And then came the hail.

The title says it all.

Here are some photos taken over the weekend. The wind had been back to normal over the last few weeks. New, non-malformed pitchers were up, replacing the manky looking ones. Everything was looking magnificent.

And then came the storm. Typical Bureau of Meteorology: the public pages said “chance of thunderstorms”. But the pay-to-see aviation service pages had maps showing high risk of severe storms over a large swath of New South Wales, with Canberra right in the middle.

So, around 6 PM, the skies darkened and it quickly grew quite ominous:

The storm dumped pea to small marble hail on us for 5 minutes. Lots and lots of close lightning strikes too. We got 23 mm (nearly 1”) of rain in about 10 minutes. We were lucky; a few kilometres away there was hail slightly larger than golf balls.

Here is the aftermath in the collection. I would hate to see what golf ball hail would do:

 

Well, it least the rain brought out some food:

Till next time.

Seedlings

Back in 2011, I noticed a number of Sarracenia seedlings had germinated in pots throughout the collection. As I had done a big Sarracenia flava pollination the previous season (crossing every clone of each flava form I had with each other and pinching out any other species’ flowers!), it was pretty obvious what species the seedlings would be. In order to see what I would get out of them, I transplanted them into a foam produce box full of peat, along with a bunch of sundews I recovered out of pots when I repotted the collection last year. Here is what the box looks like now:

There are a few very nice looking plants coming up in here. Here are my favourites:

To longtime readers of this blog, it is pretty obvious that I love Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea. During the mega pollination, I crossed all of my (then) clones together: FRT 1-1, FRT 1-5 and a clone originating from Phil Reytter’s collection. This seedling is presumably the progeny of one of these crosses (I suspect FRT 1-1 x Reytter clone – FRT 1-5 has a cut-throat blotch that I suspect would have been passed on).

Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora – nice red tube, and the only seedling true to type from these seedlings. In contrast, there are a number of flava var. rugellii, flava var. cuprea and flava var. flava / ornata.

On Sarracenia, drugs and Lepidoptera…

Saracenia flava with soon-to-be dinner.

Way back in 1976, a group of researchers extracted coniine, a narcotic drug, from the nectar of Sarracenia flava. Using the fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) as test subjects, they demonstrated that the amount of coniine in the nectar was sufficient to paralyse the ants. While I can’t access the original study online, I have often wondered what effect the coniine has on prey capture? (NB – the amount of coniine secreted by Sarracenia is not anywhere near enough to affect humans!).

Over the past couple of seasons, I have made some interesting observations with butterflies and moths coming to my Sarracenia. Last season, I watched a number of adults of the dayflying grapevine moth (Phalaenoides glycinae, Noctuidae sensu stricta: Agaristinae) drink the nectar of Saracenia leucophylla x psittacina pitchers (see photo above).

I was bemused that these moths would be attracted to Sarracenia, but became more intrigued when I found them alive but very intoxicated on the surface of the Sarracenia pots. When I picked them up, they barely but up a struggle, strange for such a strong flying (and often hard to catch) moth. However, they were never trapped by the Sarracenia hybrid they drank from, as the opening is too constricted for the moth to get inside. It was always this hybrid they were feeding at too – I never saw them at any other Sarracenia.

Now, fast forward to this season.

Over the past few days, we have had Common Brown butterflies (Heteronympha merope merope, Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) make their first appearance in Canberra. The above photo shows a male specimen, which are more conspicuous than females at this time of year.

Here is where I found one today (plant is an S. leucophylla ‘Tarnok’):

What is impressive here is the relative sizes of the common brown butterfly…

and the pitcher that caught it…

As you can see, males of the common brown have a wingspan nearly twice the size of the mouth of this S. leucophylla pitcher. In fact, the specimen I photographed (from Tenterfield, NSW), is a little smaller (and paler) than the ones I often see here in Canberra.

And yet, this leucophylla managed to snag one. Sure, with its wings folded above its back, the butterfly could fall in, but the feeding behaviour of these butterflies is such that they usually settle head up, on top of the flower they are feeding on, and rhythmically open and close their wings while they feed. Once inside the pitcher, I think the butterfly’s struggling would suck it further down the pitcher, but I really wonder whether it would fall in on its own.

Perhaps the leucophylla had a little help from some coniine?

I will keep watching what goes on with insets around my Sarracenia over the summer and see if I can photograph some interesting encounters.

Pitchers are up!

Back home at last! While I was away, the Sarracenia went mad putting up their pitchers. They look stunning now, a veritable riot of colour. The only crappy thing this season – Canberra had in incredibly windy October, with 21 days of the last month having maximum wind gusts over 40 km/h. In fact, 14 of these days had wind gusting over 50 km/h. The result – lots of aborted and deformed pitchers. Interestingly, the plants in the biggest pots were much less affected than plants in smaller pots. I wonder if the larger root surface area allowed the plants in bigger pots to be more tolerant of the wind?

Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea “FRT 1-1”. This is the tallest plant this year, standing head and shoulders above all rest. This clone has some introgression from S. leucophylla, but is nonetheless magnificent. I really do love this plant…

Sarracenia flava var. atropurpurea “Son of FRT 1-1”. Gotcha! Plants bred out this lovely flava var. atropurpurea from a cross with an unspecified flava var. rubricorpora some years ago, and it never fails to look beautiful. This pitcher opened a few days ago, with the second opening yesterday. Sadly, the wind this year has trashed a lot of the opening pitchers, although in this case the plant has responded by reducing the size of the pitchers – they were easily 200 mm (8”) taller last year.

Speaking of seedlings, here are the results of my first set of crossings. They are all products of Sarracenia flava intra-varietal crosses, so there should be some nice plants result here. I pretty much crossed all clones I had of each variety with every other clone. The all-red seedling is likely a cross between FRT 1-1 and FRT 1-5, two excellent red clones. There is also a sole seedling of flava var. rubricorpora and a couple of flava var. cuprea.

Sarracenia flava var. rugellii – I brought this clone at a Triffid park open day some years ago. It is one of the finest rugellii clones I’ve come across, with a massive throat patch and a very tight throat.

Sarracenia flava var. rubricorpora “FRT 1”. This is one of the very best var. rubricorpora I have come across, or even read about. It is not a particularly massive clone, but it never fails to produce red pitcher tubes, even if it has been freshly repotted.

Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Tarnok’. This is now the only leucophylla I grow in my collection. I have only just got it back into the collection, as a lot of people who were after this clone managed to extract all my divisions off me in exchange for flava clones I was after. Here is this plant’s flower:

I used to grow most of my Sarracenia in a greenhouse, but this year they were all outside. While the spring winds – which were particularly bad this year – can ruin pitchers, there is a benefit to keeping them under the elements: the pitchers open with the first burst of insects. This year, hoverflies (Syrphidae) were super abundant, and most of the open pitchers are well on their way to being filled. Above are some Tarnok pitchers brim full…

And here is a heavy veined flava var. cuprea from Gotcha! Plants about to nail a Muscoid fly.

The VFTs are also coming back up for another year of snapping insects – this one (and the plant behind) is a clone produced by Peter and Jessica Biddlecombe that they affectionately called red crescent. It was one of the earlier red clones available in Australia, but it seems to almost have disappeared from cultivation following clones like ’Royal Red’, ‘Akai Ryu’ and the Triffid park red clones. I might follow the advice of Carl Mazur over at Zone 6b and produce VFT seeds this year, just to see what I get coming up.

And to close off – here are some Darlingtonia coming back from their stolons. I lost all of my large plants last year – they simply rotted out. Fortunately, I had collected some stolon cuttings that had small plants already formed (which are now producing adult leaves), and cut off all the undeveloped stolons far short of where the rot symptoms were present. This photo shows one of these stolons producing new growth. Hopefully, I’ll soon have decent size plants back again soon.

Until next time, good growing.

JN.