a field of wild pitcher plants.

Driving those logging roads down by Overstreet we imagined.

Have you ever read the statistic of how much actual work the typical 8 hr "office worker" actually does.

Between the cigarette breaks, water cooler, cell phone, and chatting with co-workers, I think it's 2.

Us self employed slobs work plenty hard, but I bet you know about that.

It's just that you don't get paid unless you produce something.

So yeah, yeah, we're headed into the shop today..........

Hunting pitchers will have to wait a least a couple of days

Patty