A First

While sitting on the deck yesterday, grilling dinner, I noticed an emerged flower bud in one of my mini-bogs. Normally, this wouldn't be that big of a deal, as I always get a few flowers every fall. However, this is a flower from a plant I raised from seed, and it is the first flower I've ever got from a seed-raised plant, and it happened 30 months from germination. Now hopefully it blooms again in the spring as I think this is an excellent plant to breed. It's an open-pollinated alata x flava, that turns completely dark red. Here's some pics of the bud and the pitchers:

Hybrid Seedling

Sarracenia (leucophylla x purpurea) x 'Wilkerson's Red'
Originally uploaded by aarongunnar

Here is a pic of the first new seedling to start showing some adult characteristics. It is mitchelliana x 'Wilkerson's Red', one of roughly 15 in total I have of this cross. I originally got the seeds from Wes Buckner in the fall of 2009. The seeds germinated around Christmas '09. This particular one looks to be really leaning towards the mitchelliana look. Of the 15 seedlings I have, this one, at this point, appears the most colorful. Some of its siblings are mostly green, others just appear strongly veined in red, while one looks like it might be mostly pure red. They are still pretty young, so it's tough to read too much into the coloration at this point, but I'm pleased with how they look so far.

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.