Sunday, May 29, 2011

First Flower

It finally happened, about 3 weeks later than last year, the first blossom opened up on my garage-overwintered plants. It is a purpurea x flava, and it's the same plant that bloomed first last year, while I was in Canada, so I never got to see it last year. I thought it would've opened up sooner, but we had some pretty cool temps the past week, including a frost advisory on the night of May 26th, although we ended up not getting any frost. Unfortunately, there's nothing to cross it with. There's a few more that are probably a few days away from opening, one of which may be a duplicate of this one. Another week or so and there should be dozens opened. I don't think I'll save any of the pollen from this one though. It's not exactly the prettiest plant, the only trait that may be desirable is its large pitcher size.

Sarracenia purpurea x flava

In other news, I moved all of the plants from the greenhouse back home, but most were/are in pretty bad shape. Besides the misting of hard tap water and the uneven table they were sitting on, which led to some plants being probably too saturated with water, while others were too dry, there is also a recurrence of an insect problem. I noticed some aphids, but there is a lot of mealy bugs. I ended up throwing a bunch more away, they were already dead, and time will tell how many end up surviving. Hopefully most!

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