My Sarracenia hybrids

[jerrytheplater]

Here are some photo's of some of my pitcher plants, Sarracenia Scarlet Belle and Dana's Delight.

I brought these two plants indoors tonight to cut out all the dead pitchers and took a few photo's. These plants have only seen light frosts so far. Nothing really hard yet.

Sarracenia Dana's Delight: Photo taken Sept 20, 2009. Plant is in an 8 inch pot and needs a larger pot. It has blown off the picnic table a few times and most pitchers are broken due to this. This plant looks bad, but it really is beautiful if not damaged.



Here it is today. It has really grown in some nice new pitchers.





Sarracenia Scarlett Belle:

Photo taken Sept 20, 2009. Plant is in a 6 inch pot.



Here it is today. It has also grown in some nice new pitchers.

[JakeJ]

Awsome plant!

[HoustonFishFanatic]

Wow! What a beauty!

[legomaniac89]

Beautiful Jerry! I have one of each of these two coming sometime soon. Now I can't wait for them to get here!

[jerrytheplater]

Sarracenia Northwest just posted a new video on YouTube on North American Carnivorous plants. Gives cultural information and some good shots of plants heading for dormancy.

I need to take a shot of my VFT as they are now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMD-RgZU-JQ

[hydrophyte]

Really nice plants Jerry. Have you gotten any last minute shots before your plants go dormant? Do these plants whither completely for dormancy, or do the pitchers retain some green. I remember seeing pitcher plants in the bogs Up North in the middle of winter still with some life in the foliage.

[jerrytheplater]

Sorry to say, I didn't take any photo's of the pitchers today. (Kicks myself). I just took all my VFT and Pitcher plants to my friends greenhouse today. There was a bug buzzing in one of the pitchers of the Dana's Delight. Every time I shook the plant, the bug would buzz. Dinner time!! Prior to this, I left the pitchers outdoors to see frosts, but the VFT were protected in an unheated closed garage at night. The Scarlet Belle pitcher has a lot of frost damage on about 33% of the pitchers. The Dana's Delight doesn't show any damage. The Purple pitcher, Sarracenia purpurea also is still unharmed by the frosts.

If I left the plants outside all winter, they would die down completely, as far as I have read-I don't have first hand experience. Last winter was my first overwintering in the greenhouse. By spring time in the greenhouse most of the pitchers will have died down. They can see temperatures down to about 26-28F in the greenhouse on cold nights. Daytime it will heat up. I am not sure if they ventilate during the day in the winter, I'll have to ask. It could get pretty warm on a sunny day.

Last spring I cut off all the pitchers that had any damage on them. There were only a few undamaged pitchers on the two Sarracenia hybrids. The S. purpurea is much more winter hardy and there were more undamaged pitchers to keep for this years growth. The plants take some time to come back in to growth in the spring. They really don't start looking good until mid June or so. The fall really brings out the color in these plants.

I do have photo's of the VFT after I removed the dead traps, but I'll put them in a separate thread.