Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa var. burkeii f. luteola

Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa var. burkeii f. luteola. Yeah. Type that 10 times fast without getting carpal tunnel syndrome!  (S. purpurea ssp venosa var. burkeii = S. rosea.  Ah yes, the name game. A comprehensive run down of this is can be found in the FAQ’s of  Barry Rice’s site.)

It’s an awesome plant  and for more information, read about the history of this plant  on the International Carnivorous Plant Society page about this friggin’ awesome plant. (Thanks Mr. Miller and Mr. Hanrahan!)

About a year or so ago, I received a few seeds from fellow grower friend, Chris Gussman.  The seedlings are now showing some luteola-ness!  Chris (Chris, correct me if I am wrong), crossed 2 of his S. rosea f. luteola plants and now the seeds are coming up over here pretty nice.   I have hopes to propagate and distribute these plants (among others)  in the future to ensure this plants survival.  Thanks again Chris!

[Sarracenia purpurea ssp. venosa var. burkeii f. luteola, 9.18.10]

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I’m stuffed…

Dude, I’m stuffed… I just had this incredible dinner just now – a regular “mixtwo” burrito from Taqueria Guadalajara. (yeah, that’s a yelp link…) I don’t like the sour cream and other “fluff” to get in the way of the flavors of the meat. The two choices of protein in this particular burrito was carne asada (steak) and carnitas (pork).  The flavors play well off each other and enhance each other.  And these burritos were like as big as my forearm, and i figured I would only eat half and work out tonight — BUT — the flavor was so awesome that I just ate the whole thing. YES.  Anyway… now that I got that out of the way, I feel friggin’ stuffed. Like dude… food comatose is setting in but I gotta get this blog post outta the way before I fall asleep on my keyboard. 😉

Just hope I don’t end up like the following photo of a pitcher plant filled with bugs. This pitcher is completely stuffed.  Look closely, you can see the exoskeltons of the meals in there.  Pitcher plants are great at trapping prey; when they get too full, the older pitchers will kinda burn out and dark burn marks will appear, or sometimes the pitcher will just break down like below.  Sometimes, the traps are so good at catching prey they get so loaded and wasted with bugs that the pitcher topple over.   Yummy.  Ok, pass the Pepto Bismol please…

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Seasons [Seedling] Shift

It is a new season, and it’s becoming obvious in the garden, as well as life.  I couldn’t help but thing about change as I was driving home from the office on this beautiful evening.  I was appreciating some simple things about this change into fall:  taking in the colors of the fall sky at dusk,  rollin’ home down highway 1 with the windows down, breathing that fall air, the feel of the wind on my bald scalp… oh and pumpkin spice lattes now available! YEAH! (well, nix the pumpkin spice. I’m happy with just coffee.)  🙂

Cycles. Seasons. Change. Growth.

Beautiful.

Shifts are necessary in growing Sarracenia as well. When one grows Sarracenia from seed like me — things can and will get crowded *very* fast. Sure, seedlings will grow in the pot – for a while – but the true potential of the seedling won’t be visable until some changes happens and it’s given a little bit of room to grow.

The following photos are of a cross that I did last year of Sarracenia courtii, anthocyanin free clone x “Green Monster”  (Photos here link to the actual parent plants.)  This is S. courtii, anthocyanin free x excellens, anthocyanin free.  Anthocyanin free plants lack pigmentation and are all green. All awesome. More examples from an earlier green post.

[Sarracenia courtii, anthocyanin free x “Green Monster” – cross by Robert Co – It’s crowded! Sho ’nuff!]

In the photo above, the seedlings are growing very fast, however it’s time to sort this out. Time to sort and shift em into a place where they can grow.

[Removed from the pot. Time to break em apart.]

[Sorting.]

The sorting process is fascinating. You don’t really realize how many seedlings are in there until you break it all apart. The strongest ones are evident, and the rest — well other growers will compost them, but I’d like to give this particular cross one year to see how the plants fare and adjust just due to the rarity of the parentage. I’m hoping for some surprises as some seedlings may look smaller and not as strong as their siblings at this time, but the next year after a little TLC, some could have a spurt and become the winners of the group. It has happened to me with a few earlier crosses.

[Strongest seedling out of this batch. Good size and shape, and root system formed.]

[Fresh transplants… time for growth. In the coming years, their characters will be revealed.]

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Moonlight Sarracenia

It’s 1:30 Am – do you know where your Sarracenia are? 1:30 in the morning. Yeah… I was taking photos of Sarracenias in the autumn moonlight at one-friggin-thirty ay-em.

I was also inspired to take these photos after remembering an article in the the March 2010 International Carnivorous Plant Society Newsletter about plants and moonlight. In this article, Peter D’Amato of California Carnivores writes:

“One thing we must remember. Moonlight is sunlight, reflected by our lunar companion. Although night time varies on our earthy according to latitude and seasons, plants live in moonlight as much as the direct rays of the sun.  That some carnivorous plants may take advantage of the moon’s silvery glow is not out of the realm of possibilities.”

In line with yesterdays moonlight-y equinox-y autumnal post, here are some photos of Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’ in the moonlight.  This particular S. leucophylla photographed was a division from my fellow Sarracenia grower brodude, Mike Wang.   This division originates from one of the original seed grown plants collected by Barry Meyers Rice before the S. leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’ site was destroyed.

[Setup: Camera on tripod set up for 30 second exposure.  The way it works – if the shutter is open longer , the more light is let in… the more light, the brighter the image. The moon was just spectacular last night, and gave the leucophyllas an other worldly glow.]

[Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’, image from the shot above.]

[Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’]

[Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’]

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Autumn Equinox – 9.23.2010

Hello Autumn. Nice to see you again.

Man — after a long day at the office, it was so nice to be greeted by a wonderful full autumn equinox moon tonight. Came home and my wife baked a fresh pumpkin pie. Oh man. I am feeling very autumn-y!

The equinox marks a shift in season — where both night and day fall roughly into equal lengths.  The “harvest moon” refers to the when the autumn moon is at its brightest, when the farmers would work by its light to bring in the harvest…  I wasn’t doing any harvesting tonight, but rather doing a lot of watering.  Tonight the harvest moon and autumnal equinox fall on the same date – and this won’t happen, I’m told until another 19 years in 2029.

I just took this photo a few minutes ago; it is a photo of the autumn harvest equinox moon from my deck.

When I think of autumn (Sarracenia wise), I think of leucophylla/leucophylla hybrids, seed pods, and the seed pod harvest …and speaking of harvest, I did a little bit of harvesting  a couple of days ago.  Here’s a quick mosaic taken with photos from the handy dandy iPhone reflecting some of this…

[Clockwise from top left: group shot | S. leucophylla ‘Hurricane Creek White’, division  from a seed grown plant before the HCW site was destroyed | Handful of Sarracenia pods  | A pocket full of fresh harvested pods in envelopes to extract seed later. Yes – Cargo pants come in handy in situations like this.]

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A Minor Detail

One of the things love about Sarracenia minors and their hybrids is that they have those very cool windows on the pitcher.  It’s a luring/trapping mechanism that the plant has that I mentioned about in an earlier come to the light post.  So a couple days ago, I noticed one of the plants with some cool thick windows in the back of its pitcher head.  It’s seed grown. The seeds came over as Sarracenia minor var. okefenokeensis x “Golden Red Jubilee” — as they grew, a lot of the seed looked like the pod parent plant, and a couple plants have characteristics of both parents.  Anyway, for this particular plant it would almost seem that  it may of been self pollinated seedling?  Eh… But who knows really. That’s just a minor detail.  When it will bloom, it may give us a better indication.  Anywhoo, for now, I just am enjoying the “Minor” detail on the back of this pitcher…

[Some pretty cool windows on the back of this one..]

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Sarracenia + Light Painting

So, this past weekend, I finally was able to get a chance to go out and do some night photography around San Francisco with my good friend and bro, Ron. (Thanks for kickin’ it, bro!)  We didn’t do much painting with lights, but we did get a chance to do a lot of great night time San Francisco city scape shots.  Just a couple shots below…

There’s something so poetically metaphorical about photographing  the beauty of light while everything else is darkness. While we were out shooting, I was reminded of a photo I took in 2009 of a grouping of my Sarracenias in the dark — with an added LED flashlight of course! Ah yes, Sarracenias are a bright spot for me, indeed.

[Sept 19, 2010 – Pacific Heights from Alta Vista Park, San Francisco]

[Sept 19, 2010 – Painted Ladies in the Night, Alamo Square, San Francisco]

***
And a photo of Sarracenias and random LED light painting/scribbles.
Hmm… I should do this more often with the Sarrs…

[Sarracenia in the dark + LED lights randomly waved about, 2009]

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Hangin’ out

As I was sorting out some seedlings a couple weeks back, I discovered one of the pitcher plants kinda … hangin’ out.  Well, that thing on it was hangin’ out.

This is a 2 1/2 year old seed grown clone of S. rubra ssp. wherryi “Chatom Giant” x “Sky watcher” (cross created by Brooks Garcia) – what impresses me with this plant is that — that thing. You know,  that long thing on the hood. Reminds me of an angler or something. 🙂  Now, not all the crosses from this grex look the same, (grex is just a geeky way of saying the plants that came from the same hybrid group):  some have elongated lids,  some are showing more color, some are  exhibiting more flared hoods from the S. “Sky watcher” parentage — but they all look interesting.  I hope that it gets some of that size from it’s rubra ssp. wherryi “Chatom Giant” as it matures.  Yeah. 😉

[Sarracenia rubra ssp. wherryi “Chatom Giant” x “Sky Watcher”]

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Perspective

You ever wonder what it would be like to see Sarracenia from a bugs point of view?  Sarracenia catesbaei gives us some perspective…

[Photo: A bugs point of view – inside Sarracenia catesbaei]

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Another Reptile Crossing!

Happy weekend everyone!  Hope your weekends are going well!

Here’s a seedling that was created by Dr. Travis Wyman. It’s yet another Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ hybrid. This one is  another clone of S. ‘Reptilian Rose’ x leucophylla “pale”.  There’s a few other photos of its siblings from an earlier post – (Reptile Crossing).

What strikes me about this particular seedling is that the lips are still staying green, even in strong light.  When the light hits the nectar roll at just the right angle, it also can also seem to have a slight blueish-green hue to it.   I hope that the angular features of the parent plant get more amplified as it matures on this particular plant.  A green angular peristome (nectar roll) would mos’ def be pretty awesome!

[Sarracenia ‘Reptilian Rose’ x leucophylla “pale” – cross created by Dr. Travis Wyman]

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