Sarracenia 'Red Sumatra'

Sarracenia 'Red Sumatra'
Originally uploaded by aarongunnar

Just testing out the Flickr-Blog connection

Robins

I've had my new seedlings outside on my deck for at least a month now. Over the past few weeks, I've noticed the occasional seedling missing from a pot, or those that had yet to be transplanted into individual pots all torn up. This probably made me more mad than anything in recent memory. I would find some seedlings still alive, but no clue as to which one they were. I repotted them back into any empty pots, but who knows if I put them in the right one? So, I will have, I guess, about a dozen seedlings that may or may not be labelled correctly. Anyway, one morning I caught the culprit red-handed, a robin. He/she apparently was gathering the sphagnum to use in his/her nest - the seedlings were just in the way. I was suspecting a squirrel and was in the planning stages of getting my BB Gun ready. So I put up some bird netting I had, from experiencing this problem in the past, and haven't had any problems since. Although, the netting is unsightly and keeps getting caught in my shoes everytime I water.

Long Time Coming

It's been awhile since I posted. No reason really, other than being pretty busy and not having the time to sit down and work on this. My Sarracenia are all in active growth and looking very nice, I might add. I was in Canada for 2 weeks in May, and I thought I was gonna miss the bulk of flowering this year, but the weather happened to turn cold here while I was away, and we even had a freeze on the night before Mother's Day, which knocked off several flowers, but many made it through. I made several crosses this year which I can't wait to get the seeds going, which will be this fall sometime. It's been a few years since I actually did any crosses. Let's see, here's what I did:
-[(oreophila 'Sand Mtn' x flava) x leucophylla] x unknown flava hybrid
-the flava hybrid is all green (not antho-free) and possibly has a small bit of
purpurea in it.
-unknown flava hybrid x selfed
-I selfed it to possibly get a hint of its parentage from the offspring, we'll see
-'Lady Bug' x 'Flies Demise'
-'June Bug' x 'Lady Bug'
-'Doodle Bug' x 'Judith Hindle'
-'Judith Hindle' x (leucophylla x flava rugelli)
-'Ladies In Waiting' x 'Lady Bug'
-(leucophylla x flava rugelli) x 'Ladies In Waiting'
-[readii x (catesbaei x flava)] x 'Judith Hindle'

Well, I guess that's it for now. I've been taking a lot of pictures and will get them up here once I get some more free time.

Spring has Sprung...at least for now.

Been having some mild weather here in W. Wisconsin for the past week, and it's supposed to continue for at least another week, although I see the dreaded word 'snow' in next weekends forecast. Anyway, I moved my plants outside last week, but I'm guessing I may move them back into the garage by the weekend, depending on how cold it actually will get. Hopefully, it's only a short-term stay in there.

I checked my S. purpurea seedlings that I'm doing the fertilizer experiment on. I have no idea where my digital camera is, so I didn't get any pics, but there appears to be no difference between them at this point, which I think is 6 weeks since I started fertilizing.

I planted out some seeds last night that have been stratifying since Feb. 4, which are listed on the post from that day. I also was disposing of some seed trays that I planted around Christmas that had no germination, mostly older seeds, but was surprised to find 1 Pretty N Pink - openpollinated, and 1 Leah Wilkerson x oreophila seedling. I guess it pays to be patient with seed germination.

The plants I got from Lois Ochs via Ebay are sending up their first pitchers, and 3 of them are sending up flowers. May have to do a cross in the greenhouse, although 2 of them are unknowns.

New Plants

I bid on and won 5 plants that Lois Ochs was selling on Ebay. Well, I got the package on Thursday, and besides the 5 I won, she included a "grab-bag" that had 16! unlabelled rhizomes in it! That was so nice of her. I had prepared 3 6.5-gallon minibogs, I was going to plant the 5 I won, interspersed with some of my better 2-year-old seedlings. Well, I managed to fit all 21 in the 3 bogs, but only 2 of my seedlings. Alot of the 16 were pretty small rhizomes, but these bogs will have to be thinned out for sure in another year or two.
The "known" plants that I got:
- S. leucophylla - Hurricane Creek White
- S. x 'Bug Pipes' - a minor x psittacina hybrid. I had this plant before, purchased from David Crump when I visited his place in Charlotte, NC, several years ago. It perished 2 winters ago, and I was ecstatic when I saw Lois offering it on Ebay.
- S. alabamensis x 'Hummer's Okee Classic'. I'm not sure if there was a typo or not on the Ebay listing. I haven't asked Lois yet, but I wonder if it is really just the 'Hummer's Okee Classic' cultivar. Either way, I'm happy.
- 2 unknowns - one is an all red, kind of x mitchelliana-looking plant, and the other is a flava/oreophila-looking hybrid.

The Last of the Seeds...for now

Stratified my last batch of seeds, for the time being anyway. I have to try and remember that space is finite. I wrapped these, too, in paper towel, but I decided to soak them in peat tea that I brewed up, rather than just RO water. I figured this would be at least a little more natural. I also went ahead and soaked the ones from the previous post, even though they're pretty much ready to be planted now. I'll give them another week or two. Anyway, here's what I stratified:
-'Doreen's Colossus' x ('Leah Wilkerson' x oreophila)
-'Bud Wilkerson' x catesbaei 'Grande'
-'June Bug' - open pollinated
- x excellens - open pollinated
- mixed complex hybrids (ICPS)
- S. jonesii (ICPS)
- S. alabamenis (ICPS)

I also stratified several sets of 15 seeds, from my "seed bank" of open-pollinated species/hybrids collected over the years. I've kept them all in one envelope, so I have no idea what they are. I've got a few from this collection that are 2 yrs old now and there is really a nice diversity of pretty hybrids out of it. Anyway, I have a plan on doing a little research project with them. Basically, it will be similar to the purpurea fertilization study I mentioned in an earlier post, but a little more in depth. The treatments on these seeds will be as follows: Control (no treatment), treatment with foliar Miracid solution, treatment with soil application of Osmocote, treatment with Plant Helper (Trichoderma spp.), treatment with Miracid + Plant Helper, and treatment with Osmocote + Plant Helper. For those that don't know, Plant Helper is a microorganism that forms a symbiosis with plants, fighting off other soil-borne pathogens and supposedly increasing plant growth rates. I guess we will find out if it works on Sarracenia, and if so, how well. More info can be found at www.ampacbiotech.net

Fertilizer Experiment

I decided to do a little un-scientific experiment regarding fertilization of Sarracenia seedlings. I have some wild-collected S. purpurea seeds from two different locations in WI, roughly 120 miles apart. So I figured I'd fertilize one of them and not the other, using a Miracid solution as a foliar application approximately every 2 weeks. Obviously, it would've been better to just fertilize half of each location, but I didn't really plan too much for this. There could be inherent differences between the two populations. Anyway, here's the first pictures taken today, 2 weeks after the first fertilizer application, and 5 min. after the 2nd. I will update this post every few weeks or so until whenever. I'm not taking any measurements of any kind - just a visual comparison. The tray on the top is from Bayfield Co., from a small boggy area right next to a backroad, on the edge of a small lake. This area was very overgrown with trees and I suspect succession is creeping in and it may not be a suitable Sarracenia habitat 20 years from now. These will be the fertilized seedlings. The tray on the bottom is from Forest Co., from an open bog habitat surrounding a small lake. This was a very "healthy" looking bog, lots of orhcids and sundews present in the area. These will be unfertilized. Both sets of seeds germinated right around Christmas of 2009 and are currently kept in a greenhouse, in near hothouse conditions. I will move them to my backyard when the weather allows in late Spring, and back to the greenhouse in late Fall.


Feb. 13, 2010