Sunday, July 4, 2010

Sarracenia 'Red Sumatra'

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.